GLASGOW, Scotland -- A U.N. climate summit opened Sunday, kicking off two weeks of intense diplomatic negotiations by almost 200 countries with goals of slowing global warming and adapting to the climate damage already underway.
[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » arkansasonline.com/111g20climate/]
As U.N. officials gaveled the climate summit to its formal opening in Glasgow, the heads of the world's leading economies at the close of separate talks in Italy made pledges that include stopping international financing of dirty-burning coal-fired power plants by next year. But much of the agreement was vague, and it was not the major push some had been hoping for to give momentum to the climate summit.
Patricia Espinosa, head of the U.N. climate office, declared at the summit's opening that government leaders face two choices in Glasgow.
They can sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions and help communities and countries survive what is becoming a hotter, harsher world, Espinosa said. "Or we accept that humanity faces a bleak future on this planet."
"It is for these reasons and more that we must make progress here in Glasgow," Espinosa said. "We must make it a success."
India Logan-Riley, an Indigenous climate activist from New Zealand, had a more blunt message for negotiators and world leaders at the summit's opening ceremony.
"Get in line or get out of the way," Logan-Riley said.
But Group of 20 leaders offered more vague pledges than commitments of firm action, saying they would seek carbon neutrality "by or around mid-century." They also agreed to the end of public financing for coal-fired power generation abroad, but they set no target for phasing out coal domestically -- a clear nod to China and India.
The G-20 countries represent more than three-quarters of the world's climate-damaging emissions. G-20 host Italy and the U.K., which is hosting the Glasgow conference, had looked for more ambitious targets coming out of Rome.
But major polluters including China and Russia had already made clear they had no immediate intention of following U.S. and European pledges to zero out all fossil-fuel pollution by 2050. Russia said Sunday that it was sticking to its target of 2060.
Speaking to reporters before leaving Rome, U.S. President Joe Biden called it "disappointing" that G-20 members Russia and China "basically didn't show up" with commitments to address climate change ahead of the U.N. climate summit.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson struck a grim tone, saying G-20 leaders "inched forward" on curbing global warming, but that the goal of limiting temperature rise to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit -- struck in a landmark deal at the end of the 2015 Paris climate summit -- was in danger of slipping out of reach.
"If Glasgow fails, then the whole thing fails," Johnson told reporters in Rome.
Some observers said the G-20 pledges were far from enough.
"This weak statement from the G-20 is what happens when developing countries who are bearing the full force of the climate crisis are shut out of the room," said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa. "The world's biggest economies comprehensively failed to put climate change on the top of the agenda ahead of COP26 in Glasgow."
NATIONS' EFFORTS
While the opening ceremony in Glasgow formally kicked off the talks, the more anticipated launch comes today, when leaders from around the world will gather to lay out their countries' efforts to curb emissions from burning coal, gas and oil and deal with the mounting damage from climate change.
[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » arkansasonline.com/111charles/]
The leaders of two of the top climate-polluting nations -- China and Russia -- were not expected to attend the summit, though seniors officials from those countries planned to participate. For Biden, whose country is the world's biggest climate polluter after China, the summit comes at a time when division within his own Democratic party is forcing him to scale back ambitious climate efforts.
"We made commitments here from across the board in terms of what we're going to bring to [the summit]," the president said. "As that old trade saying goes, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating."
Negotiators will push nations to ratchet up their efforts to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.5 degrees Celsius, this century compared with pre-industrial times.
The climate summit remains "our last, best hope to keep 1.5 [degrees Celsius] in reach," said Alok Sharma, the British government minister chairing climate talks.
Scientists say the chances of meeting that goal are slowly slipping away. The world has already warmed by more than 1.1 degrees Celsius, and current projections based on planned emissions cuts over the next decade are for it to hit 2.7 degrees Celsius by the year 2100.
The amount of energy unleashed by such planetary warming would melt much of the world's ice, raise global sea levels and greatly increase the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather, experts say.
The summit laid bare the divisions that still exist between Western countries that polluted the planet the most historically but are now seeing emissions decline, and the emerging economies led by China whose emissions are rising as their economies grow.
The United States and the European Union have set 2050 as their own deadline for reaching net-zero emissions, while China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are aiming for 2060. The leaders of those three countries didn't go to Rome for the summit.
In the end, the G-20 leaders arrived at a compromise to achieve climate neutrality "by or around mid-century," not a set year.
Sharma noted that China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, had just raised its climate targets somewhat.
"But of course we expected more," Sharma told the BBC earlier Sunday.
India, the world's third-biggest emitter, has yet to follow China, the U.S. and the EU in setting a target for reaching "net-zero" emissions. Negotiators are hoping Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will announce such a goal in Glasgow.
Some of the issues being discussed during the talks have been on the agenda for decades, including how rich countries can help poor nations tackle emissions and adapt to a hotter world. The slow pace of action has angered many environmental campaigners, who are expected to stage loud and creative protests during the summit.
Earlier in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pushed back at the West's target date.
"Why do you believe 2050 is some magic figure?" Lavrov asked at a news conference. "If it is an ambition of the European Union, it is the right of other countries also to have ambitions. ... No one has proven to us or anybody else that 2050 is something everyone must subscribe to."
DIFFICULT ISSUE
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the declaration Sunday went further on climate than any G-20 statement before it. He noted that it referred to keeping the 1.5 degree Celsius global warming target within reach, something that science shows will be hard to accomplish unless the world dramatically cuts emissions from fossil fuels.
"We changed the goalposts," Draghi told reporters.
Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau said that the fact that G-20 leaders were able to get together was in itself a success given the coronavirus pandemic.
"The fact that we have well laid out the table and know where the sharp edges are, and know what work we we're going to have to do at [the climate summit] ... is a very positive step," Trudeau said.
The future of coal, a key source of greenhouse gas emissions, proved one of the most difficult issues on which to find consensus for the G-20.
At the Rome summit, leaders agreed to "put an end to the provision of international public finance for new unabated coal power generation abroad by the end of 2021." That refers to financial support for building coal plants abroad.
Western countries have been moving away from such financing, and major Asian economies are following suit: Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at the U.N. General Assembly last month that Beijing would stop funding such projects, and Japan and South Korea made similar commitments earlier in the year.
China has not set an end date for building coal plants at home, however. Coal is still China's main source of power generation, and both China and India have resisted proposals for a G-20 declaration on phasing out domestic coal consumption.
The failure of the G-20 to set a target for phasing out domestic coal use was a disappointment to Britain. But Johnson's spokesperson, Max Blain, said the G-20 communique "was never meant to be the main lever in order to secure commitments on climate change," noting those would be hammered out at the Glasgow summit.
John Kirton, director of the G-20 Research Group at the University of Toronto, said the leaders "took only baby steps" in the agreement and did almost nothing new.
He pointed to the agreement to "recall and reaffirm" their overdue commitment to provide $100 billion in assistance to poorer countries and to "stress the importance of meeting that goal fully as soon as possible," instead of stating that they were ready to stump up the full amount.
The agreement to end international coal financing "is the one thing that's specific and real. That one counts," Kirton said.
Greenpeace Executive Director Jennifer Morgan said the G-20 failed to provide the leadership the world needed.
"I think it was a betrayal to young people around the world," she said Sunday.
Information for this article was contributed by Frank Jordans, Jill Lawless, Ellen Knickmeyer, Seth Borenstein Nicole Winfield, David McHugh, Karl Ritter, Sylvie Corbet and Aamer Madhani of The Associated Press.
