Tag Archives: COP26

COP26: it’s time to deliver

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This is an extract from a speech by the Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP, shadow secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy, to Green Alliance on 13 October 2021.

I want to try to draw lessons for Glasgow from the ill-fated Copenhagen summit, which I attended as UK climate change secretary, and the successful Paris Summit of 2015. Copenhagen ended in acrimony for a whole range of reasons, but partly it was the result of a breakdown in trust between developing and vulnerable countries on one hand and developed countries on the other.

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Olympic champions in Tokyo, let’s be climate champions in Glasgow

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This post is by Robbie MacPherson, environment APPG coordinator and political adviser at Green Alliance.

This week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) reconfirmed what we already knew; that climate change is the most serious challenge of our time and that human behaviour has contributed to a warming planet. The IPCC Report was also clear that runaway global heating is inevitable without rapid, largescale emissions reductions this decade. Whether they like it or not, the report signals a clear message to decision makers in the UK and internationally: now is the time to go ‘faster, higher and stronger’ in our efforts to tackle climate change.

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G7 spending billions on fossil fuels isn’t the way to ‘build back better’

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This post is by Dr Ruth Valerio, Tearfund’s global advocacy and influencing director.

As the host of both the G7 Leaders’ Summit this weekend and the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow later this year, the UK has the opportunity and the mandate to show climate leadership. G7 countries’ pledges to ‘build back better’ from the pandemic were a welcome signal, but our new report shows that this once in a generation opportunity has not yet been taken.

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Where failure is not an option: four tests for the Glasgow climate summit

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This is an important year for the climate, culminating in the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. The task for this conference is to close the emissions gap to arrest global warming; build the world’s resilience, especially as we recover from the Covid pandemic; and agree measures to compensate poorer countries for the damage climate change is already causing. All the evidence shows that time is running out to turn the tide on the climate crisis. So, as the hosts of COP26, as well as the G7, the spotlight is on the UK government to lead international efforts on climate change in 2021. That work began last year, it must now be significantly increased, starting today, in the run up to COP26, and will need to last well beyond the Glasgow summit in November.

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Targets alone aren’t enough to deliver net zero

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This post is by Jill Rutter, senior fellow at the Institute for Government.

Much of the political debate around climate change has focused on the ambition of the target.  Last year Theresa May upped the target laid down in the Climate Change Act, accepting the Committee on Climate Change’s (CCC’s) assessment that the UK could reach net zero in 2050.  In the election there was a competition over dates: Lib Dems offered 2045; Labour hinted at 2030. Extinction Rebellion want to eliminate all emissions by 2025.

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What the world needs now is…a net zero club

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blue_marbleThis post is by Shaun Spiers, executive director at Green Alliance and Thomas Hale, associate professor in global public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

With just over eight months to go, we now have a new COP26 president in place and preparations for the biggest international summit the UK has ever hosted are in full swing. Alok Sharma has no easy task. The eyes of the world will be on Glasgow this November for the UN climate change conference. Read more

The secret life of stuff remains a secret to most of us

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Electronic circuit board close up.It is nearly ten years since my book The secret life of stuff was published. Those ten years have seen some big changes to the planetary agenda, and the book might have had an even warmer reception had it been published now. But there are aspects of what I was trying to illuminate a decade ago that are strangely still under the radar. Read more

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