Latest COP 26 draft text includes coal, fossil fuel phaseout, but weakened language – The Washington Post
Earlier this morning, summit organizers released a new draft of an agreement on how countries will combat climate change. Despite furious lobbying over the past two days, the draft at first glance appears largely similar to a preliminary text released on Wednesday, but even small wording tweaks “represents hours of intense — and still unfinished — diplomatic wrangling,” The Post’s Brady Dennis writes.
Whatever the result of the summit, it’s unlikely to satisfy the thousands of youth activists, protesters and campaigners who pinned their hopes on Glasgow over the past two weeks, our colleagues write. Activists from the group Extinction Rebellion staged a die-in outside the summit on Thursday, wrapping themselves in white shrouds and laying outside the entrance of the conference to symbolize deaths related to climate change.
Meanwhile, a coalition of developing countries that includes major emitters China and India, said it opposed language increasing the pace by which each country must ratchet up its climate plans. Bolivian chief negotiator Diego Pacheco Balanza argued that wealthy countries were shifting the burden of climate change onto the developing world and claimed that an accelerated emissions-cutting schedule “would rewrite the Paris agreement” and put the world on a “pathway to carbon colonialism.” The group on Thursday called for the removal of an entire section of the COP26 draft focused on emissions.
Mari Helena Castillo Mariscal, the deputy lead negotiator of Panama, scolded national and corporate leaders for setting the Earth on track for “a fatal 2.4 degrees warming,” referring to a United Nations forecast made this week, The Post’s Dan Zak reports. The country, which claims to have the youngest delegation of negotiators at an average age of 29, is channeling youth outrage over climate change. Mariscal called the target of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius “a necessity, a moral obligation, a lifeline.”
The Democrats’ social spending plan includes a $7,500 tax credit for consumers who purchase electric vehicles through 2026. After that point, people will qualify for the credit only if they purchase an American-made electric vehicle. The additional $4,500 is a bonus tax credit for those who purchase from union automakers.
The partisan divide over climate change has widened. The percentage of Democrats who view it as an existential threat rose by 11 points to 95 percent over the past seven years, partly driven by more Black Americans who now say the issue is very serious. The share of Republicans who say climate change is a serious problem fell by 10 points, to 39 percent over the same period.
Singleton isn’t oblivious to the impacts of coal globally or closer to home, where dust from the mines contribute to asthma and other health problems. Still it’s hard for some residents to imagine abandoning the industry when coal miners make up a quarter of the town and can earn starting salaries upward of $100,000.