Governments agreed to translate the promises made in Glasgow into policies, and to seek new ways to hasten the transition away from fossil fuels by 2030
In an admission that the goals set in Paris were not being met, the summit sought to speed up the fight against climate change in a number of ways. There was an unexpected, and eventually unanimous, call for a faster phasing down of the “unabated” use of coal and for the scrapping of subsidies for fossil fuels.
Another way of measuring the task ahead is in billions of tonnes of avoided greenhouse-gas emissions. Prior to Glasgow, there was a gap of 23bn-27bn tonnes between the emissions reductions needed by 2030 to avoid more than 1.
Even these extra pledges are unlikely to be sufficient to limit global warming to 1.5°C. But the widespread view in Glasgow was that, even though the necessary cuts would be almost impossible or cripplingly expensive to meet, the 1.5°C goal should not be abandoned because each step towards it is beneficial. Every tenth of a degree of warming has consequences for human wellbeing and carries large financial costs.
Other avenues to narrow the emissions gap to 1.5°C include financial incentives for emerging economies to cut emissions with a mix of public and private funds, the threat of carbon border-adjustment mechanisms that will tax CO-heavy imports, and more transparency and accountability in the private sector. Currently, there are hundreds of different standards for corporate disclosure of environmental, social and governance data.
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