What to look out for at COP26

WITH CHARACTERISTIC bombast, Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, told the UN General Assembly in September that COP26 would be “the turning point for humanity”. The UN’s annual climate summit, delayed by a year because of covid-19, will be held in Glasgow during the first two weeks of November. Mr Johnson’s speech called to mind the words of Christiana Figueres, then the head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, at the opening of COP21 in Paris in 2015: “Never before has a responsibility so great been in the hands of so few.”

COP21’s goal was to produce the Paris agreement, which committed signatories to keeping global warming to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and preferably to 1.5°C. The objectives of COP26, however, are less clear. What can you expect from the summit?