Cop26: Conference is a ‘PR event’, says Greta Thunberg – day five live

If the deluge of headlines and updates is getting on top of you, here is a really good explainer on the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast.

Global environment editor, Jonathan Watts, sums up what has been happening at Cop26 all week and Scotland correspondent, Libby Brooks, explains what has been happening on the streets of Glasgow.

Thunberg has now left the stage after a short but burning critique of Cop26.

“The leaders are not doing nothing, they are actively creating loopholes and shaping frameworks to benefit themselves and to continue profiting from this destructive system,” she said.

“The Cop has turned into a PR event,” she added.

“[Leaders] have had decades of ‘blah blah blah’ and where has that left us?” says Thunberg.

And now some tough words for us, the press.

The media is reporting on what leaders say they are going to do, and not whether they keep their promises, she says.

“Time and time again, the media fails to hold people in power responsible.”

Colonialism is the root cause of the climate crisis, Thunberg says. But that is “too uncomfortable” a topic for people inside the conference to discuss.

Greta Thunberg has taken the stage. And more tough words for the leaders in the conference halls.

“We know our emperors are naked,” she says.

The avalanche of commitments and initiatives seen in the first week of Cop26 – if fully delivered by nations – would amount to 40% of the emissions cuts needed by 2030 to keep the world on track to a maximum of 1.5C of global heating. That is the conclusion of an initial analysis by the Energy Transition Commission.

To keep the goal of 1.5C alive, the ETC said, annual global CO2 emissions must halve by 2030, a cut of about 22bn tonnes. It calculates that new national commitments to reducing emissions, not including India’s, could cut 3bn tonnes from that, and that the agreement by many countries to stop deforestation by 2030 cuts another 3.5bn tonnes.

A further 2.5bn tonnes is cut by a swathe of initiatives from countries and companies to move away from coal power and invest more in renewable energy and electric vehicles. The ETC said more announcements were expected in the second week of Cop26.

There has also been a big pledge on methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The ETC estimates that the commitment by 90 countries to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030 would deliver about 40% of the total methane emissions needed.

Lord Adair Turner, the chair of the ETC, said “good progress” had been seen in the first week of Cop26: “But of course it is still not enough and even with further progress next week – on steel, aviation, shipping – we are not going to achieve the full 22bn tonnes we need; we’re not going to be able to go home from Glasgow saying job done.

“But we have new commitments which will make a difference and which must be delivered, and we have a springboard for further progress which we must achieve over the next few years,” he said. “We can achieve that and we must achieve that.”

Chris Stark, the head of the UK’s Climate Change Committee, said: “The ETC take on week one of Cop26 is probably going to be as close to the authoritative view on the emissions situation as we’ll get this week. So far, this is positive stuff on the new ambitions.”

Boris Johnson has been awarded zero out of five stars for his

standup performance
speech at Monday’s opening ceremony.

Some strong words from a Filipino youth activist currently on the mic (introduced simply as “John”):

Cop, he said, has “devolved into a celebration of pointless promises by world leaders, patting themselves on the back, all the while sacrificing millions in the Global South on the altar of capitalism and imperialism.”

Everyone is cheering in the Glasgow crowd.

Ouch.

Musicians and orchestras around the globe have been playing one of the most recognisable compositions, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, this week.

But there’s a catch. The music has been altered by a team of scientists and composers to include the devastating impact of the climate crisis.

The adaptation, titled, The [uncertain] Four Seasons, re-writes the score to account for the intense storms, degraded lands, bare forests and rising seas that will occur by 2050 without action being taken by world leaders.

“In 1725, Vivaldi created a masterpiece, but since then, the world he depicted has drastically changed,” said Tim Devine, Executive Innovation Director, AKQA.

“Vivaldi’s work has been rescored for every city in the world. Every variation is different. Each one jarringly altered from the harmony of Vivaldi’s original.”

It’s chilling to listen to. Here is one version, by the Slovenian National Youth Orchestra.

Youth climate activists are currently speaking in central Glasgow. Several of them will be talking at a special Guardian event later this month.

Details are here:

Cop26: young activists talk to Franny Armstrong

Join Franny Armstrong in a special livestreamed event with young activists fighting the climate emergency around the world.

On Wednesday 10 November 2021, 8pm GMT| 9pm CET | 12pm PST | 3pm EST

Book tickets here

Back at the “Fridays For Futures” youth protest, someone has made a good point about how loving Irn-Bru is all well and good until we can’t make it anymore because we destroyed the planet.

BREAKING: The world loves Irn-Bru.

Well, that’s admittedly not completely accurate. In fact, German delegate Michael Buechl said the “first sip was rather shocking” and he won’t drink it outside Scotland.

But the rust-coloured drink – which combos 32 flavours – has proved exceedingly popular among delegates to Cop26, according to my colleagues Patrick Greenfield and Libby Brooks.

Dreli Solomon, a negotiator from Vanuatu, said he is hooked. And the Zimbabwean presidential spokesperson was reported to have emerged from a Glasgow Costco with trolleys full of cans on Monday.

(Disclaimer: no Pepsi or Coke is available in the conference centre due to a sponsorship deal)

Extinction Rebellion has just messaged us to say they put up a banner in the London borough of Wandsworth this morning in response to an opinion piece published yesterday on climate depression.

Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist, wrote in the Guardian to warn of “a growing epidemic of serious climate depression among young people”.

The piece cited a survey that found 77% of people aged 16-25 feel “the future is frightening”, 68% feel sad, and 63% feel anxious. 39% feel “hesitant to have children”.

See the banner below:

Meanwhile, in the Pacific:

Simon Kofe, the foreign minister of Tuvalu, is certainly getting the point across.

His country, midway between Hawaii and Australia, is the fourth-smallest nation in the world and home to just 11,000 people.

But it is shrinking. Already, two of Tuvalu’s nine islands are on the verge of going under, the government says, swallowed by sea-rise and coastal erosion.

Read more about it here:

Several thousand protesters are marching through Glasgow to coincide with Youth and Public Empowerment Day at Cop26. Kids are on the streets with their parents, classmates and teachers demanding world leaders do more to stop polluters and save the planet from catastrophic rising temperatures.

Unfortunately, those inside the Cop making decisions about their future won’t have heard a single slogan as they could not get close to the conference halls.

We’re expecting a much much bigger crowd tomorrow for the global day of action for climate justice, with protests expected in 200 or so cities around the world.

Greta Thunberg is going to be joining thousands at today’s Youth March that will head into central Glasgow shortly.

Expect some drama. So far this week, the 18-year-old climate activist has already sung that world leaders and big business should shove their “climate crisis up your arse” and accused attendees of “greenwashing”.

Oliver Holmes here, taking over the liveblog from Chris Michael.

If you are at Cop26, or watching from afar, you can contact me with information or suggestions at [email protected], or @olireports.

My most urgent question for the hivemind of liveblog readers is how on earth did activists lug a FOUR-TONNE block of glacier ice from Greenland to Cop26?