The two-week UN climate summit in Glasgow has ended in a joint compromise from nearly 200 countries, including on a number of outstanding sticky issues in the Paris Agreement “rulebook”.
The announcement that India had set a net-zero target was a pleasing development, even if the target date is 2070 and its short-term pledges remained unambitious.
Scientists warn that the effects of climate change get vastly worse with even a fraction of a degree, so there is a lot of human suffering between 1.5C and 1.8C.
These look out to 2030 – a point when carbon dioxide emissions would need to nearly halve, according to the world’s climate scientists, to keep 1.5C within reach.
With this in mind, countries that have not yet updated their NDC have been officially urged to submit tougher targets before COP27, to be held in Egypt.
It’s hoped big emitters such as China, Russia and Australia might then come to next year’s meeting with NDCs that could shift the global temperature dial even further still.
For example, if New Zealand fails to produce its intended methane savings of 10 per cent by 2030, the Global Methane Pledge won’t come after us in any way, beyond a public shaming.
During a short speech on the final day, Shaw reflected on the shortcomings of the proposed agreement: “Is it enough to hold warming to 1.5C? I honestly can’t say that I think that it does.
Large greenhouse emitters China and Russia were called out for not showing up, literally and figuratively.
By COP26, all 197 countries in the Paris Agreement were supposed to “ratchet” up their ambition.
In 2020, Xinping announced a new pledge: that his country’s emissions would peak before 2030 and that China would reach net zero by 2060.
New Zealand is still planning to emit roughly the same amount of net emissions between now and 2030 as in the budgets proposed by the Climate Change Commission earlier this year.
During the summit, New Zealand also signed up to a number of pledges without taking any major new steps.
Still, New Zealand behaved better than our trans-Tasman neighbour.
That deadline was missed, but the COP26 organisers hoped to pull a few additional commitments out of large economies.
There wasn’t much progress on setting a new goal for mitigation finance, apart from a call for discussions to begin.
Another request of developed countries was for the finance they were owed, under the legal precedent of loss and damage, for the permanent effects that climate change was already having on their lives.
And while developing countries welcomed the help from a proposed network that would offer them technical assistance in dealing with these permanent issues, they also wanted cash for reparations.
One of the most contentious debates revolved around who could claim credit for carbon-cutting projects paid for by others.
To settle this issue, a proposal to create two types of carbon credits was put on the table.
Another area of contention was on old carbon credits, dating back to the predecessor of the Paris Agreement, the Kyoto Protocol.
But the host countries of some of these projects – notably Brazil – did not want to lose the value of the units.
There were a few limitations: the project had to have started after 2013, with the credits issued before 2021, and these could only be used towards a country’s first NDC.
Speaking earlier in the week, WWF carbon market expert Brad Schallert said it is risky to allow these credits, even if there’s no appetite for them.
A proposal to limit the number of carbon credits a country can use to achieve its NDC made it into the rulebook.
But developed countries argued this would simply be a loophole, and wondered why anyone would design a carbon trading system with one type of credit undermining another.
This debate was also linked to a proposal to gift an “angel’s share” of all credits purchased to the Earth.
But when countries trade credits directly between one another, they are only “strongly encouraged” to provide a share of the proceeds for adaptation and donate another cut for the good of the planet.
This was identified as a problem under the pre-2020 international system for producing carbon credits.
A fight to get 197 countries to agree to some joint commitment calling time on fossil fuels was a major bone of contention at the 11th hour.
As Saturday began, the proposed joint summary from all countries called for accelerated efforts to “phase out” both unabated coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.
This didn’t go down well: the Swiss negotiator pointed out the amendment would make it harder to reach 1.5C, and received a long round of applause.
But getting nearly 200 countries to collectively move, even on this existential issue, is a mammoth undertaking.
The judgement of the world, particularly the young, was on negotiators’ minds.