Road to Glasgow starts here

Global summit vital to stem climate crisis

THIS week in Washington, US President Joe Biden will host a two-day virtual summit of 40 world leaders.

Starting on Earth Day this Thursday, the leaders summit will bring together the heads of countries responsible for about 80 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions.

This gathering won’t be focused on the immediate pandemic but on an even greater danger facing the planet – catastrophic climate change.

The Washington DC meeting comes in the wake of reports showing the world is struggling in its efforts to limit atmospheric temperature rise to 1.5C, which scientists say is vital to avoid dangerous changes to the world’s weather.

But the summit – important though it is – is really just a means of building momentum for the meeting that matters most...which will take place in just over six months in Glasgow. Now for most Glaswegians, the city is always, incontestably, the centre of the world.

But from November 1-12 this year, “dear old Glasgow town” really is going to belong to the whole world.

During those couple of weeks, representatives of nearly 200 countries will gather by the Clyde for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26).

The Scottish city that helped birth the industrial revolution two centuries ago could, if the conference goes well, witness the birth of a new revolution – the low carbon revolution.

Just last week, Alok Sharma, the former UK business secretary, who will preside over the UN Conference, said the Government is “working very hard” to ensure that – despite the pandemic – the conference can go ahead in person.

That’s because it’s a meeting that matters. A lot.

What’s at stake in Glasgow in November is actually nothing less than the future of the planet.

This week in Washington, the US will unveil Biden’s plan to cut American emissions by 2030.

That matters not just because the US is the world’s second largest carbon emitter.

It matters because the ambition of the US plan will influence the plans of the world’s largest carbon emitter – China – and countless other countries.

Those plans will affect everything from how we generate power, how we heat our homes, how we get around and even what we eat in the decades ahead. Success in Glasgow in November rests on countless countries boosting the level of ambition they’ve shown previously to go green.

The coming days, weeks and months are when momentum must be built, ambitions raised and plans unveiled.

The whole world sighed with relief when American voters dumped Donald Trump last November.

And it’s hard to overstate the boost Biden’s election has given to the prospects of a climate agreement in November.

America is back. And now is the time to turn relief into ambition

The road to Glasgow really starts in Washington this week.

Because if this week’s Washington meeting goes well, it will be a boost for what many of us want to see in November – a world-changing, planet-saving deal in Glasgow.