COP26 climate summit 'last, best hope' to meet 1.5C target

Last seven years on track to be hottest on record: UN

Global COP26 climate negotiations are the "last, best hope" to keep the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C alive, said summit president Alok Sharma as he opened the meeting on Sunday.

The Glasgow gathering, which runs to November 12, comes as an accelerating onslaught of extreme weather events across the world underscores the devastating impacts of climate change from 150 years of burning fossil fuels. 

Experts warn that only transformative action in the next 10 years will help stave off far more cataclysmic impacts.

The last year alone has seen a once-in-a-thousand-years heatwave and scorching wildfires in North America, extreme rainfall and flooding in Asia, Africa, the US and Europe and severe drought in Madagascar, which Sharma said has been referred to as the "first climate-induced famine". 

- 'Precious planet' -

That deal left many crucial details to be worked out, while emissions reductions remain woefully insufficient to avert global warming. 

And last week a UN report said even the latest, most ambitious carbon-cutting commitments would still lead to "catastrophic" warming of 2.7C. 

"If we act now and we act together we can protect our precious planet," he said.

Greta Thunberg also arrived in the Scottish city late Saturday on a train that was mobbed by waiting journalists.

- 'Investing in extinction' -

They committed to the key goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C and pledged to bring a halt to international funding for coal plants without emissions capture facilities. 

The world's focus on decarbonisation has sharpened in the face of increasingly dire warnings from scientists, central banks and security services about the threat posed by climate change, as well as global youth protests.

UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa told the Glasgow opening ceremony that nations must turn away from business as usual or accept that "we are investing in our own extinction".

But President Xi Jinping of China, the world's largest emitter, has not left his country during the pandemic and will not be travelling to Glasgow. 

Sharma said more than 21,000 representatives from governments were registered, as well as nearly 14,000 observers and 4,000 media representatives. 

The failure of rich countries to cough up $100 billion a year starting in 2020 to help developing nations lower emissions and adapt -- a pledge first made in 2009 -- will complicate the already fraught talks.

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