COP26: “Window closed” to reach the 1.5 ° C heating target – Alok Sharma

The window to maintain the 1.5-degree warming target “is closing,” COP26 chairman Alok Sharma said at the Glasgow climate summit.

Scientists say keeping global warming below 1.5 ° C will avoid the worst climate impacts – in 2015, world leaders decided to work towards it.

Sharma addressed the delegates on the first day of the event in Scotland, which has been postponed since 2020.

He said: “Climate change didn’t take a break that year.”

The Conservative MP added that COP26 was “our last best hope” to reach the goal originally set in Paris six years ago.

“Where Paris has promised, Glasgow delivers,” Sharma said. “We know that our shared planet is changing for the worse and we can only deal with it together.”

Sharma, who was named COP26 chairman on January 8, said “the rapidly changing climate is sounding an alarm for the world.”

“I believe we can carry on with the negotiations and launch a decade of ever-increasing ambitions and actions … but we have to start with momentum.”

He previously told the BBC One Andrew Marr Show that “this is about leaders” and that they needed to “step forward”.

At first glance, things don’t look promising, for one simple reason: the previous 25 of these gigantic conferences have failed to turn off the greenhouse gases that are driving global temperatures up.

Despite three decades of chatter, the planet is now at least 1.1 ° C warmer than its pre-industrial level and on the rise.

For this conference, however, expectations of real progress are higher than usual.

This is partly due to the fact that the risks are hitting at home. Floods killed 200 people in Germany this year, heat waves hit cold Canada, and even the Siberian Arctic was burning.

And scientists are clearer than ever that avoiding the most damaging temperatures means halving global carbon emissions by 2030, a deadline that’s getting close enough to focus minds.

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The two-week COP26 summit will see delegates from around 200 countries discuss how to reduce emissions by 2030.

More than 25,000 people are expected to descend on the city, including international delegates and protesters.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is currently in Glasgow, but told BBC One’s Andrew Marr that she was not “officially” invited to speak at COP26.

Read more about the COP26 Summit here.

Thunberg said, “I don’t know. It’s not very clear. Not, how, officially.”

The 18-year-old said it was sometimes necessary for environmental activists to “piss people off”.

At the start of COP26, world political leaders also meet at the G20 summit in the Italian capital, Rome.

Prince Charles urged governments to work with the private sector in an effort to make progress “for the good of humanity”.

The COP26 world climate summit in Glasgow in November is seen as crucial if climate change is to be kept under control. Nearly 200 countries are being asked for their plans to reduce emissions and this could lead to major changes in our daily lives.