Plans for the planet

The upcoming CoP26 climate change summit will be crucial for the world. Will India make a big announcement?

- REKHA DIXIT

THE WORLD’S BIGGEST climate meet is around the corner—the Conference of Parties (CoP26), under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Glasgow, the host city, is gearing up for a fortnight (October 31-November 12) of hectic negotiations where world leaders will sit down to the tough task of forging a consensus on how to save the earth before it is too late. Alarmist studies say that perhaps it is already too late, but the effort at CoP26 will still be to bring the earth back from a point beyond which it will be impossible to change the trajectory of temperature rise.

The basic objective is the same. Rising temperatures and extreme climate events are undeniable realities across the world. Almost everyone (now that the biggest naysayer, Donald Trump, is out of the picture) agrees that as long as global temperature rise is kept within 2°C —through preferably 1.5°C—of the pre-industrialized norms, there is still hope of reversing the anthropogenic changes on climate. To do this, existing emissions need to be halved by 2030 and reach a net-zero by 2050.

The differences arise when it becomes a matter of how to share the responsibility. The biggest difference is over the universal issue of who pays the bill. The work, therefore, in Glasgow is pretty clear cut.