PARIS, Dec 27, 2021 (BSS/AFP) - Across a quarter century of UN climate

conferences tasked with saving humanity from itself, one was deemed a chaotic
failure (Copenhagen/2009), another a stunning success (Paris/2015), and the
rest landed somewhere in between.

   This year's COP26 inspired all these reactions at once.

   Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, leading a 100,000-strong march through
the streets of Glasgow, dismissed the two-week meet as a "greenwashing
festival".

   But dedicated experts in the negotiating arena hailed solid -- even
historic -- advances in beating back the existential threat of global
warming.

   More often than not, observers vacillated between approval and criticism,
hope and despair.

   "The Glasgow Climate Pact is more than we expected, but less than we hoped
for," Dann Mitchell, head of climate hazards at Britain's Met Office, said
with haiku-like economy.

   Gauging the efficacy of measures announced at the COP26 summit largely
depends on the yardstick used to measure them. Compared to what came before,
the first-ever call by 196 countries to draw down coal-fired power, or a
promise to double financial aid each year -- to roughly $40 billion -- so
poor nations can brace for climate impacts, are giant steps forward.

   Likewise a provision obliging countries to consider setting more ambitious
targets for reducing carbon pollution every year rather than once every five
years.

   But all these hard-won gains at COP26 shrivel in significance when stacked
up against hard science.

   - Glasgow exit lane -

   An unbroken cascade in 2021 of deadly floods, heatwaves and wildfires
across four continents, combined with ever more detailed projections, left no
doubt that going beyond the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit)
heating limit envisioned in the Paris Agreement would push Earth into the red
zone.

   "As a lifelong optimist, I see the Glasgow outcome as half-full rather
than half-empty," said Alden Meyer, a senior analyst at climate and energy
think tank E3G.

   "But the atmosphere responds to emissions -- not COP decisions -- and much
work remains ahead to translate the strong rhetoric here into reality."

   The past year also saw Part 1 of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change's (IPCC) first comprehensive synthesis of climate science in seven
years.

   It found that global heating is virtually certain to pass 1.5C, probably
within a decade. Meanwhile, ocean levels are rising faster than anticipated,
and will do so for centuries.

   And forests, soil and oceans -- which absorb more than half of humanity's
carbon pollution -- show signs of saturation.

   Then there is the threat of "tipping points" that could see permafrost
release massive amounts of CO2 and methane, the Amazon basin transformed into
savannah, and ice sheets shedding enough mass to submerge cities and deltas
home to hundreds of millions.

   "Make no mistake, we are still on the road to hell," said Dave Reay, head
of the University of Edinburgh's Climate Change Institute.

   "But Glasgow has at least created an exit lane."

   - Permanent breaking story -

   Part 2 of the IPCC report on climate impacts, seen exclusively by AFP
ahead of its February 2022 publication, reveals another yawning gap between
the baby steps of COP26 and what is needed in the long term.

   Helping vulnerable nations cope with the multiplier effect of global
heating on extreme weather could soon require trillions of dollars per year,
not the tens of billions put on the table at COP26, a draft version of the
report makes clear.

   "Adaptation costs are significantly higher than previously estimated,
resulting in a growing 'adaptation finance gap'," said an executive summary
of the 4,000-page report.

   The failure of rich nations to deliver $100 billion a year by 2020 to help
developing countries makes it hard to imagine where these trillions will come
from.

   Glasgow marked the transition from fleshing out the rules for the 2015
Paris treaty to implementing its provisions.

   But unlike the aftermath of other major COPs, the climate crisis will
remain a permanent breaking story that is not going to recede into the
background anytime soon.

   How that saga unfolds will depend a lot on the world's four major
emitters, collectively responsible for 60 percent of global carbon pollution.

   The United States and the European Union have pledged carbon neutrality by
2050 and recently set more ambitious emission-reduction targets for 2030.

   But they refused to set up a fund demanded by more than 130 developing
countries to help pay for climate damage already incurred.

   - All sectors, all countries -

   China and India -- accounting for 38 percent of global emissions in 2021,
and rising -- have resisted pressure to give up fossil fuels.

   Beijing has steadfastly refused to do what scientists say is doable and
necessary to stay under 2C: peak their emissions far earlier than 2030.

   If climate politics remains stymied, however, global capital is already
flowing into what some have called the most massive economic transformation
in human history.

   In Glasgow, former Bank of England governor Mark Carney boasted that
nearly 500 banks, insurers and asset managers worth $130 trillion were ready
to finance climate action.

   "If we only had to transform one sector, or move one country off fossil
fuels, we would have done so long ago," commented Christiana Figueres, who
headed the UN climate convention when the Paris deal was struck.

   "But all sectors of the global economy have to be decarbonised, and all
countries must switch to clean technologies."

   Where some of that money might flow -- and who might get left out -- has
also come into focus, with major investment deals announced for South Africa,
and others in the pipeline for emerging economies such as Indonesia and
Vietnam.

   But there is little incentive for private capital to help the poorest and
most vulnerable countries to cope with climate ravages and shore up their
defences.

   "We cannot just wait for open market incentives to have their way, we need
to set prices on carbon globally, we need to set science-based targets that
become climate laws," said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute
for Climate Impact Research.