After two weeks of speeches, negotiations, promises and arguments, COP26 finally ended yesterday.
Almost 200 countries adopted the Glasgow Climate Pact, an agreement intended to accelerate climate action during this decade and keep alive the possibility of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Governments agreed to revisit and strengthen their 2030 emissions targets, increased attention to adaptation and climate finance, completed important parts of the rulebook governing the Paris Agreement, and, for the first time in a UN climate agreement, explicitly addressed coal and fossil-fuel subsidies.
Then, during the final hours, much of the political argument came down to two words.
Phase out.
The draft agreement had called for countries to accelerate the phase-out of unabated coal power. India objected to the wording, supported by China and some other countries. The final text instead called for accelerating the phase-down of unabated coal power and the phase-out of inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies.
One word changed.
It sounds almost absurd that a conference involving nearly 200 countries, trillions of dollars of economic activity and the future trajectory of the planet could become so focused on the difference between “out” and “down”.
But I think that one word explains much of the political problem climate change creates.
“Phase out” identifies a destination.
Coal ends.
“Phase down” identifies a direction.
Coal declines.
The scientific difference between those formulations could eventually be enormous. The political difference already is.
India’s position has attracted considerable criticism. Countries particularly vulnerable to climate change understandably wanted much stronger language. If the world needs rapid emissions reductions to preserve the 1.5°C target, weakening a commitment on the most carbon-intensive major fossil fuel appears exactly opposite to what COP26 was supposed to achieve.
I understand that frustration.
But I don’t think the useful conclusion is simply that India arrived at a climate conference and protected coal.
India’s argument needs to be understood before it can be judged.
Last week I wrote about the basic inequality underlying climate negotiations. Rich countries industrialised through fossil fuels and accumulated a much larger share of historical emissions. Developing countries are now being asked to transform their energy systems while they are still trying to become richer.
India’s per-capita emissions remain far below those of countries such as the United States. Its electricity demand is still growing rapidly, and coal remains deeply embedded in power generation and employment.
From Delhi’s perspective, a universal commitment to eliminate coal can therefore distribute the burden of climate action unevenly. A country that already became wealthy through fossil fuels and now possesses enough capital and infrastructure to transition away from coal is not in exactly the same position as a country still expanding basic energy access and industrial capacity.
That argument has real force.
But it also has limits.
Historical responsibility cannot become a permanent exemption from future responsibility. India is now one of the world’s largest total emitters, and its future development will significantly affect the global emissions trajectory. Climate change itself will impose enormous costs on India.
So India cannot simply say, correctly, that richer countries created more of the problem and conclude that its own future choices therefore do not matter.
They do.
This is where climate justice becomes much harder than assigning blame.
Justice has to address the past.
Climate policy has to change the future.
Those objectives overlap, but they are not identical.
The controversy over coal also reveals something about the way international agreements actually work. COP decisions operate through consensus. There is no global parliament in which 51% of countries can vote to impose climate policy on the other 49%.
That means countries with very different interests have to accept the same text.
Small island states facing existential threats from sea-level rise sit in the same negotiations as major fossil-fuel exporters. Rich European economies negotiate alongside India and African states still expanding electricity access. China, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Bangladesh and Fiji are expected somehow to accept a common framework.
Consensus gives each country’s concerns weight.
It also gives obstruction enormous power.
If an agreement has to be acceptable to everyone, the final language tends to move towards what the least ambitious important participants are willing to tolerate.
That creates a strange standard for success.
Imagine 190 countries support a very strong climate agreement but several major emitters refuse to sign it. The agreement sounds impressive but covers too little of global emissions to work.
Alternatively, almost 200 countries accept a weaker agreement. It covers virtually everyone but does less than climate science requires.
Which is better?
I don’t think the answer is obvious.
This is the difference between ambition and participation.
An international agreement needs both. Maximum ambition with insufficient participation produces limited effect. Maximum participation with insufficient ambition produces limited effect for a different reason.
Climate diplomacy exists somewhere between them.
Perhaps “phase down” is exactly what that compromise looks like.
It is weaker than many countries wanted. But coal is now explicitly addressed in a COP decision for the first time. That is not meaningless. International negotiations often move through changes that look disappointingly incremental compared with the scale of the underlying problem.
The question is whether incremental agreements create a ratchet towards stronger policy or become excuses for avoiding it.
The Glasgow Pact attempts to create that ratchet by asking countries to return with stronger 2030 commitments rather than waiting another five years. That may ultimately matter more than some of the summit’s dramatic long-term announcements.
A 2050 or 2070 target is easy to make because today’s political leaders will not be accountable when the deadline arrives. A 2030 target begins imposing constraints much sooner.
The closer the deadline, the more expensive political promises become.
That is useful.
There is also a major distinction between mitigation and adaptation that deserves more political attention.
Mitigation means reducing emissions to prevent climate change from becoming worse.
Adaptation means preparing societies for the climate change that will occur anyway.
For a country facing rising seas, stronger cyclones or severe drought, being told that the world may reduce emissions sufficiently by 2050 does not solve the problem of infrastructure being damaged next year.
Developing countries therefore want much more finance for adaptation.
The Glasgow agreement calls for developed countries to at least double collective adaptation finance for developing countries from 2019 levels by 2025. It also acknowledges the continuing failure to meet the long-promised target of mobilising $100 billion annually in climate finance.
That failure matters because climate negotiations are built partly on trust.
Rich countries tell poorer countries that everyone must increase ambition.
Poorer countries can reasonably answer that wealthy countries have not even delivered all the money they previously promised.
This is not a side issue.
Finance changes what developing countries are capable of promising.
Imagine South Africa wants to close coal plants but doing so threatens jobs, electricity supply and regional economies. External financing can make the transition politically and economically easier by funding renewable capacity, grids, worker retraining and alternative industries.
Money can therefore transform an impossible political commitment into a feasible one.
That is why arguments about climate finance should not be described simply as poorer countries demanding compensation.
Finance is part of the mechanism through which global emissions actually fall.
The same logic applies to India.
If wealthy countries want India to move away from coal more quickly, one strategy is moral pressure.
Another is making the alternative cheaper.
Help finance renewable generation, transmission infrastructure, energy storage and technological development. Reduce the cost of capital for clean projects. Support industrial transition.
If clean energy becomes economically superior, India does not need to be persuaded to sacrifice development for climate policy.
Its development strategy itself changes.
This is why I increasingly think the most durable climate policy will not depend on governments becoming altruistic.
It will depend on changing incentives until decarbonisation becomes compatible with national self-interest.
Countries are not going to stop caring about growth, jobs and energy security because delegates gave moving speeches in Glasgow.
Policy has to work with those priorities.
The United States and China provided an interesting example this week. Despite their rapidly deteriorating relationship, they announced a joint declaration promising greater cooperation on climate action during this decade.
The two governments disagree over trade, Taiwan, technology, human rights and the military balance in Asia.
They still share an atmosphere.
That means rivalry and cooperation have to coexist.
This is a more realistic model of international relations than expecting countries to become either partners or enemies in every area simultaneously.
China can be America’s strategic competitor and climate negotiating partner at the same time.
India can confront China along the Himalayan border and still share interests with Beijing in climate negotiations over the responsibilities of developing economies.
Political relationships are multidimensional.
Climate change almost forces governments to recognise that.
There is another issue at Glasgow that may become increasingly important: loss and damage.
Mitigation tries to prevent climate damage. Adaptation tries to prepare for it. Loss and damage concerns harm that can no longer realistically be prevented or adapted to.
Imagine a small island state loses territory permanently to rising seas.
A seawall may help for a while.
Eventually, some damage cannot be adapted away.
Developing and particularly climate-vulnerable countries argue that nations which contributed most to historical emissions should provide support for those losses.
The moral argument is powerful.
The political resistance is also predictable.
Wealthy countries fear creating potentially enormous and open-ended financial liabilities for historical emissions.
This turns climate justice into something resembling a question of compensation.
Who owes whom for damage caused by emissions accumulated over centuries?
How would responsibility be calculated?
Historical emissions?
Current emissions?
Per-capita emissions?
Ability to pay?
These different standards produce very different answers.
There is no neutral formula.
Every method of allocating climate responsibility contains an implicit political judgement about fairness.
That may be why negotiations become so difficult even when everyone accepts the science.
Science can estimate how greenhouse gases affect temperatures.
It cannot tell us what percentage of the cost Germany morally owes Bangladesh.
That is politics.
COP26 also completed important elements of the Paris Agreement rulebook, including rules around international carbon markets and transparency. These details will attract much less attention than the coal argument, but they may ultimately matter enormously.
International climate commitments need ways of measuring emissions consistently. Carbon markets need rules preventing the same emissions reduction from being counted twice. Countries need enough transparency that promises can be compared with actual performance.
This sounds bureaucratic.
It is.
But bureaucracy is often what converts political ambition into functioning policy.
A target without measurement is difficult to enforce.
A market without common accounting rules can become meaningless.
A promise without transparency cannot easily create accountability.
The dramatic part of politics decides what governments want to accomplish.
The boring part determines whether they actually accomplish it.
This may be the most important difference between the way I viewed climate conferences before and how I view Glasgow now.
I used to think the problem was mainly insufficient political will.
Governments know climate change is dangerous but refuse to act strongly enough.
That is still partly true.
But “political will” is too vague to explain why cooperation fails.
Governments have constituencies.
Countries occupy different stages of development.
Energy systems cannot change instantly.
Workers depend on carbon-intensive industries.
Politicians face elections.
Governments distrust whether other countries will fulfil their promises.
Poorer states lack capital.
Rich countries resist unlimited financial obligations.
Fossil-fuel producers have enormous economic interests.
Future generations cannot negotiate.
Once those incentives are visible, the slow pace of climate diplomacy becomes easier to understand.
Not acceptable.
Understandable.
That distinction matters.
If we diagnose the problem as politicians simply not caring enough, the solution is to demand that they care more.
If the problem is an institutional structure in which individual governments bear concentrated costs for globally distributed benefits, the solution has to change incentives, finance and accountability.
Moral pressure can contribute.
It cannot carry the entire transition.
So was COP26 successful?
I don’t think “success” or “failure” captures it particularly well.
The Glasgow Climate Pact is plainly insufficient to guarantee the 1.5°C target. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said after the agreement that current national commitments, even if implemented, remain inadequate and that much deeper emissions reductions are needed during this decade.
But insufficient is not the same thing as irrelevant.
Nearly 200 governments have accepted stronger language on climate action, coal has entered a COP agreement explicitly, countries are expected to revisit near-term targets, the Paris rulebook is more complete, and climate finance and adaptation have received greater attention.
The question is what happens after everyone leaves Glasgow.
A successful summit cannot be measured by the number of commitments announced inside the conference hall.
It has to be measured by what governments do when they return home and encounter the voters, companies, workers and budgets that made those commitments difficult in the first place.
India will have to translate 2070 into decisions about electricity generation in the 2020s.
America will have to translate climate ambition into legislation.
China will have to reconcile its climate targets with energy security.
European governments will have to demonstrate that ambitious domestic targets do not simply outsource emissions elsewhere.
Wealthy countries will have to deliver climate finance rather than repeatedly promise it.
And next year, governments will have to explain whether their 2030 plans have actually become stronger.
That is where the real climate negotiation happens.
Not only between countries.
Inside them.
The final drama over “phase out” and “phase down” therefore should not be dismissed as diplomatic wordplay.
Words in international agreements matter because governments know they can later become standards against which behaviour is judged.
India fought over one word because the word could constrain future policy.
Climate-vulnerable countries fought to preserve the stronger word for exactly the same reason.
The disagreement was not really semantic.
It was about who would bear the cost of what that word required.
Last week I wrote that the political problem of climate change ultimately comes down to three questions:
Who pays, how much, and when?
Glasgow has not answered them.
Perhaps no single conference could.
What it has done is make the bargaining problem clearer.
The world does not lack agreement that climate change is dangerous.
It lacks agreement over how responsibility for preventing it should be distributed.
And the final minutes of COP26 demonstrated why that distinction matters.
Almost 200 countries could agree that coal has to decline.
They could not quite agree to say that it has to disappear.
For the climate, that difference is enormous.
For international politics, the fact that they agreed on anything at all may be more significant than it sounds.
