US issues apology and India sets net-zero target at COP26 summit

United States President Joe Biden apologized for the previous US administration quitting the Paris Agreement, and India finally set a target to achieve net-zero emissions, during the World Leaders Summit at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, in Glasgow.

Heads of state, royals, celebrities, and thousands of climate campaigners descended on the Scottish city on Monday, for day two of the major climate gathering.

Delegates from 197 participating countries filtered through the main entrance of the sprawling Scottish Event Campus, separated from a throng of banner-waving activists by lines of crowd control officers in hi-vis yellow jackets.

The campaigners came from diverse groups — science unions, faith and youth groups, migrant and racial justice networks, indigenous communities — united in one message to the delegates: do what the previous 25 COPs failed to achieve, and bring global warming under control.

At the opening ceremony of the summit, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres shared his own frustration at the lack of progress made on climate change. Six years ago in Paris, parties agreed to keep rising temperatures to well below 2 C, preferably to 1.5 C, compared with pre-industrial levels. According to new UN projections, current emissions reductions pledges from COP members, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, will miss this target by a wide margin.

Guterres said that, as things stand, NDCs will "condemn the world to a calamitous 2.7 degree increase".

"We are still careening toward climate catastrophe," Guterres said. "We are digging our own graves."

Guterres suggested that if updated NDCs still fall short at the end of this COP, parties should be required to update pledges more regularly than the current timeline of five years.

He said that nations should revisit their climate plans and policies every year, "until keeping to 1.5 degrees is assured, until subsidies to fossil fuels end, until there is a price on carbon, and until coal is phased out."

Biden expressed his regret that his predecessor, Donald Trump, had taken the US out of the Paris Agreement.

"I guess I shouldn't apologize, but I do apologize for the fact that the United States, in the last administration, pulled out of the Paris Accord and put us sort of behind the eight ball," he said. "We will demonstrate to the world the United States is not only back at the table but, hopefully, leading by the power of our example."

Onlookers were eager to hear from India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, since his country had entered the conference without an updated NDC, or net-zero pledge.

"By 2070, India will achieve the target of net-zero emissions," Modi said, adding that India also aimed to meet half of its energy needs from renewable power by 2030.

Prior to the conference, China had already pledged to peak emission by 2030 and achieve net-zero by 2060. In a written statement sent to the leaders summit, President Xi Jinping reiterated the country's commitment to reducing emissions.

"We will foster a green, low-carbon and circular economic system at a faster pace, press ahead with industrial structure adjustment, and rein in the irrational development of energy-intensive and high-emission projects," he said.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is the host of COP26, likened global warming to a doomsday device, counting down toward disaster.

"It's one minute to midnight on that doomsday clock and we need to act now," he said.

Johnson called for the phasing out of combustion engine cars by 2035, the end of the use of coal-fired power stations in developed nations by 2030, and by 2040 in the developing world, and for a halt and reversal of deforestation by 2030.

"While COP26 will not be the end of climate change, it can and it must mark the beginning of the end," Johnson said.

Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, condemned rich countries for failing to meet a pledge to deliver $100 billion in climate finance to developing regions by 2020, a target she said was missed by $20 billion.

"These failures are measured by lives," Mottley said, adding that the communities living on the "frontlines" of the climate crisis are most often found in poorer parts of the planet.

Guterres said that leaders must agree on climate finance targets at this year's COP.

"The $100 billion a year climate finance commitment in support of developing countries must become a $100 billion climate finance reality," Guterres wrote on Twitter. "Only together can we avoid a climate catastrophe."

Prince Charles, attending in place of the queen who was advised by doctors to rest, said that as well as mobilizing government funds, leaders needed to raise confidence among investors and reduce financial risk associated with the transition away from fossil fuels.

"We have to put ourselves on what might be called a war-like footing," he said. "We need a vast, military-style campaign to marshal the strength of the global private sector.  With trillions at its disposal — far beyond global GDP and, with the greatest respect, beyond even the governments of the world's leaders — it offers the only real prospect of achieving fundamental economic transition."

Charles joined Guterres in his support of carbon pricing mechanisms in emissions-heavy industries, saying that "putting a value on carbon was essential" in order to create a market-driven transition away from fossil fuels.

Climate activists invited to the opening ceremony spoke on a range of challenges, including community displacement in Africa, the impact of rising sea levels on Pacific island nations, and deforestation in the Amazon, and British naturalist David Attenborough also addressed the conference.

"The world is watching you," Attenborough told delegates. "Turn this tragedy into a triumph — we are, after all, the greatest problem solvers to have ever existed on Earth. We now understand this problem, we know how to stop the number rising and put it in reverse. We must recapture billions of tons of carbon from the air, and we must fix our sights on keeping 1.5 degrees within reach."

Heads of state will take part in high-level meetings during Monday and Tuesday at COP26, and negotiations between delegations will continue into later in the month.