The movie version of the final hours of the UN climate conference in Glasgow is surely already in storyboard. As India’s Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav prepares to use his veto power to force the removal of a call to accelerate the “phase out” of coal burning from the Glasgow Climate Pact, the scene cuts to what is going on in his country, where people are choking in a Delhi smog, as city authorities in the world’s most polluted capital shut schools “so that children don’t have to breathe polluted air.”
在与中国气候使节Xie Zhenhua的会议大厅中淡入Yadav，他对其他代表团的影响使印第安人能够设计政变。从那里回到本周早些时候在北京的公告，中国的国家发展与改革委员会，该国的煤炭产量刚刚达到了有史以来每日最高的数字 - 几乎1200万吨— as the nation stoked boilers to revive its economy from the pandemic downturn.
In a dramatic conference maneuver, the world’s two largest coal-burning nations had insisted that the Glasgow delegates replace “phase out” coal with “phase down.” This change, which watered down a central element of the agreement that negotiators thought had been settled, introduced a bitter note to the end of the conference.
当然，会议声明只是纸张。他们自己没有任何改变。政府和投资者这样做。许多代表们从两周的审议中获得了一系列收益，使他们回家了。
Almost unnoticed, the conference moved the goalposts for climate action, says Piers Forster, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Leeds and long-time author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “1.5 degrees Celsius rather than ‘well below 2 degrees’ [the wording in the Paris Agreement] is clearly recognised as the main aim,” he said.
虽然世界距离限制变暖到1.5度C还有很长的路要走，但该协定至少认识到这一事实。
And, while the world is a long way from being on track to meet that aspiration, the pact text at least recognized that fact. Nations agreed they should up their game in time for the next meeting, in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, this time next year. They agreed by then to “revisit and strengthen the 2030 [emissions] targets in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs)” and to make sure those targets are consistent with the pledges made by many of them to达到零排放by mid-century.
By the time they meet in Egypt, governments should also have met their decade-old target for providing $100 billion annually in climate finance for developing nations and begun a “dialogue” to create a UN facility to manage a separate fund making payments of recompense for loss and damage caused by climate change. This was a second issue that, along with the proposed coal phaseout, came close to derailing the conference in its final hours. But on this, China held its fire.
格拉斯哥的激进分子被分配给那些为了鼓掌所取得的进步的人和对剩下的东西而感到愤怒的人。甚至一些国际高级人物也感到震惊。结果是“领导失败和外交失败”，由前爱尔兰总统玛丽·鲁滨逊（Mary Robinson）主持的长老说，他还包括前联合国秘书长潘基文（Ban Ki-Moon）。
科学家在公共反应中类似。权威权威的合着者的合着者的科琳·勒·奎尔（Corinne LeQuéré）说，结果是“向前迈出的一大步。”全球碳预算在第一周出版。爱丁堡大学的戴维·雷伊（David Reay）说：“我们仍在通往地狱的路上，但格拉斯哥至少创造了出口车道。”
Delegates at the closing COP26 session, where the agreement on phasing out coal burning was weakened.AP照片 / Alberto Pezzali
亚利桑那大学的行星科学家杰弗里·卡格尔（Jeffrey Kargel）警告说，无论有没有结束燃煤，我们都可能是世界气候系统中时间滞后的受害者。他告诉耶鲁环境360。“I am pessimistic that a 1.5-degree threshold will hold.”
Glasgow was the 26th联合国政党会议（COP）关于气候变化。许多人质疑这些伟大的年度活动的价值，他们的巨大碳足迹，成千上万的代表下降到一些显然是任意的城市，远远超过了他们在我们这个时代最紧迫的问题上所承诺的要少得多。一些人认为，近200个国家的共识协议的复杂官僚机构和要求放缓了必要的行动，而不是加快行动。该语言在煤炭上的劫持将是一个很好的例子。
替代方案也在格拉斯哥展出。这两个星期的大部分时间，我们reported here，由与联合国程序没有关系的临时国家组成的公共承诺主导。格拉斯哥只是一个方便的地方宣布他们。
这些愿意的联盟（从十几个左右到100多个）承诺将削减甲烷排放，结束森林砍伐，消除煤炭，对新的石油和天然气的结束勘探，将自动生产转换为电动和其他低碳车辆，并开发用于低碳钢和混凝土的新技术以脱碳。美国和中国等大型发射器加入了一些，但没有加入。
Similarly adrift from the UN climate process were last Wednesday’s美国 - 中国联合声明在会议之前采取气候行动和一系列公告，世界上大多数领先的国家将不再为自己的边界以外的化石燃料工厂提供资金。
当印度和中国释放了最后一刻的协议时，他们可能会误判这一反应。
许多这些单方面承诺对排放的可能影响很难评估。有些模糊或模棱两可。以及包括广为人知的美国对甲烷的承诺在内的其他人已经至少在现有的全国宣布捐款（NDC）中得到了部分解释。尽管如此，这些单方面的承诺可能比在会议期间提交给联合国系统的任何东西都对全球气候前景更有影响。
尽管独立倡议激增，但观看会议的最后几个小时的人（并通过面具唇唇上读了惠勒交易的huddles huddles在会议楼层中的阻止）毫不怀疑这些事件是否很重要。他们对顽固国家施加压力。
印度和中国在最后一次全体会议上释放了最后一刻的扼杀案件，可能会误判这一反应。愤怒并不是来自富裕的国家已经淘汰煤炭的国家。两位超级大国通常会算作盟国也加入的一系列发展世界国家。他们包括斐济等太平洋岛国，以及像安提瓜和巴布达这样的加勒比国家，他们认为煤炭的生命线可能会委托其国家托付其国家历史书籍。
会议结束后的采访中，会议主席阿洛克·夏尔马（Alok Sharma）说：“中国和印度将不得不解释自己以及他们对世界上最容易气候的国家所做的一切。”这可能不舒服。他们可能会在未来尝试同样的技巧。
煤炭is loaded onto a truck at an open-pit mine near Dhanbad, India, in September.AP Photo / Altaf Qadri
但其他人说11th小时动作不会阻止不可避免的煤炭灭亡。伦敦经济学院的环境经济学家尼古拉斯·斯特恩（Nicholas Stern）说：“最后一刻的浇水是不幸的，但不太可能放慢煤炭的强大动力，这是早期时代的肮脏燃料。”如果遵守其他化石燃料的“效率低下”补贴，将加强这种势头。
联合国协议通过规则书籍运作，每个国家都必须同意每个单词。这就是为什么在巴黎协定六年后，格拉斯哥会议仍然必须解决巴黎规则簿的两个重要部分。两者都得出结论。规则已达成了透明度的同意 - 各国如何报告其NDC承诺的细节 - 以及被称为第6条的内容 - 各国如何合作实现其目标，包括通过碳交易。
后者已被证明是有争议的。环保团体对碳市场的强烈不同意，根据该市场，减少排放的计划可以产生碳信用额，以便由想要“抵消”其排放的国家或公司购买。
Some say the trade can provide the necessary finance for nature-based solutions, emphasized in the Glasgow Climate Pact’s declaration of “the importance of protecting, conserving and restoring nature and ecosystems to achieve the Paris Agreement temperature goal, including through forests and other terrestrial and marine ecosystems acting as sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases.” These nature-based solutions could help the world to net-zero emissions.
其他人则看到碳市场只不过是会计技巧，开放欺诈，旨在使化石燃料公司及其客户沉迷于基于碳的燃料。
如果巴西砍伐森林砍伐以获得碳信贷，牧场主可能会越过边界并破坏巴拉圭。
The route to unlocking private cash lies in allowing the booming market in “voluntary” offsets set up by corporations seeking to “green” their businesses to also be used to help countries deliver on their national emissions pledges. The new rules allow governments to buy carbon credits generated by “voluntary” projects, such as forest protection or installing solar panels, and use them to offset emissions they declare to the UN in their NDCs.
如果公司还继续声称相同的偏移减少了排放量，有人称这一双重计数。其他人说这没关系，只要两个国家没有声称在联合国的碳抵消相同的碳。
这种松动抵消规则的胃口很大。巴西想要求恢复学分1200万公顷到2030年，以前的森林（几乎是英格兰的大小），即使森林砍伐仍在该国其他地方。在格拉斯哥，巴西的代表称赞该协议为实现这一目标提供了私人财务。澳大利亚希望购买其他国家产生的碳信用额，以抵消持续的化石燃料排放。
问题是志愿市场有一个坏名声for probity and accountability. Forest and other projects that generate carbon credits should be able to show that, without the intervention, there would be more carbon dioxide in the air. But this requires a counterfactual narrative that can be hard to prove. Would the forest really have been chopped down without the conservation project, for instance? And if deforestation was genuinely prevented within the project area, did the clearing of forest just happen somewhere nearby? Would a forest company or NGO have planted a woodland even if there had been no credits to sell?
The Amazon Rainforest near Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas.CIFOR通过Flickr
人们普遍认为，出售给污染公司（例如石油巨头或航空公司）的志愿市场中的便宜信贷对气候没有任何作用。因此，允许信贷用作联合国戒指的国家排放承诺的一部分。
希望是第六条交易（包括用于批准交易的中央枢纽）将提高标准而不是释放碳欺诈。
在一些碳信贷从业人员中，人们对格拉斯哥的协议将实现这一目标。格拉斯哥协议中的文字允许“自愿性碳市场也支持减少碳市场活动的国家的排放量”，”凯利·基齐尔（Kelley Kizzier）说，环境防御基金的副主席。通过这样做，该协议已经清除了“使私人资本流向发展中国家的途径”，并将创建“强大，透明和负责的碳市场，以促进更多，更快的气候野心”。
Others are more cautious. “The worst and biggest loopholes were closed, but there is still scope for countries and companies to game the system,”根据马克·马斯林的说法伦敦大学学院。涉及气候金融的国际咨询公司Charlotte Charlotte Charlotte Streck表示，很难防止森林砍伐越过边界。如果巴西镇压国内森林砍伐以获取碳信贷，牧场主可能只是破坏附近的巴拉圭。
One concern is that the rush to turn forests into tradeable carbon will damage the rights of those who live there.
引起争议的是，格拉斯哥交易允许在基于京都协议下开发的碳贸易体系中创建的碳信用额，只要他们不超过八年历史，就可以继续在新制度下进行交易。咨询公司Trove Research的盖伊·特纳（Guy Turner）认为60％这些古老的信用中，充其量是可疑的气候利益。他认为，对于这种信用证的持有人来说，他们的包容性将是现金“意外之财”，可用于抵消大约5亿吨排放。
另一个问题是，急于将森林变成可交易的碳损害权利那些居住并依靠他们的人。印度科学与环境中心的Sunita Narain，在此类问题上竞选，was pleased独立机构解决不满的“人权已在文本中提到”。But she was upset that Indigenous peoples’ rights to free, prior, and informed consent to allowing others to use natural resources on their land, which is enshrined in other UN law, had not been extended in the Glasgow deal to cover the value of their carbon.
从发展中国家的“权利”到以欧洲人和北美人的燃烧方式燃烧煤炭，再到土著人民的权利，再到碳在森林中的新发现的价值，必须加倍打击气候变化的是释放新的对抗。
Glasgow addressed them but did not always solve them.
