GLASGOW, Scotland — Almost 200 nations accepted a compromise deal Saturday aimed at keeping a key global warming target alive, but it contained a last-minute change that watered down crucial language about coal.
Several countries, including small island states, said they were deeply disappointed by the change promoted by India to “phase down,” rather than “phase out” coal power, the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
“Our fragile planet is hanging by a thread,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “We are still knocking on the door of climate catastrophe.”
Nation after nation had complained after two weeks of U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, about how the deal did not go far or fast enough. But they said it was better than nothing and provided incremental progress, if not success.
In the end, the summit broke ground by singling out coal, however weakly, by setting the rules for international trading of carbon credits, and by telling big polluters to come back next year with improved pledges for cutting emissions.
But domestic priorities both political and economic again kept nations from committing to the fast, big cuts that scientists say are needed to keep warming below dangerous levels which would produce extreme weather and rising seas capable of erasing some island nations.
Ahead of the Glasgow talks, the United Nations had set three criteria for success, and none of them were achieved. The U.N.’s criteria included pledges to cut carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2030, $100 billion in financial aid from rich nations to poor, and ensuring that half of that money went to helping the developing world adapt to the worst effects of climate change.
“We did not achieve these goals at this conference,” Guterres said. “But we have some building blocks for progress.”
Swiss environment minister Simonetta Sommaruga said the change will make it harder to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times – the more stringent threshold set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said governments had no choice but to accept India’s coal language change: “If we hadn’t done that we wouldn’t have had an agreement.”
But he insisted the deal was good news for the world.
“We are in fact closer than we have ever been before to avoiding climate chaos and securing cleaning air, safer water and healthier planet,” he said later at a news conference.
Many other nations and climate campaigners criticized India for making demands that weakened the final agreement.
“India’s last-minute change to the language to phase down but not phase out coal is quite shocking,” said Australian climate scientist Bill Hare, who tracks world emission pledges for the science-based Climate Action Tracker. “India has long been a blocker on climate action, but I have never seen it done so publicly.”
Others approached the deal from a more positive perspective. In addition to the revised coal language, the Glasgow Climate Pact included enough financial incentives to almost satisfy poorer nations and solved a long-standing problem to pave the way for carbon trading.
The agreement also says big carbon polluting nations have to come back and submit stronger emission cutting pledges by the end of 2022.