THE United Nations climate talks haven’t even started and host-nation UK is already conceding that a key goal – a deal to end coal burning – is off the table.
“It will be hard to consign coal to history at Glasgow,” Barbara Woodward, the UK’s ambassador to the UN, said in an interview Wednesday, a day before she travels to Scotland for the COP26 climate conference that begins Sunday. “We’ve got to give up coal and some of the plans do not foresee that.”
Conference president Alok Sharma has set a target for the summit to “consign coal to history” in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. That’s looking unlikely, with Group of 20 diplomats now narrowing in on a more modest plan to stop governments funding foreign coal-fired power plants, according to people familiar with the situation.
Woodward singled out for
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