Forget the Words of This COP26 Deal. Follow the Money
The language of the communique is softer than initial proposals. But if there’s one promising commitment, it’s the effort to curtail fossil fuel subsidies.
It’s a deal.
Photographer: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images EuropeFor all the weeks of negotiation and hard-headed diplomacy that go into the text of an international agreement, the words that result in the end aren’t a magic spell.
Whether the communique resulting from the Glasgow climate conference promises to “accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels” (as initial drafts proposed) or instead to escalate “efforts towards phase-down of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies,” (in the softened language of the final agreement), it will barely change what the world’s big emitters do over the coming years.