Thunberg arrives in Glasgow ahead of COP26
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived in the Scottish city of Glasgow on Saturday, a day before the start of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP26. A media scrum awaited the 18-year-old as she arrived at Glasgow train station, and police officers had to escort her through the crowd. Many environmentalists are calling the October 31-November 12 summit the world’s last chance to turn the tide in the battle against climate change. The summit in Glasgow is taking place a year late because of the coronavirus pandemic. Six years ago in Paris, nearly 200 countries agreed to individual plans to fight global warming. Under the Paris pact, nations must revisit their previous pledges to curb carbon pollution every five years and then announce plans to cut even more and do it faster. The headline goal set in Paris was to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times, yet the world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since then. The hope is that world leaders will cajole each other into doing more, while ensuring that poorer nations struggling to tackle climate change get the financial support they need to adapt.
