COP26 keeps 1.5 degrees within reach

COP26 was tasked to keep 1.5 degrees alive. With today’s agreement, there is a clear call to countries to already next year deliver more ambitious plans in order to achieve just that. The agreement also places science front and center of our collective efforts to dramatically accelerate climate action in this decisive decade, emphasizing the degree target and the need for a 45 pct. cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The agreement also emphasizes the imperative of phasing down coal and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, explicitly highlighting these issues for the first time in COP history.

“Going into Glasgow, there was an urgent cry to keep 1.5 degrees alive. Today we have heeded that call. This agreement creates a strong scientific foundation for enhanced action in the immediate future in order to close the gap. We have put coal and fossil fuel subsidies on notice; there is no room for neither in a 1.5 degrees world. Today we have laid the foundations, tomorrow we must act,” says the Danish Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities, Dan Jørgensen.

Glasgow will also be remembered as the place where the Paris Rulebook was finally agreed upon.

“Six years have passed since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, and now we finally have the rulebook wrapped up. It is not a perfect deal but a robust one that will be instrumental in guiding action on the ground. I am pleased that doubling of adaption finance for poor countries was included in the end. In a world already marred by fierce impacts and very real human suffering, this was very much needed”, says the Danish Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities, Dan Jørgensen.