COP26 live updates: Crunch time for negotiators, Obama to speak

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GLASGOW, Scotland — The presidents and prime ministers are gone. The protesters have largely dispersed. The pomp and promises that marked the initial days of the COP26 climate conference are giving way to the difficult task of hammering out an agreement on what nations will actually do together to combat global warming — and how.

Country pledges built on flawed data, Post investigation finds

By Chris Mooney, Juliet Eilperin, Desmond Butler and John Muyskens4:05 a.m.

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Across the world, many countries undercount their greenhouse gas emissions in their reports to the United Nations, a Washington Post investigation has found. An examination of 196 country reports reveals a giant gap between what nations declare their emissions to be versus the greenhouse gases they are sending into the atmosphere. The gap ranges from at least 8.5 billion to as high as 13.3 billion tons a year of underreported emissions — big enough to move the needle on how much the Earth will warm.

The plan to save the world from the worst of climate change is built on data. But the data the world is relying on is inaccurate.

At the low end, the gap is larger than the yearly emissions of the United States. At the high end, it approaches the emissions of China and comprises 23 percent of humanity’s total contribution to the planet’s warming, The Post found.

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The action shifts to behind closed doors

By Brady Dennis and Sarah Kaplan4:00 a.m.

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The presidents and prime ministers have come and gone. Prince William, by all accounts, has left the building. The streets — which only days ago echoed with the chants of protesters, marching by the tens of thousands through a cold November rain to demand climate action — are now far quieter.

In coming days, negotiators from nearly 200 countries will haggle over every word in every line of an agreement that could shape how nations report progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, how global carbon markets function, and how the rich countries of the world deliver on promises to help more vulnerable nations.

Delegates face familiar but vexing problems about how the world can agree on policies to deal with widespread deforestation, warming temperatures, rising seas and other dimensions of climate change. Central to all that is the allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars.

COP26 President Alok Sharma, striving to make Glasgow a success, urged delegates that it was “the time to shift the mode of work” and enter “a more political, high-level phase of the conference.”

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