COP26 live updates: Greta Thunberg leads climate protests in Glasgow

Greta Thunberg is leading thousands of activists in Glasgow, marching from Kelingrove Park to George Square. Chants and signs underline the growing sense of urgency about action on climate change. Below are a few scenes from the protests.

Thousands of people marched in Glasgow, Scotland, to push for climate action and protest the disparate impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities and countries. On Nov. 5, Fridays for Future Glasgow, a chapter of the youth-led climate organization inspired by Greta Thunberg, will lead a school strike for climate justice during the U.N. summit.

We spoke with six activists from the Philippines, Pakistan, India, Kenya, Bangladesh and Argentina, five of whom belong to a Fridays for Future chapter, about how climate change is impacting their countries and how they would define success at COP26.

Behind the scenes this week at the U.N. global climate conference, out of sight of the media and world leaders, front-line negotiators from more 190 countries have been hammering out text, goals, rule books and proper carbon accounting.

On Friday, COP26 President Alok Sharma thanked them for their hard work — and then told them to work harder and faster.

“The time to shift the mode of work is fast approaching. Next week represents a more political, high-level phase of the conference, with ministers arriving to help draw proceedings to a successful conclusion,” Sharma, the British government minister overseeing the climate negotiations, wrote in a letter to the meeting.

Sharma said he needs the first cut of the deal no later than Saturday afternoon. Outstanding issues — alongside tough choices and horse-trading — will be tackled by the ministers next week.

“I urge the Chairs, Groups and all delegations to expedite discussions over the coming 24 hours, focusing efforts on the balanced set of issues which are critical to what needs to be achieved here in Glasgow,” Sharma wrote.

Negotiations during these climate summits are notorious for running into overtime. Sharma hoped not.

“My expectation is that very few issues remain open by the evening of Wednesday 10 November, when near-final texts will be presented,” he advised. “My priority for Thursday 11 November will be to bring matters together and resolve final outstanding issues, leaving time for document preparation.”

COP ends on Nov. 12.

Environmentally conscious visitors in Glasgow, Scotland, for COP26 may have begun to notice an environmentally unfriendly sight: Overflowing trash cans, or rubbish bins, depending on where you’re from.

Trash collectors are engaged in a dispute over pay and working conditions with the city council and have been out on strike since Nov. 1, taking advantage of the moment to get the world’s attention and put pressure on the city during COP. City officials have been scrambling to bring in contractors while the standoff continues.

The workers appealed to Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg for support. And she in turn invited them to join her for Friday’s climate march. “Climate justice also means social justice and that we leave no one behind,” she wrote.

Enthusiastic workers RSVPed in a video featuring an inflatable rat. Chris Mitchell, from the GMB union, which represents the workers, said: “Camaraderie and solidarity from the cleansing workers in Glasgow. Stand with us.”

On Friday morning, climate protesters were saying that it was important that the workers, once heralded as ‘key workers’ of the coronavirus pandemic, were once again at the forefront of public attention.

“We need the solidarity of young people and working class that makes the city run,” said Keely Mullen, 27, who was demonstrating in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park. “Greta has been making appeals recently to the trade union movement and it’s so welcome.”

When Greta Thunberg began striking outside of the Swedish parliament when she was 15 years old, she did so alone.

Today, tens of thousands of young activists are joining Thunberg as they march through the streets of Glasgow, demanding greater action on climate change. She is participating in a climate strike organized by Fridays for Future Scotland, the Scottish arm of the movement she founded.

Why are people so drawn to the 18-year-old from Sweden?

The young activists spilling into Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park early on Friday morning said that it was a mix of the message and the messenger.

Skye-Layla Marriner, 18, a student and FFF Scotland organizer, said she could imagine going to high school with someone like Thunberg.

“She seems like a very gentle soul; she seems like a very real soul. She’s someone relatable,” she said. “She’s not someone doing herself up and trying to conform to media images. … It’s someone we look at and think, ‘Yeah, I could have gone to school with that person,’ or ‘I see myself in that person.’ It’s someone real.”

Ailis Keyes, 18, who is also an organizer with FFF Scotland, said, “We see her, and we are like, she shows our anger. She shows our emotion toward the climate crisis and emotion to the inadequacy.”

Raymond Stokki, 37, an after-school teacher from Sweden, said that Thunberg has risen to prominence because of “the way the message is delivered” and that when thousands of schoolchildren skip their lessons to demand action on climate, people pay attention. “It’s an old method, striking, but it is showing the majority of people who actually have power.”

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They outgas a lot more carbon dioxide.

This probably comes as no great shock: The wealthiest 1 percent of the world’s population emitted twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorest half of the world from 1990 to 2015, according to new research highlighted at COP26 on Friday.

The carbon footprint of the global one-percenters is also forecast to keep on growing in coming years, while the poorer half remains small and flat.

Emissions of the very, very rich are likely to be 30 times as high as what’s required to help stop the planet from warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), say the authors of the study, commissioned by the anti-hunger charity Oxfam, and carried out by the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Oxfam points out that every person on the planet — to reach Paris accord climate goals — needs to reduce individual carbon dioxide emissions by half, to an average of 2.3 tons by 2030. The planet’s wealthiest ones are on track to release 70 tons per person by decade’s end if current trends continue, the Swedish researchers say.

If you’re on social media following the climate activists protesting in Glasgow, expect to see the hashtags #Uproot the System and #ClimateJustice. What do they mean?

According to a newsletter posted on the Fridays for Future website, the “dominance” of the global north (rich, industrialized countries that are mainly in the Northern Hemisphere) over the global south (the poorer, less industrialized countries, mainly located in the southern part of the world) is a crucial to understanding and addressing climate change. Activists also talk about how race, gender, class, inequality and other issues interconnect and exacerbate the climate crisis. It’s not one thing, but a system, with deep roots, that they want yanked out.

In a similar vein, protesters talk about “climate justice,” noting that low-income countries tend to have lower greenhouse gas emissions — the Group of 20 countries, with the world’s largest economies, are responsible for about 80 percent of global emissions — and yet many of the countries that will be harmed the worst by climate change are poor. Protesters say rich countries need to recognize their historical responsibility and do more to support poorer countries.

Greta Thunberg was not impressed.

Inside a sprawling conference center in Glasgow, Scotland, this week, world leaders virtually tripped over one another to announce new promises aimed at tackling climate change and its disastrous impacts.

Outside the venue earlier this week, Thunberg, the Swedish activist, said the gathering was shaping up like so many that had come before it: Too much talk, too little action.

But not everyone is ready to declare the summit a failure at its halfway mark.

“COP26 is probably unfolding in a way that exceeds expectations compared to where we were a couple months ago, in no small part because I do think we’ve seen a few countries — a few important countries — step up,” said Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “And whether your glass is half full or half empty depends a lot on your expectations of what this COP was likely to deliver.”