20 pledges for 2020: What happens now COP26 climate talks have been delayed over coronavirus?

One by one, the great events of the year are falling victim to coronavirus: Wimbledon, Euro 2020, the Olympics, the Edinburgh festivals, even my Kraftwerk concert in a London park.

And now, the COP26 climate change summit which the UK was due to host in November, and – as I keep reminding myself and others – was billed as “the last chance to save the planet”.

November seems a long way off, but the wisdom of 30,000 people descending on Glasgow, when no-one can predict the scale of the pandemic by the autumn, is only the half of it.

The summit itself was meant to be the culmination of two years of detailed planning, with the admirable goal of cutting the carbon emissions cooking the globe.

Now, without all that essential groundwork due to take place in Glasgow at the end of the year, all the big cheeses, India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, will not be in that room, signing an agreement.

(The chances of that great climate change denier Donald Trump doing the right thing are so vanishingly slim that they were not ever even worth considering).

Now, if Dominic Raab is to be believed, progress was being made on the road to COP26. He told MPs that 114 countries have “signalled their intention to produce more plans” to cut CO2.

However, the foreign secretary’s recent evidence to a Commons committee also suggested to me that he knew the game was nearly up for Glasgow.

Remember, Mr Raab is still indulging the fantasy that Brexit can be completed at the end of the year, despite the talks being in the deep freeze – so he’s one of life’s optimists.

But, on COP26, he said: “I cannot give you a cast-iron guarantee, because things are moving so quickly,” arguing it depends on “what happens over the following weeks”. Then, of course, late last night from Alok Sharma (President of COP26) came the confirmation that the conference was postponed.

Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the foreign affairs committee, surely hit the nail on the head when he said: “It won’t be in November that the talks are held – they will be held from now.

“I believe the French took two years to get to COP21. I believe the Mexicans took a similar time for their moment. It seems extremely unlikely that we are going to be in a position to deliver in November.”

Mr Tugendhat suggested a delay of a year, to November 2021 “for the world to come together"; though as yet, no new date has been mooted.

Whether a delay of 12 months will be enough for our government to finally come up with plans to achieve its ‘net zero’ commitment is, sadly, another matter.

Read more

Boris Johnson and his government are dithering on the climate crisis