Was the Glasgow Climate Summit a real-life ‘Don’t Look up’? ASPIRE analyses the outcome of the event

Hindsight is 20-20. It is also too late to change things, but people talk far less about the second part.

The U.N. Climate Summit, held from Oct 31st to Nov 12th, intended to safeguard our fragile future from the worst impact of climate change and halt global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Around the event, optimism was fractured like one too many promises broken. As the summit approached, nations reported how many had met their pledges and how many had let corporate greed, capitalist intentions, or the defense of fossil fuels let them procrastinate on saving the world. Finally, civilians from all walks of life, regular folks with the least amount of say in climate dealings and who will be worse affected, gathered outside the summit venue in Glasgow to express their anguish, that it was too little too late.

Inside, the U.N. tottered back and forth on the same point. Days approaching the summit saw the world organization, often lambasted for not being able to execute in tandem with its reach and power, reaching out to member countries to act in accordance with Mother Nature and to understand the seriousness of the situation.

The world went into dealing with climate change whilst already dealing with a problem of epic proportions – the coronavirus. The blame game for the pandemic led to escalating tensions, causing UN Secretary-general Antonio Guterres to implore US and China to prevent their issues over Covid origins and other matters from clouding the summit’s progress.

Meanwhile, regret too reared its head. With wholesale European power prices doubling this year owing to soaring coal and gas prices, while renewable costs stayed the same, European Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans felt that Europe would not be in this position if the Green Deal had been adopted five years prior.