Opinion | COP26: Growing need for climate leadership from China, the US and India – the world’s worst polluters

UN climate change conference in the spotlight as concerns grow about a return to polluting economic activities as Covid-19 restrictions ease

With the US rejoining the climate fight, now is the time for the worst polluters to choose a better future

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Protesters attend a Fridays for Future protest in Berlin, Germany, on June 2, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 9:15am, 13 Apr 2021Updated: 5:10pm, 31 Oct 2021

The 26th United Nations climate change conference, better known as COP26, will be held this year in Glasgow at the start of November, and will draw attention to world leadership and progress made since the Paris Agreement in 2015.

COP26 will seek to force the biggest emitters of the greenhouse gases that precipitate global warming to make good on their promises by making clearer and firmer commitments to tackle climate change and keep the global temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

After former US president Donald Trump’s retreat from the Paris Agreement, the new administration has returned to the table. Ahead of COP26, President Joe Biden has formally invited 40 heads of state to participate in the Leaders Summit on Climate, including India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping.

This meeting will bring together the leaders of the three largest carbon emitters in the world. Any failure to address the challenges ahead could result in dire consequences.

The global momentum to tackle climate change has been rising over the past decade, but the three biggest polluters have made little progress so far.

When everything came to a standstill during the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns, we saw dramatic photos of New Delhi’s endemic smog lifting to reveal blue skies, Jakarta’s skyline reappearing and the San Gabriel Mountains once again visible from just behind Los Angeles. Suddenly, out of the global devastation something positive arose – a glimmer of hope.

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