The world’s most consequential international climate meeting, the United Nation’s 26th Conference of Parties (COP26), has been postponed due to COVID-19. The yearly conference, held in different countries each year, brings together representatives from all nations to discuss – and come to terms on – how to combat the global climate crisis.
This climate conference was slated to be the most important since Paris’ COP21 in 2015, when the Paris Agreement was negotiated. 2020 is the deadline for countries to submit updated plans with, theoretically, more aggressive plans to cut emissions, which signatories are encouraged to do every five years.
Every country on Earth signed the agreement, although President Trump is planning to pull the U.S. out of the agreement later this year.
The meeting was scheduled to take place in November in Glasgow, Scotland, at the SEC arena. But the Scottish government now plans to turn the venue into a field hospital to treat virus victims, and the meeting is rescheduled for October 2021.
“The world is currently facing an unprecedented global challenge and countries are rightly focusing their efforts on saving lives and fighting COVID-19,” said COP26 president-designate Alok Sharma.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary, Patricia Espinosa, said that while COVID-19 is “the most urgent threat facing humanity today … we cannot forget that climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity over the long term.”
While some environmentalists are concerned this delay may slow climate action, others believe this may give the U.S. a longer window of time to change course, especially if a new president is elected in November.
