AFP

Glasgow was on Saturday bracing for a second day of protests against what campaigners say is a lack of urgency to address global warming after Greta Thunberg labelled the crunch UN climate summit there a “failure”.

Organisers and police said they expected up to 50,000 people in the streets of the Scottish city as part of about 200 protests worldwide demanding immediate action for communities already hit by the fallout of our heating planet.

Delegates from nearly 200 countries are in Glasgow to hammer out how to meet the Paris Agreement goals of limiting temperature rises to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius.

At the halfway stage of the COP26 negotiations, some countries have signed up to pledges to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, with separate deals on phasing out coal, ending foreign fossil fuel funding and slashing methane.

The promises followed a major assessment that showed global CO2 emissions are set to rebound in 2021 to pre-pandemic levels.

Activists were unimpressed during Friday’s march.

“They cannot ignore the scientific consensus and they cannot ignore us,” said Thunberg.

“This is no longer a climate conference. This is now a global greenwashing festival.”

Security has been boosted around Glasgow’s locked down city centre ahead of Saturday’s march, which is expected to draw a variety of groups including Extinction Rebellion.

“Many thousands of us are marching right across the world today to demand immediate and serious action,” said Scottish activist Mikaela Loach. 

“We’re clear that warm words are not good enough — and that the next week of talks must see a serious ramping up of concrete plans.”

– ‘Can’t go on today’ –

COP26 negotiations will continue on Saturday before taking a pause on Sunday ahead of what is shaping up to be a frantic week of shuttle diplomacy, as ministers arrive to push through hard-fought compromises on a number of issues.

Countries still need to flesh out how pledges made in the Paris deal work in practice, including rules governing carbon markets, common reporting timeframes and transparency. 

Countries came into COP26 with national climate plans that, when brought together, put Earth on course to warm 2.7C this century, according to the UN.

With just 1.1C of warming so far, communities across the world are already facing ever more intense fire and drought, displacement and economic ruin wrought by global heating.

Brianna Fruean, a Samoan member of the Pacific Climate Warriors, who addressed a world leaders’ summit at the start of COP26, said it was time for leaders to take note of protesters’ demands.

“It can’t go on like this,” she said. 

“We refuse to be just victims to this crisis. We are not drowning, we are fighting and on Saturday the world will hear us.”

Four astronauts are scheduled to return to Earth from the International Space Station early Monday after spending more than six months in space, NASA announced.

The four members of the Crew-2 mission, including a French and a Japanese astronaut, will therefore return to Earth before the arrival of a replacement crew, whose take-off was delayed several times due to unfavorable weather conditions.

NASA said in a statement late Friday that Crew-2 members are due to return to Earth “no earlier than 7:14 am EST (1214 GMT) Monday, Nov. 8, with a splashdown off the coast of Florida.”

“As we’re preparing to leave, it’s kind of a bittersweet feeling, we might never come back to see the ISS, and it’s really a magical place,” French astronaut Thomas Pesquet said earlier Friday during a press conference from the space station.

“I’m very thankful that people dreamt the ISS some time ago and then went ahead and worked hard to make it happen and to build it for the benefit of everyone,” Pesquet added. 

Endeavour, the Crew Dragon spacecraft, is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station at 1805 GMT Sunday to begin the journey home.

Once detached from the ISS, the capsule will begin a journey of several hours, the duration of which can vary greatly depending on the trajectory, and will then land off the coast of Florida.

A backup undocking and splashdown opportunity is available Monday, if weather conditions are not favorable, NASA said.

The two missions are being carried out by NASA in collaboration with SpaceX, which now provides regular launches to the ISS from the United States.

Crew-3 is scheduled to take off for the ISS aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where astronauts have been in quarantine for days.

US astronaut Megan McArthur was confident that not getting the replacement crew to ISS before the current crew departs was just a temporary setback.

“Of course that’s not optimal,” McArthur told reporters during the Friday press conference. “But we are prepared to manage that. Spaceflight is full of lots of little challenges.”

A Paralympian quadruple amputee, an Olympic silver medalist and an “eco-adventurer” will attempt to swim 122 kilometers across the highest navigable lake in the world to raise awareness of environmental pollution.

The French trio — Theo Curin, 21, Malia Metella, 39, and Matthieu Witvoet, 27 — were in La Paz on Friday finalizing preparations to swim across Lake Titicaca on the border of Bolivia and Peru.

“One of the reasons is that I wanted to take on a challenge that has never been done before,” said Curin, a Rio 2016 Paralympian who had part of both arms and both legs amputated when he was six after contracting meningitis.

Starting on Wednesday, the trio will swim from Copacabana on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, 122-kilometers across to Puno on the Peruvian side of the world’s highest body of navigable freshwater, some 3,800 meters above sea level.

They have been training for 13 months at Lac de Matemale in the Pyrenees for the challenge, which they expect will take then 10 days to complete.

Besides the long distance they will have to cover and the high altitude which will make the task more difficult, the swimmers will come up against the cold: the water temperature is just 10 degrees Celsius.

They will take turns to swim an expected 12 kilometers a day while the other two will keep warm and fed in a boat traveling alongside the swimmer.

“Theo asked me (to join him) and he has incredible values,” said Metella, a silver medalist in the 50-meter freestyle at the Athens Olympics in 2004.

“Swimming in freshwater, in a lake, in a river, is something that I have never done, or in an exceptional cold and I want to see what it’s like.” 

Besides taking on a personal challenge, the adventurers want to raise awareness of pollution in the lake that is considered sacred to the indigenous Aymara and Quechua people that live on its shores.

For Witvoet, who describes himself as an eco-adventurer, “the message we want to impart is that we can change things so that this lake becomes clean again.”

The four-decade-old mystery of a German skier who vanished in the Never Summer Mountains appeared to have been solved with the discovery of skeletal remains, US authorities said this week.

Rudi Moder, who was 27 at the time, set out through the snow covered range, part of the Rocky Mountains, in Colorado, on February 13, 1983. 

He never returned.

His worried roommate raised the alarm a week later, setting in motion a high-altitude search that involved avalanche sniffer dogs, rescuers on skis and in snow shoes, and aerial reconnaissance.

During a four-day operation, teams were hampered by heavy snow, but recovered a food cache, and a nearby snow cave containing Moder’s sleeping bag and other gear.

After that, the trail went cold, and subsequent searches over the following months and years yielded no clues.

Then in August last year, human bones were discovered by a hiker in the Skeleton Gulch area, near avalanche debris at an altitude of around 11,000 feet (3,350 metres), the National Park Service said Thursday.

“This summer, park rangers further searched the scene and found skis, poles and boots, along with remains of personal items believed to belong to Moder,” a statement said.

The FBI’s Evidence Response Team were called in to help retrieve and preserve the remains.

The park service said a coroner’s attempts to positively identify the skeletal remains using dental records proved inconclusive.

However, there had been extensive collaboration with the German government and Moder’s family, and officials believed they had solved the mystery.

Jacinda Ardern has warned the Glasgow climate summit is “make or break” in the fight to curb global warming, saying the world is now paying the price for decades of procrastination.

The New Zealand leader called for the UN-brokered talks to result in immediate and meaningful action, adding “we’re definitely at a point now where it’s moved beyond targets”.

“Glasgow is critical and I think everyone has recognised this juncture we’re at,” she told AFP in an interview conducted in partnership with Covering Climate Now, the New Zealand Herald and NBC News.

“This is the moment where it will be make or break for those ambitions that we’ve seen around 1.5 degrees.

“We know what falling short of 1.5 degrees means for the rest of the world, for ourselves and our region.”

Ardern said climate change was already fuelling extreme weather in New Zealand and neighbouring Pacific atolls faced inundation as rising waters overran their protective seawalls.

“For us, it’s in our backyard, and it does make it immediate,” said the 41-year-old, who has previously described the issue as a life-and-death generational challenge.

– ‘Steep drop to the bottom’ –

The Glasgow talks have brought together negotiators from 196 countries in the biggest climate conference since a landmark meeting in Paris in 2015.

Delegates in Scotland’s largest city are tasked with bringing to reality the ambitious goal set in Paris of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels.

While unable to attend personally because she is hosting this month’s APEC economic summit — and is dealing with a Covid-19 crisis at home — Ardern has released policies she says put New Zealand at the vanguard of climate action.

They include halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, quadrupling foreign aid for climate mitigation projects and forcing financial markets to reveal how their investments impact global warming.

Ardern admitted New Zealand, like many countries, had long talked a big game on climate change, then failed to back up its rhetoric.

“For a number of decades, targets were set but investment and changes were not made to align with it and help us achieve that,” she said.

The centre-left leader, who took office in 2017, said her government was committed to climate action regardless of what other countries were doing or the prospect of domestic blowback over its economic cost.

“We can’t get ourselves into a situation where our action is reliant on the action of others, because who pays the price in that game, but all of us?” she said.

“It’s not enough to simply say, ‘we’ll wait until everyone else does their bit’. I’ve heard that argument. We have to do ours now, lest we all end up on a steep drop to the bottom.”

– Criticism  –

However environmental groups have criticised New Zealand’s climate policies, notably for excluding its lucrative but heavily polluting agricultural sector from plans to achieve zero net emission by 2050.

Greenpeace Aotearoa’s Christine Rose said the sector accounted for almost half of New Zealand’s emissions — largely through methane from livestock — and excluding it rendered the government climate pledges “meaningless”.

“Unless we take action to address agricultural emissions now, the heavy lifting is left to the rest of us while agribusiness continues to profit from pollution,” Rose said.

Climate activists Generation Zero also last month called New Zealand’s policies a “disgrace”, citing the failure to take into account agriculture.

And Greta Thunberg has panned Ardern, saying the prime minister was not a climate leader.

Ardern said she stood by her record, while defending the young Swedish activist’s right to speak out on behalf of her generation.

“In my view, the world needs those who are out there holding us to account because this is not just about ‘set a target, walk away and hope for the best’ — those activists are seeking tangible changes now,” she said.

Ardern said it was important to consider the plight of those on the frontline of climate change, such as Pacific islanders dealing with increasingly violent cyclones, ocean warming and coastal erosion.

She was hopeful such voices had been heard in by the delegates debating the planet’s future in Glasgow. 

“I will always be an optimist, and so I want to wait and see what we’re able to generate out of COP,” she said.

Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg on Friday branded the UN climate summit in Glasgow a “failure” during a mass protest in the Scottish city demanding swifter action from leaders to address the emergency.

Thunberg said pledges from some nations made during COP26 to accelerate their emissions cuts amounted to little more than “a two-week long celebration of business as usual and blah, blah, blah”.

“It is not a secret that COP26 is a failure,” she told the thousands of people at the protest. 

“This is no longer a climate conference. This is now a global greenwashing festival.”

Delegates from nearly 200 countries are in Glasgow to hammer out how to meet the Paris Agreement goals of limiting temperature rises to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius. 

The first week of talks saw countries announce plans to phase out coal use and to end foreign fossil fuel funding, but there were few details on how they plan the mass decarbonisation scientists say is needed.

The promises followed a major assessment that showed global CO2 emissions are set to rebound in 2021 to pre-pandemic levels.

“They cannot ignore the scientific consensus and they cannot ignore us,” said Thunberg.

“Our leaders are not leading. This is what leadership looks like,” she said gesturing to the crowd.

Two days of demonstrations are planned by activist groups to highlight the disconnect between the glacial pace of emissions reductions and the climate emergency already swamping countries across the world.

– Some progress –

Onlookers to Friday’s march lined the streets and hung out of windows to watch the stream of protesters, who held banners reading “No Planet B” and “Climate Action Now”.

“I’m here because the world leaders are deciding the fate of our future and the present of people that have already been impacted by climate crisis,” said 18-year-old Valentina Ruas.

“We won’t accept anything that isn’t real climate policy centred on climate justice.”

Students were out in force, with some schools allowing pupils to skip lessons to see the march and one young green warrior holding a placard that read: “Climate change is worse than homework”.

Experts say a commitment made during the high-level leaders’ summit at the start of COP26 by more than 100 nations to cut methane emissions by at least 30 percent this decade will have a real short-term impact on global heating. 

But environmental groups pointed out that governments, particularly wealthy polluters, have a habit of failing to live up to their promises. 

Vanessa Nakate told the crowd that people in her native Uganda were “being erased” by climate change.

“People are dying, children are dropping out of school, farms are being destroyed,” she said. 

“Another world is necessary. Another world is possible.”

– ‘Take responsibility’ – 

Countries came into COP26 with national climate plans that, when brought together, put Earth on course to warm 2.7C this century, according to the UN. 

With just 1.1C of warming so far, communities across the world are already facing ever more intense fire and drought, displacement and economic ruin wrought by the Earth’s heating climate.

“Scientists have done what they need to do, they’ve told us about the problem. Young people have done what they need to do by calling attention to this issue,” said Natalie Tariro Chido Mangondo, a Zimbabwean climate and gender advocate. 

“And it’s just up to our leaders to get their act together.”

Campaigners say they expect up to 50,000 demonstrators in the Scottish city on Saturday as part of a global round of climate protests.

A spokesman from Police Scotland said there were “fewer than 20 arrests made” as of Friday night, mainly for public disorder offences.

Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg on Friday branded the UN climate summit in Glasgow a “failure” during a mass protest in the Scottish city demanding quicker action from leaders to address the emergency.

Thunberg said pledges from some nations made during COP26 to accelerate their emissions cuts amounted to little more than “a two-week long celebration of business as usual and blah, blah, blah”.

“It is not a secret that COP26 is a failure,” she told the thousands of people at the protest. 

“This is no longer a climate conference. This is now a global greenwashing festival.”

Delegates from nearly 200 countries are in Glasgow to hammer out how to meet the Paris Agreement goals of limiting temperature rises to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius. 

The first week of talks saw countries announce plans to phase out coal use and to end foreign fossil fuel funding, but there were few details on how they plan the mass decarbonisation scientists say is needed.

The promises followed a major assessment that showed global CO2 emissions are set to rebound in 2021 to pre-pandemic levels.

“They cannot ignore the scientific consensus and they cannot ignore us,” said Thunberg.

“Our leaders are not leading. This is what leadership looks like,” she said gesturing to the crowd.

Two days of demonstrations are planned by activist groups to highlight the disconnect between the glacial pace of emissions reductions and the climate emergency already swamping countries across the world.

– Some progress –

Onlookers to Friday’s march lined the streets and hung out of windows to watch the stream of protestors, who held banners reading “No Planet B” and “Climate Action Now”.

“I’m here because the world leaders are deciding the fate of our future and the present of people that have already been impacted by climate crisis,” said 18-year-old Valentina Ruas.

“We won’t accept anything that isn’t real climate policy centred on climate justice.”

Students were out in force, with some schools allowing pupils to skip lessons to see the march and one young green warrior holding a placard that read: “Climate change is worse than homework”.

Experts say a commitment made during the high-level leaders’ summit at the start of COP26 by more than 100 nations to cut methane emissions by at least 30 percent this decade will have a real short-term impact on global heating. 

But environmental groups pointed out that governments, particularly wealthy polluters, have a habit of failing to live up to their promises. 

Vanessa Nakate told the crowd that people in her native Uganda were “being erased” by climate change.

“People are dying, children are dropping out of school, farms are being destroyed,” she said. 

“Another world is necessary. Another world is possible.”

– ‘Take responsibility’ – 

Countries came into COP26 with national climate plans that, when brought together, put Earth on course to warm 2.7C this century, according to the UN. 

With just 1.1C of warming so far, communities across the world are already facing ever more intense fire and drought, displacement and economic ruin wrought by the Earth’s heating climate.

“Scientists have done what they need to do, they’ve told us about the problem. Young people have done what they need to do by calling attention to this issue,” said Natalie Tariro Chido Mangondo, a Zimbabwean climate and gender advocate. 

“And it’s just up to our leaders to get their act together.”

Campaigners say they expect up to 50,000 demonstrators in the Scottish city on Saturday as part of a global round of climate protests.

Summit organisers on Thursday confirmed a number of positive Covid-19 tests among attendees, but have said they will not provide figures on how many.

Jacinda Ardern has warned the Glasgow climate summit is “make or break” in the fight to curb global warming, saying the world is now paying the price for decades of procrastination.

The New Zealand leader called for the UN-brokered talks to result in immediate and meaningful action, adding “we’re definitely at a point now where it’s moved beyond targets”.

“Glasgow is critical and I think everyone has recognised this juncture we’re at,” she told AFP in an interview conducted in partnership with Covering Climate Now, the New Zealand Herald and NBC News.

“This is the moment where it will be make or break for those ambitions that we’ve seen around 1.5 degrees.

“We know what falling short of 1.5 degrees means for the rest of the world, for ourselves and our region.”

Ardern said climate change was already fuelling extreme weather in New Zealand and neighbouring Pacific atolls faced inundation as rising waters overran their protective seawalls.

“For us, it’s in our backyard, and it does make it immediate,” said the 41-year-old, who has previously described the issue as a life-and-death generational challenge.

– ‘Steep drop to the bottom’ –

The Glasgow talks have brought together negotiators from 196 countries in the biggest climate conference since a landmark meeting in Paris in 2015.

Delegates in Scotland’s largest city are tasked with bringing to reality the ambitious goal set in Paris of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels.

While unable to attend personally because she is hosting this month’s APEC economic summit — and is dealing with a Covid-19 crisis at home — Ardern has released policies she says put New Zealand at the vanguard of climate action.

They include halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, quadrupling foreign aid for climate mitigation projects and forcing financial markets to reveal how their investments impact global warming.

Ardern admitted New Zealand, like many countries, had long talked a big game on climate change, then failed to back up its rhetoric.

“For a number of decades, targets were set but investment and changes were not made to align with it and help us achieve that,” she said.

The centre-left leader, who took office in 2017, said her government was committed to climate action regardless of what other countries were doing or the prospect of domestic blowback over its economic cost.

“We can’t get ourselves into a situation where our action is reliant on the action of others, because who pays the price in that game, but all of us?” she said.

“It’s not enough to simply say, ‘we’ll wait until everyone else does their bit’. I’ve heard that argument. We have to do ours now, lest we all end up on a steep drop to the bottom.”

– Criticism  –

However environmental groups have criticised New Zealand’s climate policies, notably for excluding its lucrative but heavily polluting agricultural sector from plans to achieve zero net emission by 2050.

Greenpeace Aotearoa’s Christine Rose said the sector accounted for almost half of New Zealand’s emissions — largely through methane from livestock — and excluding it rendered the government climate pledges “meaningless”.

“Unless we take action to address agricultural emissions now, the heavy lifting is left to the rest of us while agribusiness continues to profit from pollution,” Rose said.

Climate activists Generation Zero also last month called New Zealand’s policies a “disgrace”, citing the failure to take into account agriculture.

And Greta Thunberg has panned Ardern, saying the prime minister was not a climate leader.

Ardern said she stood by her record, while defending the young Swedish activist’s right to speak out on behalf of her generation.

“In my view, the world needs those who are out there holding us to account because this is not just about ‘set a target, walk away and hope for the best’ — those activists are seeking tangible changes now,” she said.

Ardern said it was important to consider the plight of those on the frontline of climate change, such as Pacific islanders dealing with increasingly violent cyclones, ocean warming and coastal erosion.

She was hopeful such voices had been heard in by the delegates debating the planet’s future in Glasgow. 

“I will always be an optimist, and so I want to wait and see what we’re able to generate out of COP,” she said.

Thousands of young people marched through the streets of Glasgow Friday to protest a lack of climate action with a clear message to negotiators at the COP26 summit: “If not now, when?” 

Two days of demonstrations are planned to highlight the disconnect between the glacial pace of emissions reductions and the climate emergency already swamping countries across the world.

Large crowds organised by the Fridays for Future global strike movement began marching through Glasgow city centre, with high-profile campaigners Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate expected to address the masses.

Onlookers lined the streets and hung out of windows to watch the stream of protestors, who held banners reading “No Planet B” and “Climate Action Now”.

“I’m here because the world leaders are deciding the fate of our future and the present of people that have already been impacted by climate crisis,” said 18-year-old Valentina Ruas.

“We won’t accept anything that isn’t real climate policy centred on climate justice.”

Sixteen-year-old Beth Donaldson said young people were fed up with hollow promises from leaders.

“We see on the TV all these political leaders saying they’re going to take action but we never see what action they’re actually going to take,” she said. 

School children were out in force, with some schools allowing pupils to skip lessons to see the march and one young green warrior holding a placard that read: “Climate change is worse than homework”.

Delegates from nearly 200 countries are in Glasgow to hammer out how to meet the Paris Agreement goals of limiting temperature rises to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius. 

The UN-led process requires countries to commit to ever-increasing emissions cuts, and urges richer, historical emitters to help developing countries fund their energy transformations and deal with climate impacts. 

Countries issued two additional pledges on Thursday to reduce their fossil fuel consumption. 

Twenty nations, including major financiers the United States and Canada, promised to end overseas fossil fuel funding by the end of 2022.

And over 40 countries vowed to phase out coal — the most polluting fossil fuel — although details were vague and a timeline for doing so not disclosed. 

The promises followed a major assessment that showed global CO2 emissions are set to rebound in 2021 to pre-pandemic levels.

Thunberg herself was not impressed, tweeting after the twin announcements: “This is no longer a climate conference. This is a Global North greenwash festival.”

– ‘Take responsibility’ – 

Experts say a commitment made during the high-level leaders’ summit at the start of COP26 by more than 100 nations to cut methane emissions by at least 30 percent this decade will have a real short-term impact on global heating. 

But environmental groups pointed out that governments, particularly wealthy polluters, have a habit of failing to live up to their climate promises. 

“I expect this protest to remind world leaders and negotiators and politicians that young people are watching them,” said Brianna Fruean, 23, from Western Samoa.

Countries came into COP26 with national climate plans that, when brought together, put Earth on course to warm 2.7C this century, according to the UN. 

With just 1.1C of warming so far, communities across the world are already facing ever more intense fire and drought, displacement and economic ruin wrought by the Earth’s heating climate. 

“Scientists have done what they need to do, they’ve told us about the problem. Young people have done what they need to do by calling attention to this issue,” said Natalie Tariro Chido Mangondo, a Zimbabwean climate and gender advocate. 

“And it’s just up to our leaders to get their act together.”

Campaigners say they expect up to 50,000 demonstrators in the Scottish city on Saturday as part of a global round of climate protests.

Summit organisers on Thursday confirmed that there had been a number of positive Covid-19 tests among attendees, but have said they will not provide figures on how many.

The ruins of an Iraqi Kurdish village abandoned 36 years ago and submerged under the waters of a dam, have suddenly resurfaced thanks to sinking water levels in the drought-hit country.

The construction of the dam, two kilometres (one mile) north of the town of Dohuk, started in 1985 and prompted the resettlement of Guiri Qasrouka’s 50 families.     

Guiri Qasrouka was then swallowed by the waters which serve to irrigate surrounding farmland.

“Because of the drought” caused by scant rainfall in Iraq, the Dohuk dam’s water level dropped by seven metres (23 feet) in September and brought the village back to the surface, explained the dam’s director, Farhad Taher.

“This phenomenon is certainly linked to climate change,” Taher said, adding that the ruins had also reappeared in 2009, 1999 and 1992.

Before the winter rains set in and the village goes under again, visitors on foot can now view the stone walls of a Guiri Qasrouka home that is still standing.

The algae-splattered and shell-indented ruins are set against a backdrop of the towering Kurdish mountains of northern Iraq.

With financial compensation, villagers, who had also fled between 1974 and 1976 during a Kurdish uprising, built a new Guiri Qasrouka nearby.