GLASGOW, Scotland – Exhausted negotiators from nearly 200 nations struck a deal Saturday intended to propel the world toward more urgent climate action, but without offering the transformative breakthrough scientists say must happen if humanity is to avert disastrous planetary warming.

Two weeks of high-profile talks yielded a package that pushes countries to strengthen near-term climate targets and move away from fossil fuels faster. It insists that wealthy countries fulfill a broken promise to help vulnerable nations cope with the rising costs of climate change. And it cracks open the door to future payments developed nations might make for damage already done.

Saturday’s agreement, however, does not achieve the most ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris accord – to limit Earth’s warming to 2.7 Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels. Instead, delegations left Glasgow with the Earth still on track to blow past that threshold, pushing toward a future of escalating weather crises and irreversible damage to the natural world.

And representatives from hard-hit nations feared that the deal could leave their people facing an existential threat.

“The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees is a death sentence for us,” Aminath Shauna, the Maldives’ minister of environment, climate change and technology, told the summit. “What is balanced and pragmatic to other parties will not help the Maldives adapt in time. It will be too late.”

Organizers acknowledged that the hard-fought agreement doesn’t go nearly far enough. But they argued that the progress made here, combined with new pledges to halt deforestation and cut emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, creates a road map to a safer future and “keeps 1.5 alive.”

“We’re all well aware that collectively, our climate ambition and action to date have fallen short on the promises made in Paris,” Alok Sharma, the British minister of state and president of the Glasgow talks, told delegates Saturday.

But he insisted that the deal adopted by the nations of the world would set out “tangible next steps and very clear milestones” to push the world closer to those goals.

Yet with global temperatures already up more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit, and extreme weather wreaking havoc around the world, it remains to be seen whether this agreement will be sufficient to deal with mounting calamities inflicted by climate change.

Negotiators leave Glasgow with key questions unanswered: Can nations muster the political will to deliver on the soaring rhetoric that marked the summit’s start? Can COP26, as it’s known, mark the start of a “decisive” decade to turn the tide on global warming?

Most important, can the lurching progress of these annual conferences keep pace with the problem they were designed to solve?

Anything short of that will consign future generations to untold suffering, the European Union’s top climate official, Frans Timmermans, told delegates in the waning hours of the summit. Timmermans – whose delegation faced accusations of not doing enough to forge a stronger outcome in Glasgow – said he had been pondering what life will be like in 2050 for his 1-year-old grandson.

“If we succeed, he’ll be living in a world that’s livable. He’ll be living in an economy that’s clean, with air that’s clean, at peace with his environment,” he said. “If we fail – and I mean fail now in the next couple years – he will fight with other human beings for water and food. That’s the stark reality we face.”

The conference ended on a sour note when delegates from China and India proposed a last minute change to crucial text around moving away from coal, saying they would agree only to “phase-down unabated coal,” rather than “phase out.”

Country after country rose to object to the 11th-hour change.

“This commitment on coal had been a bright spot in this package,” said Marshall Islands climate envoy Tina Stege. “One thing we were hoping to carry out of here and with pride. It hurts deeply to see that bright spot dimmed.”

But Stege said that she would accept the language change “only because there are critical elements of this package that people in my country need as lifeline for their future.”

The final agreement at COP26 did recognize the scientific reality that putting the brakes on climate change will require nations to speed efforts to cut emissions soon, rather than merely commit to far off “net zero” targets.

It “requests” that leaders revisit their national climate goals as soon as next year – a not-so-subtle nudge to the world’s biggest emitters to strengthen commitments that have proven lackluster and insufficient. A joint pledge issued by China and the United States during the gathering also acknowledged the need to do more in this decade.

It also lays out a plan to resolve thorny disputes around rules for global carbon markets that allow investors to buy and sell emissions reduction credits – a complex topic that for years has tripped up delegates at climates talks.

No sooner had the final gavel fallen in Glasgow than activists began picking apart the summit’s failings, calling the pact little more than a parade of empty promises. Language calling for countries to end coal burning and fossil fuel subsidies – the first such references in any U.N. climate text – was diluted with references to “unabated” coal and “inefficient” subsidies.

A proposed fund to pay for irreversible “loss and damage” wrought by climate change in vulnerable countries was left out of the final text, angering delegates who say such reparations are long overdue. Instead, nations agreed to start a “dialogue” about the idea.

And, ultimately, the decision does not require the drastic carbon cuts needed to meet the warming targets that scientists, activists and representatives from vulnerable nations say the world must make.

Some of the harshest condemnations were reserved for wealthy countries, which have released the bulk of greenhouse gases now in the atmosphere but have often resisted mandates to provide cash for developing nations and limit their massive pollution.

“Developed countries are fully responsible for climate change,” Bolivian negotiator Diego Pacheco Balanza told reporters. “But they don’t want to get engaged in a real discussion of finance. They are watering down and eluding their responsibilities.”

Richie Merzian, a former Australian climate official, quipped this week of his coal-exporting nation, “The only thing Australia has brought to this negotiation is good coffee over at the Australian pavilion.”

In a public session for ministers on Friday, even U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry acknowledged that the biggest, richest emitters “do bear the greatest responsibility.” President Biden also has pledged to boost U.S. climate aid to poor nations to more than $11 billion a year – a promise that will require the blessing of a narrowly divided Congress to fully meet.

But behind the closed doors of negotiating rooms, representatives from multiple countries said, U.S. diplomats were among those opposed to establishing “loss and damage” payments for vulnerable countries and sought to weaken language that would double the aid directed toward adaptation. On Saturday, Kerry sought to assure skeptical nations that the United States would make “”every effort in the world” to help nations battered by climate change.

The talks in Glasgow unfolded in a world already irrevocably altered by human emissions. A landmark U.N. report published in August found that global temperatures are increasing at a rate unparalleled since the fall of the Roman Empire. The last time the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose this much this fast was 66 million years ago, when a meteor destroyed the dinosaurs.

“The alarm bells are deafening,” said U.N. secretary general António Guterres, calling the findings “a code red for humanity.”

The scientific warnings seemed almost superfluous amid a year of monstrous hurricanes, raging wildfires and deadly heat waves. These crises cost nations hundreds of billions of dollars, and thousands of lives.

The gathering also took place against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, which had already delayed it by a year. Delegates in the cloistered “blue zone” were tested daily. The thousands of attendees wore masks. Access to meeting rooms was restricted, angering activists who usually are able to observe such proceedings. And simmering tension over the pandemic’s unequal global impact fueled developing nations’ push for more help from wealthier parts of the world.

As talks stretched into overtime, Kenya’s environment minister was among the many representatives pleading with fellow negotiators to take forceful action.

“We bleed when it rains; we cry when it doesn’t,” Keriako Tobiko said, referring to floods and droughts that have displaced tens of thousands of people in his country and elsewhere. “For us, 1.5 is not just a statistic. It is a matter of life and death.”

In the months leading up to COP26, organizers had described it as global moment of truth – a “last best hope,” in Sharma’s words. “One minute to midnight on that doomsday clock,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Presidents and prime ministers showed up early in Glasgow and made new commitments to an estimated 40,000 attendees. The announcements included efforts to cut methane and halt deforestation, to phase out financing for coal plants and to help nations buffeted by the deadly trifecta of climate change, mounting debt and a deadly pandemic.

Heads of state mingled with movie stars and royal family members. The cafeteria served up vegan haggis and reusable cups of coffee. Beloved British naturalist David Attenborough urged world leaders to “turn tragedy into triumph” by reversing decades of environmental decline. Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, declared that warming of even 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit would sink her island nation.

“Try harder,” she told an auditorium brimming with powerful leaders. “Try harder.”

Halfway through the summit, an estimated 100,000 protesters swarmed the streets of Glasgow, weathering the Scottish wind and rain to remind those inside that they were watching and expecting bolder policies.

Indigenous leaders in traditional dress, and grandmothers shouting expletives about the fossil fuel industry joined the swirling mass. Schoolchildren clutched their parents’ hands and waved signs that read, “Act now.”

“Cut the crap,” was emblazoned on a cart pushed by 55-year-old Malcom Strong. Inside the cart: a bucket of manure.

That excrement reflected how little faith many activists had in the process unfolding inside Glasgow’s cavernous convention center. They dismissed the U.N. summit as a “conference of polluters,” a “meaningless” event of “greenwashing” and “blah blah blah.”

“This is what? COP26? And still we are negotiating basic things,” said Beverly Longid, an indigenous activist from the Philippines.

Throughout, “keep 1.5 alive” was a rallying cry for world leaders and activists alike. The success of COP26 would be measured, they argued, by how much closer humanity got to the collective goals it set six years ago in Paris.

“Paris promised,” Sharma said repeatedly. “Glasgow must deliver.”

But delivering, it turned out, did not come easily.

By the second week of the conference, the fanfare had given way to a sobering reality: Commitments made here, however promising, will depend on words becoming concrete action in the months and years to come.

As negotiations stretched on, the U.N. Environment Program reported that COP26 would likely end with Earth on track to warm 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit – though other analyses suggested the number could drop if countries take swift action to fulfill long-term pledges.

Despite a wave of vows to zero out emissions by the middle of the century, the U.N. analysis found, countries’ plans between now and the end of the decade would shatter hopes of keeping warming to 1.5 Celsius. Scientists said humanity has less than a 20 percent chance of meeting that goal.

Missing the target would be catastrophic. Warming beyond 2 degrees Celsius could trigger the inexorable collapse of the Greenland ice sheet. Coral reefs would virtually disappear. Natural disasters would escalate. Prolonged droughts and crop-destroying floods could put millions of people at risk of starvation.

Ultimately, some of the same officials who once hoped for a profound leap in Glasgow, who saw COP26 as a defining moment, by Saturday night described it not as an ending, but as a beginning.

“Glasgow ends today. But the real work begins now,” said Seve Paeniu, climate minister for the low-lying atoll nation of Tuvalu.

Saturday evening, the spectacle that had once carried so many hopes started to fade.

Workers began to break down pavilions that had showcased various countries, including the installation of polar bears wearing life jackets – a reminder from Tuvalu that rising seas threaten its existence.

Protesters who had chanted and banged drums, filled the streets and even once overtaken a plenary hall, had dispersed. The man outside in a Darth Vader costume, singing karaoke each morning and surrounded by signs about solar radiation, had left his post.

The site alongside the River Clyde, where delegates from every corner of the planet had come to try to save it, went from crowded to nearly deserted. A few remaining souls trudged down the empty hallways, past a banner that read, “We can do this if we act now.”

And nearby, a still-lit neon sign flashed its silent message:

“Hurry up please. It’s time.”

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