COP26: A complete walkout, an uncompleted draft, and more highlights from Day 12

Glasgow, UK - The deadline for the end of the COP26 climate summit came and went, so now it's into overtime for negotiators trying to seal the deal on climate action. Activists are saying there is nothing ambitious from the summit and got their protest on to make demands.

Protesters move through the restricted Blue Zone area of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.
Protesters move through the restricted Blue Zone area of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.  © IMAGO / ZUMA Press

Members of climate justice and civil society groups numbering in the thousands staged a walkout on the official final day of COP26 to protest the lack of ambitious agreements on fighting climate change.

They also delivered 10 concrete demands in their People's COP26 Decision letter to the climate summit before leaving the venue.

These include kicking fossil fuel companies out of UN climate conferences, making pledges and agreements binding, and finally paying the $100 billion per year promised in 2015 to poorer countries to transition sustainably to green energy.

As they walked out, negotiators still hadn't wrapped up talks, pushing the summit into an overtime expected to wrap up as late as Sunday night.

A range of countries called for stronger action on phasing out fossil fuels, but the main "cover decision", which is the collection of agreements to come out of COP26, uses weak and ambiguous phrasing that puts the brakes on a phase-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels.

Kenya's representative said 1.5C was "not just a statistic, it is a matter of life and death," while US climate envoy John Kerry said the world cannot abandon a target to limit global warming to 1.5C as he described spending money on fossil fuel subsidies as "insanity." Nevertheless, the cover decision only "requests" that countries kindly stop wasting money on "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies.

COP26 is a frustrating disappointment so far, but if talks lead to an ambitious cover decision, stopping climate change might still happen in time.

Cover photo: IMAGO / ZUMA Press

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