COP25, Madrid’19: Too little, too late

Chile's Minister of Environment and COP25 president Carolina Schmidt (2R) and UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa (2L) attend the closing plenary session of the UN Climate Change Conference COP25 at the 'IFEMA - Feria de Madrid' exhibition centre, in Madrid, on December 15, 2019. - A UN climate summit in Madrid stumbled towards the finish line after marathon talks between countries exposed deeper divides than ever over how to enact humanity's plan to avert global warming disaster. - AFP pic

COP25, the 25th United Nations (UN) climate talks, in Madrid was a huge disappointment. As I understand it, the talks had two main goals: to seek new commitments for further drastic cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases beyond that promised in Paris‘15; and to agree on a set of regulations for new international carbon markets.

The theme of the meeting was: “Tiempo de actuar, ” i.e. time for action; its logo being a clock, showing a quarter to 12. Action? The meeting was anything but: it only managed a weak and watered-down commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions; while the regulations for new global carbon markets had to be deferred to COP26, Glasgow in November 2020.