Leader - Glasgow Glacier will be the measure of success

Delegates arrive in Scotland for the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. Photo: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire

On the first day of the summit yesterday there was the usual round of familiar warnings. COP26 president Alok Sharma said the window was closing in which to keep warming to within the 1.5C target.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the gathering would be the “world’s moment of truth”, while First Minister Nicola Sturgeon urged leaders to return home from Glasgow with a “message of hope”.

Setting out the “stark reality” of climate change as the conference began, UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa said: “We stand at a pivotal point in history.

“We either choose to achieve rapid and large-scale reductions of emissions to keep the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C – or we accept that humanity faces a bleak future on this planet.”

Yet without tangible successes from this fortnight, such pronouncements will ring as hollow as previous ones, amounting to plenty of sound and fury while signifying very little.

Or, as teenaged climate activist Greta Thunberg mockingly described global leaders’ previous promises at the Youth Climate Summit in September: “Blah, blah, blah.”

So far, the signs are not encouraging. No-shows from Chinese and Russian presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin do not augur well for their commitment to reducing their countries' vast carbon footprints. China alone is reponsible for more than a quarter of the world’s CO2 emissions.

And President Joe Biden’s 85-car motorcade through Rome to meet the Pope last week could suggest a discrepancy between words and action from the US leader over the environment.

A glacier in Antarctica has been formally named after the city hosting COP26. The Glasgow Glacier is thinning and flowing relatively fast into the Getz basin.

Its fate, generations from now, will ultimatately reflect the success or otherwise of the talks now taking place in the city after which it is named.