G-20 ministers stumble over coal, global warming targets

Bloomberg

Environment ministers from the Group of 20 nations were unable to reach full agreement on key climate goals, just 100 days before a critical international conference kicks off.
After marathon negotiations that ran through the night, the ministers couldn’t find common ground on phasing out coal or how much to limit global warming, Italian Ecological Transition Minister Roberto Cingolani said at a press conference in Naples.
The divisions among the G-20 nations bode badly for United Nations climate talks set to start on October 31 in Glasgow. Leaders and diplomats including US presidential climate envoy John Kerry have repeatedly stressed that the meeting, known as COP 26, may be the last chance to set international policies that would prevent the planet from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, which scientists say is key to staving off the worst impacts of climate change.
“The G-20 accounts for 80% of all global emissions,” Patricia Espinosa, head of the UN’s climate change secretariat, said during the meeting, which took place as dramatic weather events hit parts of the world from China to Germany. “There is no path to 1.5C without the G-20.”
Ending use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, was a major sticking point. Italy, which is hosting the G-20 meeting, pushed to include that goal within the official communique. However, a number of countries including India and Russia resisted, Cingolani said.

“It is frustrating that despite the progress made by some countries, there was no consensus in Naples to confine coal to history,” said Alok Sharma, the incoming COP26 president, following the meeting. The question over phasing out coal will now be kicked to the gathering of G-20 leaders in October, taking place in the days immediately before COP26 starts.
As the talks dragged on overnight, the US, Canada and Europe lobbied for including the goal of limiting warming to 1.5C. But other countries were unwilling to go beyond the 2015 Paris Agreement’s less ambitious target range. In the end, the text recognised that the impacts of climate change at 1.5C are much lower than at 2C.