The line of fire

Cop26, which begins in Glasgow on Sunday, may involve world leaders, cost billions of dollars, generate reams of technical jargon and be billed as the last chance to prevent calamitous global heating but, at its simplest, the climate conference is a debate about dialling up or dialling down risk.

Dialling up

1.1C

The world has heated up by about 1.1C since the Industrial Revolution. Even at this level, delegates no longer need to read scientific studies to understand how 200 years of emissions, exhaust fumes and tree burning have destabilised the climate. All they have to do is look out the window. The host city, Glasgow, has sweltered through its hottest summer on record. Globally, in the summer of 2021, there were record temperatures, fires and floods, killing hundreds in the north-western Americas, choking swathes of Siberia, inundating cities