Climate Hype Might Be the Ticket to Decarbonization

The 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the third meeting of the parties under the Paris Agreement, is not going to save the world.

You would not know it from the headlines. The rhetoric of climate journalism can sometimes swell with catastrophic overtones, but accounts of COP26, which will come to a close today in Glasgow, Scotland, have reached a new level of engorgement. “Can the Glasgow climate change summit save the world?” asked The Hill. “The fate of the planet will be negotiated in Glasgow, Scotland,” Vox declared. The BBC called Glasgow “the last best hope to fight climate change.”

It isn’t—or, at least, it isn’t in the way that such coverage suggests. In the next day or so, countries will likely agree to a “Glasgow deal,” but it will not resolve the core challenges of climate change, nor will it launch a new era in international climate