The recently concluded COP 26 summit in Glasgow was supposed to shine an international spotlight on global warming and charge up the next stage of commitments from countries to reduce carbon emissions. There were only two problems. One: it’s unclear how much progress was actually made. The conference did end with a new consensus about the need for action, and some analysts called that a substantial achievement. But the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg accused the conference of consisting of a lot of “blah, blah, blah.” Two: nowadays, it’s hard to focus on the fact that the world is on fire when global warming is competing for our attention with immediate problems like the worldwide pandemic, economic instability, and the fact that democracy is weakening around the world, and may not have long to go in the US.
So we wanted to take a look at where we really are on climate, COP 26, and the US role in it, and to do that we have one of the very best environmental leaders in the United States. Elizabeth Gore is Senior Vice President for Political Affairs at Environmental Defense Fund. She served as a US Senate Legislative director and chief of staff for 18 years, and 6 years in the House of Representatives before that. We talk climate, progress, whether Congress really is a mess, and why she was invited to be the commencement speaker at UMASS.
