The cover story: Meet the people working to accomplish the COP26 agenda

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The Cover Story Meet the People Working to Accomplish the COP26 Agenda By Elijah Wolfson Editorial Director of Health, Science & Climate Change Global leaders have been talking about taking action on greenhouse gas emissions since I was about three years old, but efforts have lagged, while our speed towards the point of no return has accelerated. There is plenty to suggest that the upcoming United Nations COP26 meetings in Glasgow, Scotland, will be more of the same: posturing and ambivalence from those in the corridors of power and desperate pleas for real change from those outside. Yet there is, perhaps more than ever, a shared understanding of the forbidding reality we face. The past 12 months have seen unprecedented droughts, fires, floods and storms; a resolute shift in investor priorities toward a carbon-free future; and a new focus on climate change in the policy discussions of the world's largest economies—indeed, climate really has become everything. COP26 will be an attempt to channel the experience of the past few years into multilateral action. That means complex geopolitical consternation will need to be sidelined, or it could scuttle the talks in significant ways, especially among major superpowers—and major emitters—like China, Russia, and the U.S. For this week's special climate package, Justin Worland profiles John Kerry in his late-career act as Joe Biden's climate czar. His story makes it clear: successful climate diplomacy between the global giants is an existential matter for those inside the borders of those countries, and beyond. Solving the climate crisis will also entail technological innovation—such as the lab-grown beef that Aryn Baker discusses in her feature on Mosa Meats, or the fully electric Ford pickup truck engineered by Linda Zhang, who appears on one of our covers this week. It will be essential for the world's most vulnerable populations to have a seat at the table—after all, as Amy Gunia reports from Australia, the insight of Indigenous communities that have lived in harmony with the land for generations is invaluable at this tenuous moment. And it will require listening to the voices of young activists who have made climate consciousness the core of their efforts. In this issue, we've excerpted an essay from an upcoming book written by one such climate champion, Vanessa Nakate, the 24-year-old Ugandan activist, on how global discussions on the climate crisis often ignore the continent most affected by it. All of these elements will be at play in Glasgow in the coming weeks. There is some good news: progress has been made in recent years, and the current trajectory of carbon emissions and their resulting impact on global warming is not as bad as the worst outcomes of previous projections. But the world is still far off track to achieve the emissions reductions goals of the Paris Accords—which means the stakes of these meetings could not be higher. P.S.: TIME journalists will be in Glasgow, Scotland, throughout the course of the meetings—if you'd like to stay up to date with the latest news and analysis, and read exclusive interviews and dispatches from the ground, we'll be sending a daily version of our climate newsletter every afternoon from Oct. 31 to Nov. 13. To sign up, visit time.com/climate-newsletter. Read the Story » Share the cover story

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