Call for world leaders to ‘banish ghosts of past’ with Cop26 climate vows

Conference president, Alok Sharma, says countries must agree on how to tackle crisis

Alok Sharma, the president of the Cop26 climate summit, has called on global leaders to banish ghosts of the past" and step up with new pledges to lower emissions as the world is running out of time to keep warming below 1.5C.

As leaders prepared to fly in for the conference in Glasgow, Sharma could not say with certainty that the two-week event would end with a deal to keep that prospect alive. As host nation, the UK is responsible for overseeing the negotiations and trying to extract meaningful pledges from the representatives of almost 200 countries in attendance.