Into the future
Mount Holyoke instructor contemplates climate commitments that came out of COP26, the annual global conference on climate change.
This year’s international climate conference in Glasgow, known as COP26, concluded with world leaders committing to significant steps to keep global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius. Among the pledges they made were promises to end deforestation, phase-out coal dependence, stop fossil fuel subsidies and to increase renewable energy production.
WhoWhatWhy, a global news organization, interviewed Robert Darrow, visiting instructor in politics, about the conference. Darrow noted that advancements in technology make clean energy a particularly powerful weapon in the fight against climate change.
“Clean energy technologies, particularly wind and solar and battery technologies, have advanced substantially over the last 10 or 20 years, and it really is a different economic investment picture today than it was even five years ago,” he said.
Still, enforcement challenges and global skepticism aimed at the United States makes the effects of the promises hard to predict.
Read about Mount Holyoke’s commitment to environmental sustainability.