There is widespread coverage of the join US-China declaration on climate change, announced at COP26 last night. The Financial Times says Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua described climate change as an “existential crisis”, announcing what it calls a “high-stakes move during the final days of the [COP26] summit”. The paper says: “The US-China joint statement sends a political signal to other nations that the world’s two biggest emitters will push for a strong final outcome at the COP, even as negotiators are bogged down in late-night wrangling in the last days of the two-week summit.” It says the statement “contained little in the way of new emissions commitments, other than China stating that it would start to address methane emissions…[n]everthelesss, it represents a detente”, adding: “The fine print of the joint statement also suggests the two sides have found agreement on some of the outstanding issues in the negotiations – such as setting five-year climate targets rather than 10-year ones.” The FT also reports: “Negotiators say China has shifted its position and is now supporting a key clause in the COP ‘cover text’, that urges countries to update their emission targets by the end of 2022”. Associated Press says the joint statement was announced in “back-to-back news conferences” at the COP26 summit in Glasgow. The New York Times notes that the US and China are “at odds on many issues”, calling the climate statement a “surprise deal” in which the countries said “they will both do more to cut fossil fuel pollution this decade”. It reports: “Some observers hoped the announcement might inject needed energy into lacklustre negotiations at this week’s Glasgow climate summit, although the terms weren’t particularly aggressive.” The paper says that Xie has been meeting his US counterpart John Kerry almost every day at COP26 and adds: “[A]ccording to American and Chinese officials, the agreement was the product of months of meetings between Xie and Kerry.” Although the joint statement does not specify when China will peak emissions, the NY Times reports: “Kerry on Wednesday said the two countries discussed the issue many times, and insisted that the new agreement pushed China in the direction of bending the curve of emissions downward soon.”

BBC News says the US-China deal signals boosted cooperation on climate over the next decade. It quotes EU climate chief Frans Timmermans calling the move “really encouraging” and saying “it certainly helps us here at COP to come to an agreement”. The broadcaster also quotes UN secretary general Antonio Guterres calling it “an important step in the right direction”. Climate Home News says the statement commits the countries to “accelerate emissions cuts this decade”. It reports: “Under the deal, both sides promised to act in this ‘decisive decade’ to reduce emissions and keep the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit temperature rise ‘well below 2C’ and pursue efforts for 1.5C ‘within reach’. They recognised that ‘there remains a significant gap’ between current national carbon-cutting pledges and policies and what is needed to achieve the Paris goals.” The Washington Post says the countries agreed to jointly “raise ambition in the 2020s” as well as “boost[ing] clean energy, combat[ing] deforestation and curb[ing] emissions of methane”. According to the Times, the joint statement “raises hope of a wider deal” at COP26. It reports: “The UK government hopes that the rapprochement will put pressure on other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, which have been seeking to limit the ambition of the final summit communiqué.” The Guardian says the joint statement “came as a surprise to the UK hosts”. The Sun reports: “China also doubled down on their earlier promise to ‘phase down coal consumption’ from 2026 and ensured they would ‘make the best efforts to accelerate this work’.” Regarding the impact on the COP26 cover decision, it reports: “A source close to the agreement talks said China and the US’ union had been helpful, but reiterated that all 197 nations must agree to sign off the deal.” Politico quotes Xie saying: “Cooperation is the only choice for both China and the United States.” It adds: “Kerry echoed that sentiment, even as he acknowledged the tensions between Washington and Beijing.” The Press Association, NBC News, Hill, i newspaper and Reuters all have the story.

Another BBC News reports a “cautious welcome” for the US-China statement from “activists and politicians”. For Bloomberg, columnist David Fickling writes under the headline: “Empty climate promises, made jointly, still mark progress.” He says: “What’s encouraging is not so much the modest goals of the three-page declaration, but the fact that there’s any cooperation at all.” In the Sydney Morning Herald, analysis from Nick O’Malley says the US-China statement “gives Glasgow summit momentum for hope”. He adds: “It doesn’t mean the work of COP26 is done, just that there are fewer roadblocks to achieving success now that the statement has been made.”

Many publications cover the drafts of the COP26 “cover decisions”, which were published early yesterday morning. BBC News says the draft “urges” countries to strengthen their climate goals by the end of 2022 and “says vulnerable nations must get more help to cope with the deadly impacts of global warming”. It reports that COP26 president Alok Sharma said yesterday he expected “near final texts” to be published overnight. [At time of writing, no new cover decision texts had emerged.] Climate Home News says the cover decision drafts call for phasing out coal and ending fossil fuel subsidies. It says that this language, if it survives negotiations, would be the first explicit reference to coal and fossil fuels in the UN climate process. The publication adds: “Strong pushback is expected from countries with big coal, oil and gas interests like Australia and Saudi Arabia.” (The Independent reports that Saudi Arabia has “denie[d] playing climate saboteur” at the summit while Reuters reports that top representatives of OPEC “defended a future role for fossil fuels” at COP26.). The Financial Times says the draft cover decisions are “likely to undergo significant revisions”. Bloomberg says the drafts “call for more action to tighten climate goals” and asks the UN to report every year on the combined impact of country pledges. The outlet quotes Greenpeace saying of the draft: “It’s a polite request that countries maybe possibly do more next year.” Bloomberg adds: “The draft also calls on countries to accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels.” Reuters says Germany wants the Glasgow decisions to “push major emitters to step up ambition”. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: “Australia and other countries are working to water down a key proposal from the Glasgow climate summit which would pressure the Morrison government to overturn its opposition to a more ambitious 2030 emissions-reductions target.” Thomson Reuters Foundation says climate-vulnerable nations “urged stronger commitments on finance to help them adapt to climate change impacts and repair the damage they are suffering, in response to an early draft”. The Guardian says the drafts have been criticised “for lack of financial help for vulnerable countries”. The Press Association, i newspaper, Hill, New Scientist, BusinessGreen and many others have the story. The i newspaper, Reuters, Press Association and the Independent have analysis of the text, while the Guardian “dissects the wording of the draft version of the document”. Reuters carries reactions to the drafts. [See the Twitter thread from Carbon Brief’s policy editor Simon Evans for a detailed rundown of the cover decision texts.]

Meanwhile, BBC News says “[h]orse trading [is] set to begin” over the COP26 outcome. The Press Association reports Sharma saying “we are fighting tooth and nail to make sure we have an ambitious outcome”. In analysis for the Conversation, Michael Jacobs of the University of Sheffield says the UK presidency “will not have made many friends with the text”. He says: “[T]he widespread consensus among delegates I have spoken to is that the draft they have produced is not sufficiently ‘balanced’ between the interests and positions of the various country groupings.” Jacobs argues the text is “weak” on finance, but adds: “There are several issues on which negotiations are continuing and the text has yet to reflect their progress.”

In other developments from COP26, many publications carry the comments of UK prime minister Boris Johnson. The Press Association reports: “Boris Johnson has appealed to other leaders not to sit on their hands as the world asks for action on climate change at the COP26 talks.” It quotes him saying that the summit is “not going to fix” climate change, but adding that it could agree “the first genuine road map for a solution to anthropogenic climate change that I can think of in my lifetime”. The New York Times says Johnson “pleaded with officials and negotiators on Wednesday to seize the opportunity to strike an ambitious agreement that would avert the worst effects of climate change”. It quotes him calling on countries and negotiators to “pull out all the stops”. BusinessGreen says Johnson asked world leaders: “Will you help us?” The Press Association says he urged leaders to “help negotiators in push for climate deal”. Reuters says Sharma “call[ed] for speedy work at COP26 so summit can end on Friday”.

The Financial Times covers five things to watch as COP26 enters its final days, including the Paris rulebook, Article 6 carbon markets, ambition towards 1.5C, the cover decision texts and when the summit will end. Another piece for the paper says the “clock [is] tick[ing]” for a deal on Article 6. The New York Times looks at “four major areas of contention” at COP26, namely speeding up emissions cuts, finance, loss and damage, and Article 6 of the Paris Agreement covering cooperation including international carbon markets. Meanwhile, Climate Home News says negotiators have struck a deal that “brings support for victims of climate disaster a step closer”. It says the Santiago Network on loss and damage “could be up and running in a year, but thorny issues of how to fund it and channel aid to frontline communities have yet to be decided”. BBC News reports that Iran has offered to ratify the Paris Agreement if sanctions against the country are lifted. It says Iran is one of the few countries yet to ratify the pact. A BBC News “Reality Check” looks at subsidies for fossil fuels and renewables. Reuters says the EU has called on other countries to give more finance for climate adaptation.

Separately, the Times says the UK “will today snub an initiative at COP26 led by Denmark and Costa Rica under which countries will agree to set an end date for exploring and extracting oil and gas”. It adds: “At least eight countries [not including the UK] are expected to join the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA) and commit to stop issuing exploration licences or take other initiatives to cut oil and gas production.” The i newspaper says Brazil has “backtrack[ed]” on a pledge to end deforestation by 2030, which it signed up to last week. It explains: “Signatories to the pledge committed to ‘working collectively to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030’. But earlier this week Brazilian senators gave a press conference at COP26 suggesting it would only work to tackle illegal deforestation.” BusinessGreen reports calls from campaigners for the COP26 decisions to “promise crack down on climate misinformation”. Finally, DeSmog reports: “Climate denial campaigner attempts to discredit COP26 with false diesel power claims.”

India is requesting $1tn in public climate finance over the decade to 2030 to implement its pledges, reports Bloomberg. It says: “India is asking for such a large sum because it’s also taking into account loss and damage, environment secretary Rameshwar Prasad Gupta said in an interview.” The outlet adds: “‘Let’s be clear,’ an unnamed delegate told the Hindustan Times, ‘India will not update its NDC [nationally determined contribution to the Paris Agreement] till there is clarity on climate finance.’” It continues: “India also pushed back on proposed language in the final Glasgow agreement that countries will ‘accelerate the phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels.’ Gupta said the nation will only move away from the dirtiest fossil fuel if it gets the financial support it’s asking for.”

Xie Zhenhua, China’s climate envoy, told the Guardian in a joint interview with a Chinese media outlet that the country has detailed and concrete plans for meeting its climate commitments. Xie is quoted saying that China is pursuing those plans vigorously, unlike some countries that are “paying lip service”. The newspaper says that it conducted “a rare and extensive interview” with Xie, who “implicitly chided the US president”. NPR airs a five-minute programme that asks: “What President Xi Jinping’s absence from COP26 indicates for China’s climate pledges?” CBC News reports that “China’s refusal to sign onto key pledges at UN summit doesn’t mean it’s a climate laggard”, according to analysts. According to Bloomberg, “China signalled it’s unlikely to join a global pledge to cut methane emissions, and said it’s already doing enough to reduce greenhouse gases”. The outlet quotes Wang Yi – who is described as “a senior Chinese negotiator at COP26” – as saying, “the US keeps telling people to join it for new pledges but without giving solutions about how to” tackle methane.

In China’s state media, CGTN – the English arm of China’s state broadcaster CCTV – reports that “Xie outlined the key concerns and areas of contention among countries at the halfway point of the meeting in Glasgow” during a “joint interview” with China Media Group (CMG) and the Guardian. The article says: “[Xie] said China’s position on the 1.5C global warming target set by the Paris Agreement is clear, and bickering over its wording would only cause delays.” CGTN also runs an interview with Laurence Tubiana, a key architect of the Paris Agreement and now head of the European Climate Foundation (which funds Carbon Brief). Tubiana is quoted as saying: “When you look at…the Chinese plans on energy, on transport, on building, you see the direction – and the direction is the right one.” Xinhua – the state news agency – has an interview with “British author and political commentator” ​​Carlos Martinez, who “criticised some Western countries’ performance on climate change, such as the Us”. Martinez praised China’s climate action in a separate Xinhua video, saying that the country has made “quite remarkable progress”.

Elsewhere, the South China Morning Post says that eastern China’s Zhejiang province “announced rationing would end on Monday, but said cities in the province must continue to watch consumption and reduce energy use, while remaining vigilant about further power cuts in the future”. The Diplomat speaks to Judith Shapiro – director of the Master’s in Natural Resources and Sustainable Development for the School of International Service at American University – about her views on “China’s role at COP26, the significance of China’s blackouts induced by coal shortages since September, and future directions China’s climate policy might take”.

A Bloomberg editorial notes that while “COP26 in Glasgow has made real progress…it has been disappointing”. It says that “rich-country governments came to the conference knowing they’d broken a crucial promise they made more than a decade ago” to “mobilise $100bn a year in public and private finance to help emerging economies fight climate change”. Poor countries, it notes, “have three distinct and exceptionally strong claims on support”. These are that “they didn’t cause global warming…they will suffer disproportionately” and “they lack the resources”. It points out that “far too much (more than 70% of total public climate finance in 2019) is given as loans, not grants”. It concludes: “Putting this right without further delay is an ethical imperative and a matter of compelling mutual interest”.

Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio, chairman of Moray Biosciences and a co-leader of the KAA Initiative, has a piece in the Financial Times calling for “a revolution” in the way conservation of the Amazon basin is managed. “So far, well-intentioned public and private sector and civil society organisations have focused on tried-and-tested policies aimed at eliminating illegal deforestation and promoting economic and social development. But these are not enough by themselves,” he writes. Instead, he says a combination of approaches is needed, including a “well-resourced undertaking” equivalent to the US “Marshall Plan” that pumped billions of dollars of aid into Europe to help rebuild following the second world war. This would include mass reforestation, which he argues could be a significant source of employment for people living in the Amazon region. Castilla-Rubio also says there is a need for the equivalent of an Apollo programme to build a new “bio-economy” in the region that makes use of its vast biological resources by way of a “combination of autonomous robotic systems and computational and synthetic biology”. He argues that the Amazon’s “bio-assets” could help drive an “alternative model of economic development”, instead of being destroyed to make way for cattle ranching. “We need more than the easy net-zero commitments from governments and businesses alike that are likely to emerge from the COP26 summit in Glasgow,” he concludes.

Using climate model simulations and palaeoclimate data, a team of researchers has produced the first “proxy-constrained, full-field reanalysis of surface temperature change” spanning the past 24,000 years. The results indicate that, “in contrast with previous proxy-based reconstructions…global mean temperature has slightly but steadily warmed, by ~0.5C, since the early Holocene (around 9,000 years ago)”, the authors say. They add: “When compared with recent temperature changes, our reanalysis indicates that both the rate and magnitude of modern warming are unusual relative to the changes of the past 24,000 years.” An accompanying News & Views article says the study is “a triumph” and “sets a new standard for the development of large-scale temperature reconstructions of the geological past”. (For more on proxy data, see Carbon Brief’s explainer.)