When it comes to Greta Thunberg, summit meetings on climate protection don't do much.

“No change comes from there,” she said, “on the sidelines” of the World Climate Conference, namely outside the venue in Glasgow, where around 120 heads of state and government met on Monday and Tuesday.

The participants “in there” only pretended to care about the welfare of the younger generations or that of the countries directly affected by climate change.

In reality, however, they showed no leadership in the fight against global warming.

Rather, this should come from the population, said the eighteen-year-old and pointed to the mass of her supporters on Glasgow's streets: “This is what leadership looks like!”

Christian Geinitz

Business correspondent in Berlin

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It is fair to ask what the huge fortnightly event in Glasgow, of which the Summit is only a small part, actually brings. Even sustainability has to be questioned when 25,000 participants arrive, spend the night, consume energy and consume snacks that are wrapped in plastic film. Huge tents are filled with hot air here, in the hotels and guest houses it pulls through leaky windows in the cold, wet Scottish autumn. Hundreds of police officers - some of them brought from Wales - guard the scene in large SUVs, block roads, cause traffic jams and resentment.

Every participant completes a rapid corona test once a day, theoretically 350,000 cotton swabs, test tubes, result cassettes, all of them are disposable.

In terms of content, too, some governments could certainly have provided more.

The Federal Government criticized the People's Republic of China on Tuesday with unusual sharpness.

"The role of China is disappointing," said Environment State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth in Glasgow.

It is "urgently necessary" to move the country to more ambitious climate protection goals.

Too little engagement in Beijing

Beijing announced shortly before the conference that it wanted to become carbon neutral by 2060. That was important and an "icebreaker" for other emerging countries, said Flasbarth. "But now you have to see that it has been overtaken by a number of others." The G20, of which China is a member, wants to achieve the goal by the middle of the century, Germany by 2045.

Flasbarth also criticized the fact that China had not made any commitments to reduce other greenhouse gases such as methane.

That could "not be the last word from the largest emitter in the world".

French President Emmanuel Macron and American security advisor Jake Sullivan had previously accused Beijing of insufficient engagement.

Macron said China and other countries were doing too little to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees from the pre-industrial era by the end of the century.

This is the aim of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement as the maximum target; meanwhile, the limit is seen as a general guideline.

India is finally committed

Despite such setbacks, the COP26, as the conference is officially called, is not completely lost for climate protection, and the summit at the beginning was more than just the "blablabla" that Thunberg and, most recently, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had feared. This is how India and Russia moved, as Flasbarth recognized. Moscow initially aimed to become climate neutral by 2060, but has now switched to 2050. Flasbarth spoke of a "very strong statement", since Russia has huge fossil deposits.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced new national targets at the climate conference on Monday evening.

The country is not aiming for greenhouse gas neutrality until 2070, ten years later than China.

So far, however, it had completely rejected such stipulations, since the industrialized countries in particular were responsible for global warming - also historically - and India had the right to catch up in prosperity.

The fact that India is now proclaiming its own climate neutrality is "enormous," said Flasbarth.

2070 is actually considered too late for the third largest emitter, but the signal and direction are being appreciated in the West.

Flasbarth also expects from New Delhi: "Absolutely sure: that is not the last word."

"Emergency mode" as the last measure

There was also praise for the progress from academia. "With India, all of the major emitters are now committed to net zero emissions, which is exactly the critical mass that we need," says climate researcher Niklas Höhne from the New Climate Institute. "This makes it clear that even giant consumers like China or India are getting out of coal, oil and gas."

However, the time is still too late. Even with new commitments, it will not be possible to halve global greenhouse gas emissions to 25 gigatons by 2030; there remains a gap of at least 70 percent. In Glasgow there must therefore be so-called sectoral efforts in addition to the general reduction, as was the case on Tuesday with the agreement to reduce methane. In order to still achieve the climate goals, the world must switch to an "emergency mode", demanded Höhne. This could include speed limits or the end of short-haul flights, as well as huge investments in renewable energies: "The Corona crisis has shown that the world works in an emergency mode and that enough money can be mobilized."

Christoph Bals, Managing Director of Germanwatch, also believes that the summit has set important signals that climate protection is not yet lost.

"Practically all governments have now logged in to the zero emissions target, they will not come back." A tangible result from "Glasgow" is also that for the first time four industrialized countries, including Germany, an emerging country in terms of phasing out coal and thus achieving higher national reduction targets (NDC ) wanted to help, namely South Africa.

"This is a prime example of the climate cooperation that we urgently need now," Bals is convinced.