COP26 in Glasgow has ended in the manner largely predicted at the outset: with an ambiguously worded ‘Glasgow Pact’ containing little of substance. Being a pact and not a treaty it avoids any need for ratification by the US Senate which would end in a rejection humiliating for President Biden (the Senate requires a two-thirds for ratification of a treaty and had voted 95-0 in a resolution indicating it would not ratify a treaty, like Kyoto, unless it imposed binding commitments on developing countries).

The International Energy Agency considered that the Nationally Determined Contributions agreed would probably limit post-industrial revolution increases...