In the many interviews he has given, his eloquent and strong political speech on ecology is shocking because it comes from the mouth of a 12 year old child. Francisco Vera is a Colombian activist and founder of the environmental movement Guardianes por la Vida (Guards of Life). A new voice representing future generations. With thousands of followers on social networks and active in several mobilisations, he has now taken a step further by attending his first UN Climate Summit, the COP26 in Glasgow.

A total of 31 countries and 11 major automobile companies have committed this Wednesday, in the framework of the COP26 climate summit, to sell only zero-emission cars by 2035 (2040 in the case of developing countries). The United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada, Austria and India are among the signatories, but major car manufacturers such as the United States, Germany, France and Spain are missing. The latter three, however, are awaiting the negotiation of a proposal from the European Commission that goes in exactly the same direction and that if successful would also establish a ban on the sale of polluting cars throughout the EU in 2035.

The recovery from the covid-19 pandemic is once again driving up greenhouse gas emissions. The drop in CO₂ left by lockdown will remain a mere jolt, because the post-pandemic economic recovery plans are back on fossil fuels and moving us away from the change that science is calling for. The emissions rebound, in fact, puts the world on track to exceed the 1.5°C limit in 11 years. This is according to the latest analysis of global CO₂ emissions by the Global Carbon Project, presented on Thursday at the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow.

Mariel Vilella is global strategy director of Zero Waste Europe (ZWE), the network of communities, organisations and local leaders calling for the elimination of waste in society. ZWE was founded in 2014 as the European branch of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA).

If there is somewhere close where we can already see the effects of the climate crisis it is the Ebro delta. It is like watching the sea level rise at an accelerated rate, not because the water is rising more than in other coastal areas, but because, in parallel, the Delta is sinking (due to the phenomenon known as subsidence) and the coastline is retreating due to the lack of sediments that reach it. "In the Delta we are experiencing what our beaches will suffer in 2050 or 2070, and this makes it an excellent natural laboratory in which to test solutions," explains UPC professor and director of the Maritime Engineering Laboratory, Agustín Sánchez-Arcilla.

The G-20 meeting held in Rome prior to Glasgow's Climate Summit has left some important images that reflect the moment of instability that the post-pandemic world is living. On the one hand, the most notable were the physical absences of both Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, who took part and participated virtually but who were, in fact, at the centre of some of the conflicts, political but mainly economic, that dominated this summit.

We are a year late and six years behind schedule. Since the Paris Agreement was reached in 2015, the world has still not managed to set a course towards the goals set out in that historic pact: to keep global warming below 2ºC, at least, and ideally below 1.5ºC. The UN climate summit that kicks off this Sunday in Glasgow, COP26, is a historic new opportunity to achieve this. A key meeting that should lay the foundations for the radical economic and energy transformation that scientists are calling for before 2030. But the 190 countries that signed the agreement have their homework to do and their credibility is being called into question.

The Glasgow Climate Summit, COP26, is starting and until the 12th experts, politicians and activists will compete to explain who is the most aware and responsible in the fight against global warming. There will again be promises, which will be labelled as insufficient and which, as has happened so far, will probably not be fulfilled. Parole, parole, as the song goes.