GLASGOW, Scotland – The public pressure that helped spur more world action on global warming is due to be on full display outside the UN climate summit Saturday, when thousands of demonstrators are expected to march through the rainy grey streets of Glasgow to demand leaders move faster to cut fossil fuels that are wrecking the climate.
Police helicopters buzzed over Glasgow early Saturday as authorities prepared for a second day of protests by climate activists. Scots are accustomed to inclement weather and turnout for the march was expected to be strong despite stiff gusts and a drizzle that turned to cold rain.
Inside the more than half-mile-long (kilometer-long) conference venue, negotiators knuckled down for a seventh straight day of talks to finish draft agreements that can be passed to government ministers for political approval next week.
Among the issues being haggled over at the talks by almost 200 countries are a fresh commitment to the goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), getting countries to review their efforts more frequently in a way that would increase pressure for deeper cuts, and financial support for poor nations.
A Democratic and Republican delegation of US senators was scheduled to visit the summit on Saturday. Off-year Republican victories that have unsettled members of President Joe Biden´s Democratic Party gave the bipartisan visit more impact, AP reported.
Saturday´s march is drawing a range of participants and ages, after tens of thousands of young people in the Fridays for Future movement protested Friday outside the conference´s steel fences and turnstiles.
