2021 Notebook: Climate change, weather crises and what next

THE BACKGROUND: Melting glaciers, deadly floods in Germany, record high summer temperatures in generally mild Oregon, more urgent pleas for help from Pacific island nations. With growing urgency, the effects of climate change were felt around the world in 2021.

A United Nations climate conference in Glascow, Scotland, in November — called COP26 — ended with almost 200 nations agreeing to a compromise aimed at keeping a key global warming target alive, but which contained a last-minute change that watered down language about phasing out coal.

While many nations complained the deal did not go far or fast enough, they said it was better than nothing and provided incremental progress.

Here, some Associated Press journalists involved in the coverage reflect on the story and their own experiences.

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SETH BORENSTEIN, science writer, Washington, D.C.:

COP26 leaves us sort of where we were before. There’s a little bit more being done to try to control emissions, a lot more pledges to do stuff. But a lot of these pledges are still based very much in the future. These net-zero by 2050, 2060 pledges — these are pledges made by leaders who won’t be alive when their pledges become due.

This has also been an interesting year where you had a major climate report in August. But more than anything, it’s yet another year where climate change keeps popping up in extreme weather all over the world. But this year, perhaps a little bit more in the Western, richer countries than in the past: in Germany, in Belgium, horrible flooding in Tennessee, places like that. And not to mention the wildfires and 116-degree (47 Celsius) heat in Portland, Oregon. I mean, if you had to choose one weird thing, the Pacific Northwest is known for mildness, but there are records and then there are records,...