“Wow what an amazing experience! What was COP like?!” For anyone I haven’t had the chance to talk to since returning, I’ll put my answer here. At some point, you can’t wait for a head of state to commit to net-zero or a United Nations pact to solve climate change. Although I am much more optimistic of international negotiations than the media coverage of COP tends to be, I still found little inspiration from the Presidents or Prime Ministers. However, the observers I met throughout my week at COP26 sparked this immense drive to continue dedicating my life’s work to the clean energy transition that will save our generation from the catastrophic impacts of human-induced climate change. I met some of the most amazing people from around the world, all contributing to this effort in their unique ways and in their own communities. My biggest takeaway from COP: the people of this world will continue to fight against climate change until they are no longer physically able to do so. The biggest contribution I can make is to continue doing the same thing in my own community.

Now going back to the point about the international negotiations and media portrayal. Reading the New York Times’s coverage of COP26 can make one really pessimistic about climate change negotiations. One of the extremely human aspects of COP is that most of the negotiations happen in the final hours (and usually extend past the deadline). After all the dust has settled on the official Glasgow Pact, the document accomplishes more than even I was expecting. I put together this table of some of the goals of COP and the outcomes achieved through the Glasgow Pact and announced by individual countries during the two weeks. 

Doing this exercise, made me realize that COP26 actually achieved more than I expected and more than I think the world expected. Even so, we should continue asking our world leaders to increase ambition and continuously integrate climate solutions into every aspect of governance.

Lastly, in the week since returning from COP I was asked to present my experience to the program office in the U.S. Department of Energy that I worked for this past summer. I realized over the course of preparing for this presentation that when a world leader promises to “do the work of fighting climate change”, what they really mean is to commit effort and resources via their government offices to make incremental and niche tweaks to the existing economy. The work of fighting climate action occurs in these program offices all across the U.S. government and all across the world. My former colleagues felt inspired by my commentary and found inspiration from what I was discussing. In these program offices, there is a tendency to feel like the work you are doing is small and not part of this big picture of climate action, but when you zoom out you realize it is the fundamental work of solving climate change. 

As I stated earlier, I truly believe the people of this world, not just the Presidents, will be the ones to impart the crucial changes in our fight against climate change.