The Greta Thunberg-led protesters and other activists who always considered the whole thing an exercise in greenwashing will insist that it produced nothing but hollow declarations meant to make jet-setting elites feel good about themselves.
The text features clear progress, such as stronger transparency in how countries deliver on their national emissions-reduction pledges and an expectation that countries quickly update those pledges to put them in line with keeping global warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.
That’s a breakthrough that, in theory, should help meet emissions targets by allowing countries that exceed theirs to sell credits to those falling short.
It was never realistic to expect an international gathering to firmly put emissions-reducing policies in place, since that hard work mostly had to be done at domestic levels.
For a country such as Canada, it was an upping of a previous target, from a 30 to a 40 per cent cut from 2005 levels by 2030.
More surprising progress came nearer the conference’s end in a co-operation declaration from the United States and China.
The jury is still out on how some of them – such as a pact by over 100 countries to end deforestation by 2030, which Indonesia’s government signed on to and then days later hedged on – will hold up.
Crucially, there was at least some movement – though not nearly enough – on bridging the gap between the developed and developing world in terms of investment in both mitigating climate change and adapting to its unavoidable impacts.
And while it’s easy to scoff at the somewhat inflated $130-trillion total in green financing announced in the first week by Mark Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero, desire to make a good showing here surely did accelerate the pace at which some private sector assets are being committed to non-emitting investments.
A good start would be by recognizing that the desire to show progress has resulted in a few too many of those mid-conference announcements of a group of countries making shared pledges, in a way that undermines their value.
If even delegates at the conference have trouble telling them apart, let alone anyone in the outside world, there is a risk of them being easily forgotten when everyone goes home.
But the UN still needs to consider how to level the power balance at these events, to give countries facing the worst of climate change’s consequences an equal voice.
Added ambition will still be needed, in coming years, from countries that have not yet made emissions-reductions in line with keeping global warming to a non-catastrophic level.
But at minimum, programs will need to increasingly focus on countries sharing lessons and supports, along with more specifically targeted international financing schemes.
That will depend, too, on what leaders and officials and executives do when they get home from Glasgow.