In the quest for civic success stories, the very last place to look might appear to be climate news. The best efforts of the United Nations Climate Change Conference will not be enough to avert the worst effects of warming, scientists say.
Little wonder youth climate activist Greta Thunberg has dismissed the COP26 global summit in Glasgow as "a green wash festival" and "a failure." But the derision of Thunberg and thousands of other young COP26 protesters is precisely what makes the summit a potential turning point. Shifting politics and coalitions, new players and new narratives all cut against the inevitable parade of stories predicting climate doom.
Here are a few pieces of good climate news worth noting, for the sake of building the political will to press ahead with the real solutions that remain within reach. As former President Barack Obama cautioned at the summit, even as he acknowledged that the future can look bleak, "cynicism is the recourse of cowards. We can't afford hopelessness."
The politics of hope
Scientists have been the first to throw cold water on the lofty pledges made in Glasgow, pointing out that world leaders' commitments to zero out emissions are not ambitious or immediate enough to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. That is the target considered essential to avoid disastrous sea-level rise, heat waves and ecosystem collapse.
Yet even scientists have derived hope from changing climate politics. At the first U.N. climate summit in 1995, The Washington Post noted, Green parties were written off as fringe activists. Green parties in Europe are now mainstream, having won about 10 percent of seats in the European Parliament's most recent elections. In the United States, 60 percent of people now call climate change a major threat, a near-20-point shift since 2013.
Today, as the world reels from unrelenting natural disasters, "no one is questioning the science, no one is questioning that the crisis is happening," Annika Hedberg, who leads sustainability research at the European Policy Center, told The Post. "The debate is around what can be done and at what speed. This is a positive thing — we're not questioning the science but the measures."
Youth power
Youth climate activists' speeches were "the best part"of the COP26 summit, according to the sustainability news site Green Matters, and arguably the most important. Youth activists who made their voices heard in Glasgow included Mikaela Loach, a U.K.-based activist who said climate and justice cannot be separated, Vanessa Nakate, who described how decreased rainfall has devastated crops in her native Uganda, and Kenya-based Elizabeth Wathuti, who warned that Africa's deadly heat waves, wildfires and floods are just beginning.
All three dramatized their stories with emotional appeals, a tactic that legendary conservationist Jane Goodall calls crucial to environmental activism. "Being angry and pointing fingers, you won't get anywhere," Goodall has said. "You just have to reach people's hearts. And the best way I know is to tell stories. My job now is to try and help people understand every one of us makes a difference. And cumulatively, wise choices in how we act each day can begin to change the world."
A commanding coalition
Young people may have the most at stake in the climate debate — the average 6 year old will live through triple the number of climate disasters as their grandparents, a recent study found — but they were hardly the only ones protesting in Glasgow. Indeed, the climate movement is becoming a political force building coalitions across causes from economic inequity to civil rights.
The estimated 100,000 protesters who gathered in Glasgow were joined by activists in Paris, London, and some 200 other locations around the world. Among the most visible and vocal were youth activists with "Fridays for Future," the international movement built around school walkouts launched by Thunberg when she was just 15. But now Thunberg is 18, and she and her fellow students are poised to win fresh influence as adult voters and soon-to-be influence leaders.
And as the climate movement comes of age, it is becoming something of an umbrella campaign for a broad array of progressive causes. Activists in Glasgow included Black rural residents in Brazil concerned about how mining is affecting indigenous communities, vegan activists and social justice advocates opposed to police brutality.
A potent partnership may be emerging between climate activists and labor organizers, who have gained new leverage in this season of strikes and wage demands. Stuart Graham, a Glasgow trade union official and one of the protest organizers, told The New York Times that his top concerns include improving the city's housing stock and boosting free public transportation. "It's critical that we have a civil society with a powerful voice to hold these leaders to account," Graham said.
The shared interests of environmental and labor activists may hold the key to whether global leaders step up the pace on climate action in time to avert disaster. Too often, environmental debates have descended into fights over jobs versus conservation. Obama urged protesters in Glasgow to "stay angry," but also to "build the broad-based coalitions necessary for bold action." The Glasgow protests, in a final bit of good news, hint at the potential to bridge the longstanding worker-environmentalist divide.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks with U.S. President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on May 27, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Trump met with his Cabinet days after saying a peace deal with Iran was“ largely negotiated” amid expectations around the re-opening the Strait of Hormuz.
The worst deal in the history of deals
As a former Republican, sometimes it’s fun to look back on the things we — I was part of a “we” at one time — criticized Democrats for, and not all that long ago.
Remember, if you will, when Republicans condemned former President Bill Clinton for pardoning his brother and his corrupt donor friend Marc Rich?
Or, remember when Republicans wagged their fingers at former President Barack Obama’s golf outings? Or his executive orders? Or his Syrian “red line”?
Or all the times Republicans went after former President Joe Biden’s gaffes?
While those criticisms may have been justified at the time, they look patently ridiculous next to our current president’s cartoonish and downright dangerous offenses.
Offenses like pardoning Jan. 6 insurrectionists — nearly 100 of whom have gone on to be arrested for, charged with, or convicted of crimes separate from the events of that day.
Or wreaking havoc on the global economy by instituting reckless tariffs on friends, neighbors, and enemies alike?
Or taking a proverbial sledge hammer to countless government agencies that have put every American in danger, whether on airplanes, in hospitals, at job sites, or in natural disasters.
That’s just a few, but nothing looks worse next to his predecessors than Donald Trump’s supposed Iran deal, at least as it’s outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding, the details of which Trump was loath to share.
And for good reason — they are shockingly bad and humiliating for the U.S.
I remember Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA from 2015 very well. I, along with many Republicans as well as a cadre of foreign policy experts, criticized that deal for its obvious and problematic concessions to a very bad actor who we’ve long known could not be trusted. But trust was what we gave the Iranian regime, as well as sudden access to a boatload of cash — $100 billion, to be exact.
All of Obama’s provisions were temporary, which would allow Iran to restart enriching uranium upon their sunset; the deal didn’t address Iran’s ballistic missiles, or its funding of terrorist proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas; the supposed “anytime, anywhere” inspections came with a 24-day delay, if Iran so chose, giving them ample time to hide any suspect materials; and it didn’t require any congressional authority.
In short, I’d argue it wasn’t a great deal. But as bad as it was, it looks like the Magna Carta next to Trump’s.
Trump’s deal would give Iran immediate sanction relief and access to $300 billion, presumably to use to fund terror proxies; it doesn’t secure any upfront limits on uranium enrichment or missile development; it allows Iran to charge for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz in the future; and it calls for Israel to stop its attacks on Hezbollah, another win for Iran.
Neither Americans nor the Middle East are safer than we were 100-plus days ago when Trump decided to pursue this folly. And in fact, our economy is weaker for it. But Iran is unquestionably stronger and more emboldened.
They’ve seen Trump’s weakness, unseriousness, and frighteningly limited appreciation for history. They’ve seen him retreat on most of his core threats to the regime, from bombing their cultural sites to ending a civilization overnight. And they’ve taken notice as he’s abandoned the promises that were supposedly central to his justification for war in the first place — regime change, liberating the Iranian people, and removing Iran’s nuclear materials.
What a waste of blood and treasure, not to mention American might and power, only so that our enemies can watch us limp desperately toward a conclusion that’s being described — by the right — as “unthinkable,” “appeasement,” and “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.