CHRISTIANA FIGUERES

The inventors were honored with $1.2 million in prize money to boost their work.

Things can look pretty bleak at international climate talks in Egypt

Things can look pretty bleak at international climate talks in Egypt.

Women are leading negotiations about the thorniest topic in the United Nations climate talks in Egypt

Women are leading negotiations about the thorniest topic in the United Nations climate talks in Egypt.

Scientists say climate change is bad, and getting worse, but it is not game over for planet Earth or humanity.

That’s what worked to make the historic 2015 Paris climate deal a success, former U.N. climate secretary Christiana Figueres told The Associated Press. “For heads of state, it is actually a much better use of their strategic thinking,” Figueres said. Xi Jinping, president of top carbon polluting nation China, and Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t be in Glasgow. More troublesome are several small nations from the Pacific islands that couldn’t make it because of COVID-19 restrictions and logistics. The Biden administration has tried hard to temper expectations that two weeks of climate talks will produce major breakthroughs on cutting climate-damaging emissions.

World leaders are turning up the heat and resorting to end-of-the-world rhetoric in an attempt to bring new urgency to sputtering international climate negotiations.

The woman who engineered the Paris agreement six years ago doesn’t expect the United Nations climate conference that just started in Glasgow to end with the same kind of big landmark.

President Joe Biden takes center stage in a two-day climate summit highlighting America's return to the fight to curb global warming.

President Joe Biden takes center stage in a two-day climate summit highlighting America's return to the fight to curb global warming.

President Joe Biden is being forced to go virtual for many of his leader-to-leader talks during the coronavirus pandemic, and the resulting Zoom meetings just aren't a natural fit for the back-slapping politician.

China and the United States both say they are intent on retooling their economies to burn less climate-wrecking coal, oil and gas. But tensions between them threaten their ultimate success (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)WASHINGTON – The world’s hopes for curbing climate change hinge on action by two giant nations whose relations are deteriorating: China and the United States. New details of how quickly China plans to reduce carbon emissions will be revealed Friday when Beijing releases its next Five Year Plan. And in April, President Joe Biden is expected to announce the United States' own new targets for emissions cuts. AdThe U.S. and China both have appointed veteran envoys as their global climate negotiators, John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua.

A United Nations report released on Friday, Feb. 26, 2021, finds the countries of the world are not promising to do enough carbon-cutting to keep global warming from hitting dangerous levels. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)The newest pledges by countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions are falling far short of what's needed to limit global warming to what the Paris climate accord seeks, a new United Nations report finds. Most countries — especially top carbon polluters China, United States and India — missed the Dec. 31 deadline for submitting official emission-cutting targets for November’s climate negotiations in Scotland. Fewer than half of the world’s countries, accounting for 30% of the world’s carbon emissions, submitted targets by the deadline. At least 10 countries that submitted goals last year did not provide tougher goals, Hare said.

(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)World leaders welcomed the United States' official return to the Paris climate accord Friday, but politically trickier steps lie just ahead for President Joe Biden, including setting a tough national target in coming months for cutting damaging fossil fuel emissions. Officially, the United States was only out of the worldwide global climate pact for 107 days. It’s the political symbolism that the largest economy refuses to see the opportunity of addressing climate change.” said Christiana Figueres, the former United Nations climate chief. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate energy panel, has criticized Biden for rejoining the Paris accord, tweeting: “Returning to the Paris climate agreement will raise Americans’ energy costs and won’t solve climate change. The Biden administration will set unworkable targets for the United States while China and Russia can continue with business as usual."

A United Nations report released on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021 says humans are making Earth a broken and increasingly unlivable planet through climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)Humans are making Earth a broken and increasingly unlivable planet through climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. So the world must make dramatic changes to society, economics and daily life, a new United Nations report says. And many of the solutions, such as eliminating fossil fuel use, combat multiple problems including climate change and pollution, she said. The report also tells nations to value nature in addition to the gross domestic product when calculating how an economy is doing.

Five years after a historic climate deal in Paris, world leaders are again meeting to increase their efforts to fight global warming. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)The forecast for global warming is looking a little less bleak in the long term, but not so rosy in the short term. With numerous countries pledging to clean up their act and projected temperature rises now smaller than they once were, scientists and diplomats say the outlook for mid-to-late century is not as gloomy as it was when the historic 2015 Paris climate accord was signed. On Saturday, exactly five years after the Paris climate agreement was struck, world leaders will gather virtually to both celebrate progress and chart the next steps. More than 100 countries — and even more companies, states and cities — have pledged to achieve net zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century.

Christiana Figueres, the U.N.'s head of global climate negotiations, says reaching a deal to reduce carbon emissions is finally within reach because it's in every country's economic interests to do so. She spoke with CBS News about how the U.S. could benefit from leading the way.