Cop27: was this the year climate progress unravelled?

The war in Ukraine has led to soaring energy prices, political enmity and instability. Can the meeting of global leaders re-focus the world's attention on the climate catastrophe?Last year Cop26 ended with a hard-won agreement and some optimism that global leaders were finally taking important steps - however small - to address the climate crisis. Since then the urgency of taking action has been driven home by a catalogue of extreme weather - from the UK suffering its hottest summer to Pakistan being engulfed in floods and the Horn of Africa being gripped by a terrible drought.Yet as Cop27 begins in Egypt on Sunday, the Guardian's environment correspondent Fiona Harvey tells Michael Safi, the world's attention appears to be anywhere but on the talks. The war in Ukraine has led to soaring energy prices, with global powers at loggerheads and a rush for new sources of fossil fuels - creating even more obstacles to consensus-building on reducing emissions. Continue reading...