By SETH BORENSTEIN and FRANK JORDANS

More than one world leader says humanity’s future, even survival, hangs in the balance when international officials meet in Scotland to try to accelerate efforts to curb climate change. Temperatures, tempers and hyperbole have all ratcheted up ahead of the United Nations summit.

And the risk of failure looms large for all participants at the 26th U.N. Climate Change Conference, known as COP26.

Six years ago, nearly 200 countries agreed to individualized plans to fight global warming in the historic 2015 Paris climate agreement. Now leaders will converge in Glasgow for two weeks starting Sunday to take the next step dictated by that pact: Do more and do it faster.

It’s not easy. Except for a slight drop because of the pandemic, carbon pollution from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is increasing, not falling.

Between now and 2030, the world will spew up to 28 billion metric tons (31 billion U.S. tons) of greenhouse gases beyond the amount that would keep the planet at or below the most stringent limit set in Paris, the United Nations calculated this week.

“Everything is at stake if the leaders do not take climate action,” young Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate said. “We cannot eat coal. We cannot drink oil, and we cannot breathe so-called natural gas.”

Her words were echoed by a man tasked with steering one of the world’s richest economic blocs through the climate transition.

“We are fighting for the survival of humanity,” European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said. “Climate change and the threatening ecocide are the biggest threats humanity faces.”

Climate change is fueling heat waves, flooding, drought and nastier tropical cyclones. Extreme weather also costs the globe about $320 billion a year in economic losses, according to risk modeling firm AIR Worldwide. And people die.

“The unhealthy choices that are killing our planet are killing our people as well,” said Dr. Maria Neira, director of public health and environment at the World Health Organization.

Humanity and the Earth won’t quite go off a cliff because of global warming, scientists say. But what happens in Glasgow will either steer the world away from the most catastrophic scenarios or send it careening down a dirt road with tight curves and peril at every turn. It’s a situation where degrees, even tenths of a degree, translate into added risk.

“We are still on track for climate catastrophe,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday, even after some countries’ recent emission pledges.

For months, United Nations officials have touted three concrete goals for these negotiations to succeed:

— Countries must promise to reduce carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 compared with 2010.

— Rich countries should contribute $100 billion a year in aid to poor countries.

— Half of that amount must be aimed at adapting to climate change’s worst effects.

World leaders have recently softened those targets a bit, and they say the goals may not quite be finished by mid-November, when negotiations end. U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry told The Associated Press: “There will be a gap” on emission targets.

Under the Paris pact, nations must revisit their previous pledges to curb carbon pollution every five years and then announce plans to cut even more and do it faster. Delayed a year by the pandemic, this year’s meeting is the first to include the required ratcheting up of ambitions.

The hope is that world leaders will cajole each other into doing more, while ensuring that poorer nations struggling to tackle climate change get the financial support they need.

The headline goal set in Paris was to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since then.

Former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said this month that the 1.5-degree mark “is the threshold for our survival, humanity, our planet Earth.”

But every analysis of current climate-change pledges shows that they are not nearly enough to stop warming at that point but will instead lead to at least another degree or a degree and a half Celsius of warming (about 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit).

All five emissions scenarios studied in a massive UN scientific assessment in August suggest that the world will cross that 1.5-degree-Celsius threshold in the 2030s, though several researchers told the AP that it is still technically possible to stay within that limit or at least temporarily go over it and come back down.

Small island nations and other poor, vulnerable communities said in 2015 that 2 degrees would wipe them out, and insisted on the 1.5-degree threshold.

“Our way of life is at stake,” said Tina Stege, the climate envoy for the Marshall Islands. “Our ability to provide our children with a safe and secure future is at stake. Atoll nations like the Marshall Islands do not have higher ground to retreat to.”

In Glasgow, divisions between nations are big, and trust is a problem, say several United Nations officials and outside analysts.

Rich countries like the United States and European nations developed carbon-belching energy and caused most of the problem historically, but now they ask poor nations to cut or eliminate the use of fossil fuels. In return, they’ve promised $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries switch to clean energy.

So far, the funding has fallen far short of that amount.

“Failure to fulfill this pledge is a major source of the erosion of trust between developed and developing nations,” Guterres said.

The key to success may lie in the middle, with major emerging economies.

Three days before the meeting starts, China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, submitted a new national target that is only marginally stronger than what was previously proposed.

China is so important that if every other nation cuts back in line with the 45% global emission reduction and China doesn’t, the world’s total will drop only by 30%, according to Claire Fyson, a top analyst at Climate Action Tracker, a group of scientists that monitor and analyze emission pledges.

In the end, every country, will be asked to do more in Glasgow, said United Nations Environment Programme Director Inger Andersen. But much of the effort, she said, comes back to China and the U.S.

“We need these two powers to put aside whatever else and to show true climate leadership because this is what it will take,” Andersen told the AP.

But realistically, she added, leaders in Glasgow, will take anything “in terms of real, meaningful commitments that are backed by action — action that starts in 2022.”

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Borenstein reported from Washington, Jordans from Berlin. Associated Press Writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed from Washington. Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at https://twitter.com/borenbears and Frank Jordans at https://twitter.com/wirereporter.

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Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/Climate

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By EMMA H. TOBIN

NEW YORK (AP) — Is it OK to go trick-or-treating during the pandemic?

It depends on the situation and your comfort level, but there are ways to minimize the risk of infection this Halloween.

Whether you feel comfortable with your children trick-or-treating could depend on factors including how high the COVID-19 transmission rate is in your area and if the people your kids will be exposed to are vaccinated.

But trick-or-treating is an outdoor activity that makes it easy to maintain a physical distance, notes Emily Sickbert-Bennett, an infectious disease expert at the University of North Carolina. To prevent kids crowding in front of doors, she suggests neighbors coordinating to spread out trick-or-treating.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says outdoor activities are safer for the holidays, and to avoid crowded, poorly ventilated spaces. If you attend a party inside, the agency says people who aren’t vaccinated — including children who aren’t yet eligible for the shots — should wear a well-fitting mask, not just a Halloween costume mask. In areas with high COVID-19 transmission rates, even the fully vaccinated should wear masks inside.

It’s generally safe for children to ring doorbells and collect candy, since the coronavirus spreads mainly through respiratory droplets and the risk of infection from surfaces is considered low. But it’s still a good idea to bring along hand sanitizer that kids can use before eating treats.

VIRAL QUESTIONS: READ MORE Is it OK to go trick-or-treating during the pandemic?What is the ‘delta plus’ variant of the coronavirus?Can new variants of the coronavirus keep emerging?What’s the latest advice on the type of mask I should wear?

For adults, having a mask on hand when you open the door to pass out candy is important.

“You probably won’t necessarily know until you open the door how many people will be out there, whether they’ll be wearing masks, what age they’ll be, and how great they’ll be at keeping distance from you,” Sickbert-Bennett says.

Another option if you want want to be extra cautious: Set up candy bowls away from front doors.

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The AP is answering your questions about the coronavirus in this series. Submit them at: FactCheck@AP.org. Read more here:

What’s the latest advice on the type of mask I should wear?

Can I get the flu and COVID-19 vaccines at the same time?

Can new variants of the coronavirus keep emerging?

By LISA MASCARO, AAMER MADHANI and ALAN FRAM

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pushing past skeptics, Senate Democrats on Wednesday unveiled a new billionaires’ tax proposal, an entirely new entry in the tax code designed to help pay for President Joe Biden’s sweeping domestic policy package and edge his party closer to an overall agreement.

The proposed tax would hit the gains of those with more than $1 billion in assets or incomes of more than $100 million a year, and it could begin to shore up the big social services and climate change plan Biden is racing to finish before departing this week for global summits.

The new billionaires’ proposal, coupled with a new 15% corporate minimum tax, would provide alternative revenue sources that Biden needs to win over one key Democrat, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who had rejected the party’s earlier idea of reversing the Trump-era tax breaks on corporations and the wealthy to raise revenue.

Biden met late Tuesday evening with Sinema and another Democratic holdout, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, at the White House.

“No senator wants to stand up and say, ‘Gee, I think it’s just fine for billionaires to pay little or no taxes for years on end,’” said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, helming the new effort.

Biden and his party are zeroing in on at least $1.75 trillion in health care, child care and climate change programs, scaling back what had been a $3.5 trillion plan, as they try to wrap up negotiations this week.

Taken together, the new tax on billionaires and the 15% corporate minimum tax are designed to fulfill Biden’s desire for the wealthy and big business to pay their “fair share.” They also fit his promise that no new taxes hit those earning less than $400,000 a year, or $450,000 for couples. Biden insists all the new spending will be fully paid for and not piled onto the national debt.

While the new tax proposals have appeared agreeable to Manchin and could win over Sinema, whose support is needed in the 50-50 split Senate where Biden has no votes to spare, the idea of the billionaires’ tax has run into criticism from other Democrats as cumbersome or worse.

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said he told Wyden the billionaires’ tax may be more difficult to implement than the route his panel took in simply raising rates on corporations and the wealthy.

Under Wyden’s emerging plan, the billionaires’ tax would hit the wealthiest of Americans, fewer than 800 people, starting in the 2022 tax year.

It would require those with assets of more than $1 billion, or three consecutive years of income of $100 million, to pay taxes on the gains of stocks and other tradeable assets, rather than waiting until holdings are sold.

A similar billionaires’ tax would be applied to non-tradeable assets, including real estate, but it would be deferred with the tax not assessed until the asset was sold, though interest would have to be paid.

Overall, the billionaires’ tax rate would align with the capital gains rate, now 23.8%. Democrats have said it could raise $200 billion in revenue that could help fund Biden’s package over 10 years.

“I’ve been talking about this for years,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who campaigned for the presidency on a wealth tax, and backs Wyden’s approach. “I’ve even made billionaires cry over this.”

Republicans have derided the billionaires’ tax as “harebrained,” and some have suggested it would face a legal challenge.

And key fellow Democrats were also raising concerns about the billionaires’ tax, saying the idea of simply undoing the 2017 tax cuts by hiking top rates was more straightforward and transparent.

Under the House bill approved by Neal’s panel, the top individual income tax rate would rise from 37% to 39.6%, on those earning more than $400,000 a year, or $450,000 for couples. The corporate rate would increase from 21% to 26.5%. The bill also proposes a 3% surtax on the wealthiest Americans with adjusted income beyond $5 million a year.

With Sinema rejecting the House’s approach to taxes and Manchin panning the new spending on programs, the senators have packed a one-two punch, throwing Biden’s overall plan into flux.

That was also forcing difficult reductions, if not the outright elimination, of policy priorities — from paid family leave to child care to dental, vision and hearing aid benefits for seniors.

The once hefty climate change strategies are losing some punch, too, focusing away from punitive measures on polluters that raised objections from coal-state Manchin, in a shift toward instead rewarding clean energy incentives.

Manchin’s resistance may scuttle one other tax idea — a plan to give the IRS more resources to go after tax scofflaws. He said he told Biden during their weekend meeting at the president’s home in Delaware that that plan was “messed up” and would allow the government to monitor bank accounts.

All told, Biden’s package remains a substantial undertaking — and could still top $2 trillion in perhaps the largest effort of its kind from Congress in decades. But it’s far slimmer than the president and his party first envisioned.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told lawmakers in a closed meeting Tuesday they were on the verge of “something major, transformative, historic and bigger than anything else” ever attempted in Congress, according to another person who insisted on anonymity to share her private remarks to the caucus.

Other leading Democrats began to lend their backing to the emerging deal.

“We know that we are close,” said Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, after a meeting with Biden at the White House. “And let me be explicitly clear: Our footprints and fingerprints are on this.”

From the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden still hoped to have a deal in hand to show foreign leaders the U.S. government was performing effectively on climate change and other major issues. But she acknowledged that might not happen, forcing him to keep working on the package from afar.

She warned about failure as opposed to compromise.

“The alternative to what is being negotiated is not the original package,” she said. “It is nothing.”

Democrats are hoping to reach an agreement by week’s end, paving the way for a House vote on a related $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill before routine transportation funds expire Sunday. That separate roads-and-bridges bill stalled when progressive lawmakers refused to support it until deliberations on the broader Biden bill were complete.

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Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri, Darlene Superville and Colleen Long contributed to this report.