The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) is underway

Six years ago, the Paris Agreement committed world governments to try to hold global temperature increases “well below” 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels and to aspire towards a limit of 1.5°C.

Governments were mandated to produce updated plans in 2020 to show how they would actually achieve that goal. Delayed by a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), now beginning in Glasgow, represents that moment of truth. 

We must hope that COP is not a flop or that it is a "cop out".

There is still far too much hype and too little substance.

There is a huge gap between rhetoric and action.

I am a staunch Republican, since I don't believe that having an unelected head of state in a modern democracy is remotely sustainable, but the Queen was right when she recently said that she was "irritated" by leaders who "talk but don’t do" on the climate emergency.

It is unfortunate that the UK is hosting COP26 given its move away from global leadership to flag-waving and nationalist isolation arising from Brexit.

Furthermore, the "greenwashing" UK Government hardly sets a good example for the world with its cynical creative accounting when reporting UK carbon emissions, its oilfield licensing in the North Sea, its support for a coal mine in Cumbria, its reduction in taxes to encourage short-haul flights, the eco-vandalsim of HS2 plus much more. Staggeringly, there was no mention at all of the climate emergency in the recent Budget, let alone any significant investment in a net zero programme or a green recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. 

As Caroline Lucas MP has recently said “Boris Johnson is uniquely ill-equipped to deal with a crisis like climate change, where you need public trust. At a time of crisis, whether that’s Covid or climate, you need leaders who have integrity, consistency and courage. And those are three words I would not associate with Boris Johnson.”

Nonetheless, COP26 does seem like a moment where public pressure and awareness is at its greatest. We know that this decade is going to be just about the most consequential in human history if we are serious about the existential threat that the climate emergency poses to humanity.

It is time for political leaders of the world's governments and the private corporate and business sector to deliver ambitious and meaningful action to pull us back from the brink, to steer us through transition and to build resilience and sustainability moving forward

It is time for every single one of us as individuals to step up and review and change our behaviours and lifestyles.

We need significant changes in the way that we inhabit our planet and consume its resources and we need technological solutions to reduce and sequester carbon .... but we also need nature-based solutions to restore natural capital (rewilding projects, preservation of existing woodlands and forests and planting of new woodlands and forests, restoration of wetlands, salt marshes and peatlands, etc.) that both address the climate emergency and the biodiversity emergency.

There is a critical global problem requiring a global solution.

The longer we prevaricate and delay, the worse the climate emergency will get and the higher the cost of mitigation, adaptation and remediation.

We are already reaching tipping points and the inevitable feedback loops which follow.

This year’s extreme weather events, the heatwaves, wildfires and floods that have made headlines across the world, are evidence that the destructive consequences of global heating are happening faster than expected and on a larger scale. Continued heating beyond 1.5°C would deliver even more devastating weather events, droughts and crop failures. It would increase the chances of widespread famines and complete ecosystem collapse.

There is a drama-documentary "The Age of Stupid" set in 2055 which portrays a world which has been ravaged by catastrophic climate change. London is flooded, Sydney is burning, Las Vegas has been swallowed up by desert, the Amazon rainforest has burnt up, snow has vanished from the Alps and nuclear war has laid waste to India. An unnamed archivist is entrusted with the safekeeping of humanity's surviving store of art and knowledge. Alone in his vast repository off the coast of the largely ice-free Arctic, he reviews archival footage from back "when we could have saved ourselves", trying to discern where it all went wrong. There is a line in the film that says “Why is it, knowing what we knew then, we didn’t act when there was still time?" 

We have a beautiful planet with amazing biodiversity.

We must take action to save it and create a more sustainable future.

Now.

💚🦆 🦉🦋🐝🦊🦡🌼 🌳💚
Stay safe, stay well, stay strong, stay connected with nature