COP26 must do more than just Negotiations to save our Planet from Collapse.
Governments across the world had two major crises to tackle; the oil price crash and the climate crisis Before COVID-19 outbreak turned the world upside down.
Right now the three crises have converged, so too can the paths through them. According to scientists, we can rebuild clean and healthy with trillions of dollars of stimulus, transitioning away from fossil fuels to clean infrastructure and industries that create millions of jobs, overcome deep social inequalities and create a thriving economy.
Earth’s climate is changing rapidly. Several observations, documented in thousands of journal papers and texts and summarized every few years by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are evident of the same. The primary cause of that change is the release of carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and natural gas.
One of the goals of the international Paris Agreement on climate change is to limit the increase of the global surface average air temperature to 2 degrees Celsius, compared to preindustrial times. There is a further commitment to strive to limit the increase to 1.5℃.
But whether this will be achieved by the world leaders currently sitting at the COP26 is yet to be known. Many studies say that beyond the emissions reductions registered in 2015, no further efforts were made to control emissions.
This means we are heading for a world that will be more than 3 degrees warmer by 2100. The first thing that hits you is the air. In many places around the world, the air is hot, heavy, and depending on the day, clogged with particulate pollution. Your eyes often water.
When storms and heat waves overlap and cluster, the air pollution and intensified surface ozone levels can make it dangerous to go outside without a specially designed face mask.
Our world is getting hotter, an irreversible development now utterly beyond our control. We have already passed tipping points, like The Great Melting of the Arctic sea ice, which used to reflect the sun’s heat.
Researchers have warned that in five to 10 years, vast swaths of the planet will be increasingly inhospitable to humans. We do not know how habitable the regions of North Africa, Australia, and the western United States will be by 2100.
No one knows what the future holds for their children and grandchildren. According to Sir David Attenborough, “If we continue on our current path, we’ll face the collapse of everything that gives us security.”
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