Friday, 12 November 2021
Youth activists should be admired and supported in urging action to protect our Planet from further damage, but it must be their elders — scientists, governments and other relevant bodies — who enforce and implement regulations to elicit action. Without this help young people can only do so much. It is, after all, the baby boomer generation, the mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles, which is responsible for the highest carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution. It is also they who have the power to mandate changes in behaviour and implement the strictest of rules to curb further climate damage. Youngsters are justly concerned about the kind of future they will inherit if not more is done to stop emissions, end greenhouse gases and phase out the burning of fossil fuels. It is the young people of today and the generations which follow that will have to deal with the consequences which reckless human behaviour has had over past decades and centuries.
To anyone observing COP26 from the outside, the Conference may have appeared to be a lot of grand political posturing. The young activists protesting on the streets of Glasgow certainly think so. Amongst the tense negotiations and the tentative commitments made — some more so than others — there will undoubtedly be a degree of what Greta Thunberg calls 'greenwashing' from the leaders who want to (in fact need to) be seen to make ever more fervent pledges to ensure the country they represent actively reduces its carbon emissions.
While opinions about the success of COP26 appear to vary widely, it is perhaps not the abject failure that some had predicted prior to the event following the negotiations by G20 Summit in Rome in the lead up to COP26 in Glasgow. Although it is indisputable that much still needs to be done in terms of securing finance from the world's richest nations to support the most vulnerable countries, agreements on abandoning oil and gas and the transition to renewable energy, significant commitments have been made in respect to reversing deforestation, and the cutting of carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. There have also been unexpected commitments made by India for reducing its use of coal by 2070 and a pact between the US and China to work together to limit global temperature rises to the 1.5C level recommended by the so-called 'Paris Agreement' in 2015. But, whilst trying to focus on the positive, there is also a lot of understandable doom-mongering. On Friday, 12 November, the last scheduled day of negotiations the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, said that COP26 will probably not achieve all of its aims in limiting global warming to 1.5C of pre-industrial level. As Guterres puts it, "the world is on life support".
