COP26 - Success or Failure?
- Dec 7, 2021
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 3, 2022
With COP26 having wrapped up on the 12th of November, many people may be wondering where the climate movement goes from here. The conference, which lasted 13 days, was co-hosted by the United Kingdom and Italy and was held in Glasgow. Glasgow was picked to host the event due to the city’s experience in hosting events such as this and its commitment to sustainability.
Many climate activists believe that the conference was a failure, with 18-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg calling the conference “a global north greenwash festival” and a “2-week long celebration of business as usual and blah blah blah” at a Fridays for Future youth rally in George Square during the conference.
One of the prominent objects featured at the conference was the climate clock, the clock, which was brought to the blue zone, projected on the Tolbooth Steeple and driven around the city on the top of a Prius hybrid car, shows us just how long we have until it is too late to combat the damage done by climate change.
Andrew Boyd, who is one of the people behind the climate clock, said: “The aim of the climate clock is to, most importantly, remind all the decision makers and people in our movement of the exactness and tightness of the climate deadline.”
There is also an online version of the clock, which not only is counting down to the end of the “window of hope” but is highlighting the three main lifelines or solution pathways that are vital in saving the planet. One of these lifelines is the indigenous communities that are protecting 43,500,000km of the worlds land. It is known that indigenous people make up only 5% of the worlds population but indigenous people protect up to 21% of the worlds land making indigenous communities vital in aiding the fight against climate change.
Another of the lifelines that will help tackle the climate crisis is a $9.52b green climate fund that was pledged by the rich nations of the global north, this pledge was originally $100b but only $9.52b has actually been given to help fund the effort to save the planet, and the final lifeline is renewable energy, at the moment only 12.5% of the worlds power comes from renewable energy sources and while this number is slowly ticking up, it is not ticking up fast enough.
Boyd said: “I think this is both an inside and an outside game, we need people on the inside with the authority and the ability to get their national governments into alignment with the demands of science and climate and currently no government is in alignment but there are some that are better than others so it is an inside game to get the best kind of agreement we can and it is an outside game to speak the climate truth on the street and demand what is necessary even if it appears to be impossible.
In 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a stark report that made it apparent that we do not have a lot of time left to act to save the planet and keep the temperature at which the world is heating up down to 1.5°C. In fact, as of December 2021, we only have about 7 and ¾ years left to halt the damage caused by climate change.
The aim of the conference was to discuss new policies and action plans that would tackle the climate crisis head on.
Some of the most significant promises include many countries such as Scotland, Argentina, Brazil, Austria and many others pledging to become carbon neutral and reduce emissions to zero by the year 2050. However, many other promises were made such as a pledge by many countries to end and reverse deforestation. Promises such as these are seen as a big step forward.
However, many believe that there is still more to be done, we still need things such as an increase in wind and solar power and ending all subsidies and funding to the fossil fuel industry in order to keep the coal and oil in the ground instead of trying to harvest it. In the last 4 years, 89% of global carbon emissions have come from the fossil fuel industry.
Mary Ellen Carroll, a New York-based conceptual artist who designed an installation to be put on the roof of the Schoolhouse in Glasgow’s Kinning Park area, said: “They have known the science for decades so how it keeps changing and, in whose interest it keeps changing for.
“I think we have reached this tipping point and that is why this COP in particular is so important. If you think about it, COVID has affected everybody in the world and climate also affects everybody in the world the same way so what are we going to do about that collectively.”
In recent times it has become more apparent than ever that the rate at which the worlds climate is changing is becoming alarmingly troublesome. The impact of climate change on the world is massive.
In the last three decades, the oldest and thickest ice in the arctic has declined by 95%, with further ice caps declining at a rate of almost 13% per decade. One of the main communities that this affects is the Polar Bears, who reside in the arctic and rely on the ice as it gives them access to food such as seals, without the ice, Polar bears wold not only become displaced and with no habitat but they would likely starve.
Deforestation and forest fires are affecting many wildlife habitats with one of the most recent and shocking cases of this being the fires that took place across many parts of Australia in 2020. Not only did this affect much of the wildlife with species such as Koalas being badly injured, dehydrated and without a habitat, it also affected the communities living in the areas surrounding as smoke and ash filled the air, polluting it and sometimes causing the rain to become brown with ash and soot.
In September 2021, the United Nations released a statement entailing that climate change and increasingly extreme weather events, have caused a surge in natural disasters over the last fifty years and of the top 10 climate change related disasters, droughts have proven to be the deadliest causing over 650,000 deaths in the period of time between 1970-2021.
Economic losses have also increased three-fold in the same time period with three of the top ten costliest disasters all being hurricanes that occurred in 2017. These 3 hurricanes accounted for 35% of total economic disaster losses from 1970-2021.
It is becoming more apparent that climate change is linked to many natural disasters which is not only displacing communities, but is costing billions to fix the extreme damages caused by such events. It proves the prevalent need to tackle the climate crisis and work to save the planet before it is too late.
With 7 ¾ years until the damage is irreversible, the time to act is now and it has never been more important to reach an agreement and get it right in order to save the planet.
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