The at­tempt to re­sus­ci­tate a dy­ing plan­et. This is what the Unit­ed Na­tions COP26 sum­mit will try to achieve. Put aside your thoughts of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic for a mo­ment, place those wor­ries about the econ­o­my on the shelf, be­cause this is the BIG one; the one that gov­erns every­thing else. Quite sim­ply with­out a plan­et earth, there is no ‘us.’

Thank­ful­ly, we are now past the de­nials of cli­mate change, that glob­al warm­ing is yet to be proven—as if the marked in­crease in tem­per­a­tures an­nu­al­ly were an anom­aly—and now we are scram­bling to save our­selves.

This sum­mit will be laden with the cor­rect sound­bites, am­bi­tious state­ments to ad­dress the ma­jor prob­lem that we face as a plan­et. There may even be ad­den­dums to the COP21 Paris Agree­ment which is, lest we for­get, an ac­tu­al legal­ly bind­ing treaty on cli­mate change. The goals list­ed with­in the Agree­ment may ap­pear lofty but are nec­es­sary for our ex­is­tence.

But some six years lat­er, which na­tion would turn up in Glas­gow to re­ceive a pass­ing grade for their ef­forts to curb cli­mate change in ac­cor­dance with that his­tor­i­cal 2015 treaty?

This re­mains the burn­ing is­sue; the ex­e­cu­tion of the strate­gies that have been care­ful­ly laid out to tran­si­tion the en­tire plan­et from our cen­tu­ry’s old green­house gas emis­sion prac­tices to­wards a car­bon neu­tral utopia. The knowl­edge is there and guides the strat­e­gy, but the po­lit­i­cal will is lack­ing.

Con­sid­er this, if the da­ta showed that the earth would ex­pire in the year 2025 un­less we dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced glob­al warm­ing, we would im­me­di­ate­ly stop the emis­sions. Much like the glob­al lock­down for the coro­n­avirus, we would do what is nec­es­sary to en­sure our sur­vival.

The prob­lem is that rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing, the de­struc­tion of the earth is not im­me­di­ate, it is not hap­pen­ing next week, it has been a slow ero­sion that is now ac­cel­er­at­ing, the com­bi­na­tion of our grow­ing mass con­sump­tion and our ex­tend­ed ig­no­rance of the green­house is­sue. Just like past gen­er­a­tions have left it for us to deal with through sum­mits such as COP26, our at­ti­tude is to al­so let our grand­chil­dren cope with the rav­ages of cli­mate change, even though we are now ab­solute­ly aware of the need to act when faced with melt­ing glac­i­ers, in­creased flood­ing, shift­ing sea­sons, wider droughts and more hur­ri­canes.

The lead­ers of every sin­gle na­tion can­not af­ford to sit on their hands any­more. One of the pos­i­tive as­pects of the Paris Agree­ment is that it al­ready pro­vides a vi­able frame­work for mu­tu­al ac­tion, with tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial sup­port. In­deed, Trinidad and To­ba­go has just re­ceived $1M to aid its con­struct of an en­hanced trans­paren­cy frame­work, a re­quire­ment of COP21 slat­ed to be­gin in 2024.

It is the ad­her­ence to the over­ar­ch­ing re­quire­ments of said Agree­ment that must be bol­stered, while al­so tight­en­ing the means to achieve the list­ed tar­gets. The ma­jor goal from 2015 was to lim­it glob­al warm­ing to be­low 2 de­grees Cel­sius or even 1.5 de­grees.

Is it work­ing? The world’s lead­ers will be­gin COP26 on a plan­et that is cur­rent­ly on course for a tem­per­a­ture rise of 3 de­grees Cel­sius this cen­tu­ry…

The fin­ger point­ing ex­er­cise of nam­ing and sham­ing the world’s largest pol­luters is fail­ing in its in­ten­tion be­cause the coun­tries in ques­tion are not suf­fi­cient­ly em­bar­rassed. A new ap­proach must be found that re­quires an all-en­com­pass­ing uni­ver­sal re­quire­ment for all na­tions. Third world na­tions can­not be spared the need to ad­here to re­duced emis­sion prac­tice be­cause they are deemed to be still in de­vel­op­ment. The an­swer is to let that de­vel­op­ment oc­cur with­in pa­ra­me­ters that rep­re­sent a new world or­der on re­new­ables and ze­ro car­bon. That is where the strict­ness of the out­come of sum­mits such as COP26 should emerge, across the board. The more de­vel­oped na­tions need to be man­dat­ed to cut their emis­sions as much as the small­er na­tions, with every coun­try abid­ing by the same per­cent­age lev­el tar­gets.

Eas­i­er said than done? Of course, achiev­ing this would rep­re­sent the great­est ever diplo­mat­ic suc­cess. By na­ture, we are men­tal­ly con­fined to think with­in our na­tion­al­i­ties. We think in terms of how our own coast­line will be af­fect­ed by ris­ing wa­ter lev­els, or how in­creased flood­ing dec­i­mates our coun­try’s food se­cu­ri­ty. With the ex­cep­tions of plagues and pan­demics, noth­ing has ever threat­ened the en­tire plan­et. Wars are fought be­tween na­tions, trade em­bar­gos are im­ple­ment­ed against oth­er coun­tries, in­ter­na­tion­al sport is one up­man­ship dis­guised as friend­ly bat­tle; na­tion­al bor­ders de­fine our thought process.

Glob­al warm­ing does not recog­nise na­tion­al bor­ders, in fact, it’s on the path to erad­i­cat­ing some of those imag­i­nary lines that we hold so dear through pa­tri­o­tism. But now is the time for al­le­giance to earth. Our path to this present sit­u­a­tion is re­plete with the hu­man trend that is germ-like in its scope; to de­stroy a per­fect­ly health en­ti­ty. The ma­jor­i­ty of the an­i­mal king­dom’s nat­ur­al habi­tat has been dec­i­mat­ed, the seas pol­lut­ed to al­most hope­less lev­els and now an ex­as­per­at­ed plan­et is on the ropes, un­able to cope with any more of our dis­dain for where we ex­ist.

Ac­cu­sa­tions and state­ments will not suf­fice in Glas­gow. The world needs un­equiv­o­cal ac­tion to stop the demise prac­ticed by all with laws ac­cept­ed by all. It will not be pop­u­lar, but there is no oth­er choice. Un­like pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, we have acute aware­ness of the prob­lem, more im­por­tant­ly, we pos­sess the knowl­edge to re­verse it.