COP 26 is an opportunity the left must take

Between the 9th and 19th November, the UK will play host to the 26th UN Climate Change conference, or COP26. This represents a historic opportunity for the UK climate movement to mobilise, to take leadership as we move into the last decade where meaningful action to halt disaster is possible.

The COP programme has produced the two major international agreements on reducing greenhouse gas emissions—the Kyoto agreement (1997) and the Paris agreement (2015). Taken together, these have formed the basis of global effort to combat climate change.

Yet in 2020, it is clear that these efforts are failing. Last year global CO2 emissions reached another record high, and the trend is set to continue. In fact, there has only ever been one year where emissions have decreased due to decarbonisation efforts, not global recession, and that was 2015. More shockingly, over half of the total global greenhouse gas emissions ever released have been released in the last 25-30 years – or since the UN Climate Change conferences have been taking place.

According to the IPCC report on climate change in 2018, humanity has but twelve years to take action. That means, as we enter 2020, we are entering the last decade where something meaningful can be done to avert catastrophe. 

Since the release of report, there has been a historic upswing in campaigning around the climate. From programmes such as the transatlantic Green New Deal, to the Youth Strikes and Extinction Rebellion, consciousness of the urgency of the situation has shot up, and we have witnessed the rise of global mobilisations. 

Encouragingly, there has also been a marked increase in campaigners naming those responsible for the situation we are in – the fossil fuel companies, who have known since the 70s that climate change was coming, but who worked to actively sow confusion and scepticism in order to protect their profit margins.

Historically the COP26 conferences have provided a focal point for social movements that are fighting to force states to act to curb emissions. This November must be no different. We are well placed in the UK to take advantage of this opportunity, as over the last year we have seen a huge growth in the size of our climate movement – including the historic shift in the position of the trade unions to back measures to decarbonise the economy.

Organising around Glasgow will provide a focal point for the movement, an opportunity to grow in numbers and forge new links between groups that will be essential for the decade of struggle ahead. Just as the anti-war movement shifted common sense around questions of intervention abroad, so to must we now shift common sense that a radical decarbonisation of the global economy is not only necessary, but that there is no alternative to it. Let’s mobilise millions on the streets. Let’s aim high – the moment demands it.

Organisations you can join

Reclaim the Power

Exctinction Rebellion

The Youth Strikes

Labour for a Green New Deal