We have a little time to reflect with honesty and clarity on the prospects for the global community to deliver on its climate change commitments, now that the Glasgow climate negotiations (COP26) have been re-scheduled for 2021 due to Covid-19. To shed light on this, we have written a paper that considers the implications of the Paris Agreement for wealthier and industrialised nations. In particular, the paper focuses on the mitigation proposals of two self-avowed ‘climate progressive’ countries, the UK and Sweden. Both have developed high-profile legislation, ostensibly designed to cut their emissions in line with holding the rise in temperature to “well below 2°C” and “pursing … 1.5°C”. Yet as the paper demonstrates, peel away the layers of obfuscation and even these ‘climate leaders’ are actively choosing to fail – and by a huge margin.
Ecologist 8th June 2020 read more »