How these two key takeaways from COP26 could affect B.C.
Global News
Interviews with delegates from the University of British Columbia revealed a widespread sense of urgency and a resurgence of hope after the world came together to battle COVID-19.
This past year has been a real wake-up call in B.C. in terms of climate change.
The province experienced an historic and deadly heat dome in June, extensive drought and another devastating wildfire season, and unprecedented bomb cyclones in the Pacific Northwest.
The biggest international conference on climate change, COP26, is going right now in Glasgow with more than 30,000 people from around the world and is showing to be unlike any conference before.
Several interviews with delegates from the University of British Columbia revealed a widespread sense of urgency and a resurgence of hope after the world came together to battle COVID-19.
“We don’t have a lot of time and this may very well be the last conference that can still have an impact before things become too difficult and too challenging,” Walter Mérida, one of UBC’s eight conference delegates, said.
Added fellow delegate Temitope Onifade: “The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that the world can really address urgent issues if they want to.”
The conference aims to tackle two main issues that the Paris Agreement, set at COP21 in 2015, failed to address: Securing substantial global-emission reduction targets and finalizing the Paris Rulebook, a list of specifications or guidelines on how to implement the agreement.
“That (was) a political breakthrough on its own right,” Mérida said about the Paris accord, the first legally binding international treaty on climate change. “But it was insufficient to really make things happen.”