Climate Change: COP 26

Earl of Glasgow Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Glasgow (LD)]

My Lords, my home is about 30 miles from the centre of Glasgow, and for two weeks I have been host to something like 50 delegates from all over the world, attending or taking part in the COP 26 negotiations. I do not think I am alone in having to admit that, until recently, I had been supremely unconcerned about the imminent perils of global warming. Of course, I knew it was an issue of concern and that some drastic action might have to be taken soon to counteract it, but I never appreciated how imminent it was. It was only after meeting so many indigenous people from all over the world that I have become aware of how urgent this issue has become. Global warming is not something we will have to deal with in four or five years’ time; it is happening now and we must deal with it now. Because we have already left it too late, the solutions are likely to be painful.

So far, climate change has had only minimal effects in Britain, restricted mainly to excessive flooding in Yorkshire and the Midlands, but in many other parts of the world global warming is already changing the ways of life of indigenous people and permanently endangering their future. Staying in my home were people from Kenya, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, South Africa, New Zealand and the Marshall Islands, a lady representing Amazon Watch from Brazil and a teacher-diplomat lady from the Caribbean island of Grenada. By talking and listening to them, I got a first-hand worldview of what is really happening to our planet.

Of course, we are all aware of the melting ice cap and the imminent threat to the low-lying islands of the Pacific, the disappearance of the glaciers in the Alps, the ferocious forest fires in north-west America, the drought in South Africa and the floods in Pakistan, but it is the crop failures in so much of the world’s farming land that are causing the most concern. We must not get complacent, because so many of the worst effects of global warming have not yet directly affected us. The repercussions, at least, soon will.

I have no idea whether COP 26 will eventually be regarded as a success or a failure, but I believe that at least the publicity surrounding it has made more people, such as me, more aware and more knowledgeable about the imminent threat of global warming. By the time my visitors had left, I had been convinced that, apart from the continuing need to drastically reduce our emissions, the most important single issue is the preservation of the world’s rainforests. I therefore ask the Government whether they are putting sufficient pressure on Brazil, which seems to be ambivalent on this matter, to put an end to the present destruction of the Amazon rainforest.