10 tests for COP26 | Green Worldhttps://greenworld.org.uk/article/10-tests-cop26Tina Rothery and Rupert Read
Wed 6 Oct 2021
1. An unprecedented investment in genuinely renewable energy.
2. A thorough shift in transport away from petrol and diesel vehicles, and most crucially, away from aviation.
3. A huge free transfer of technology and funding to global South countries.
4. A programme for transformational adaptation to dangerous human-triggered climate change.
5. Planetary boundaries should be taken seriously – there should be hard caps on resource use and pollution.
6. Companies should be legally required to disclose climate-related financial risks and/or dependence on fossil fuels, incorporating these into their financial accounts so that investors can see clearly the risk of their assets being stranded.
7. Trade arrangements should be rewritten in order to facilitate a green transition.
8. ‘Net-zero’ schemes via ‘negative emissions technologies’ should only be permitted where there is genuinely no alternative. ‘Net’ must never be an excuse for weak targets.
9. Targets should be established for the reduction of industrial and intensive agriculture, especially in the case of animal farming. Agriculture and food can no longer be the elephant in the room.
10. Methods of allocation must ensure that women; children and young people; small businesses; and marginalised communities, including peasant and indigenous communities, share adequately in the benefits of any green government investment packages, or, at minimum, are not harmed or displaced by them.
These demands are the bare bones of what needs to be agreed upon and set out for immediate action this year, rather than being kicked into the long grass of 2050, 2060, or even 2035. Respect for science and the Precautionary Principle demands a spirit of shared urgency, a quasi-wartime mobilisation.
Anything less will be failing the world, and failing future generations, for whose sake we need to act now.
If these 10 tests are not met, that would license a truth-forceful response by citizens, whose futures and children are on the line.