We Can't Cop Out of Cop26

 As you will be aware, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (otherwise known as the COP26 Summit) begins in Glasgow today.  You may be familiar with the COP26 Goals.  Or you may be thinking ‘Boring’.

But please don’t stop reading.  This is not going to be a smug lecture on how ‘we are all guilty’.  Industry and heavily industrialised countries, including China, the United States and India, must take their share of responsibility for the emission of greenhouse gases (principally carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide) which are the driving force in climate change.  These greenhouse gases trap heat close to the earth’s surface and thereby warm it up, like a blanket. A certain amount of greenhouse gas is essential, as otherwise earth would be too cold to live on, but, between 1990 and 2018, greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 50%*.  This is the problem, and it is an urgent one.

It is said that ‘young people’ care about the environment.  Having taught at college for many years and waded through their discarded crisp packets and half-drunk plastic bottles of lurid turquoise energy drinks, and dodged their belching vehicles in the car park, I wonder.  I believe children in school are told, in a Blue Peter-ish way, that they must be concerned about ‘The Environment’, but don’t understand the implications.  My four-year-old granddaughter told my husband that her yoghurt pot must be recycled, but then her mummy (my daughter) is a green journalist.

 It is disappointing that, as individuals, our scope for practical action is limited.  We have moved on from token gestures like not using aerosol hairsprays.  But we can pray, and carry on praying for the fortnight (or more) in which the Conference runs. 

 We can also write about Climate Change; I myself have written content for the environmental website What Can YOU Do.  To be effective, we need to understand.  I am ashamed about how much I had to look up on Google in order to write the second paragraph of this post, but it was good to refresh my memory on things I had read about initially a long time ago.  It’s all very scientific and technical and often left to ‘experts’ and, if you leave something to experts, ‘groupthink’ sets in.  We all need to be aware of how Climate Change ‘works’ and have our own views which we can share, not just in articles on ‘The Environment’ but in the mainstream, in fiction, even.  Does anyone remember the 1990s Children’s BBC programme ‘Uncle Jack’?

We are the stewards of the earth, as in Psalm 24:1: "The Earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it".  We must remember this always.

Rosemary Johnson has had many short stories published, in print and online, amongst other places, Friday Flash Fiction, Cafe Lit, Scribble, The Copperfield Review, Fiction on the Web and 101 Words.  She has also contributed to Together magazine and Christian Writer.  She has also written a historical novel, set in the Solidarity years in Poland.  In real life, she is a retired IT lecturer, living in Suffolk with her husband, Bret, who is a church organist.

*https://www.wri.org/insights/4-charts-explain-greenhouse-gas-emissions-countries-and-sectors