Climate change, Carbon Emissions, Environment, COP26

COP26: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Just-Get-On-With-It

Europe and the US pumped CO2 into the atmosphere for centuries, but now everyone has to clean up the mess. How’s that going?

Illustration by Author

What didn’t happen at COP26 was more important than what did, and everyone is affected, whether they believe it or not. Physics isn’t concerned about what’s fair or whose fault it is. It just mindlessly follows its rules.

CO2, the dominant green house gas, forms only about 0.04% of the atmosphere we breathe, but without it, earth would look very different. No CO2 at all, and it would be an ice planet and with too much, it would be a water world, or worse.

At COP21 in Paris, in 2015, humanity acknowledged that there was too much CO2 and that the planet was getting too warm. It wasn’t the first time, but this time everyone promised to make plans by COP26.

How did that work out? Is the greatest civilisation the world has ever seen succeeding in its attempt to manage 0.04% of the atmosphere?

The Good

Let’s start off on a positive note. Countries made commitments to reduce CO2 and other…