Article by Jemima Parker
SEPT 2021: In just a few days one of the most important conferences to be held in recent years will take place. The global climate summit, known as COP26, will be held in Glasgow during the first two weeks of November. The importance and relevance of COP26 cannot be underestimated given the domination of our news headlines, over recent months, by one environmental crisis after another - from extreme heat events and frequent wildfires, to catastrophic floods and biodiversity loss. Events like these are becoming increasingly commonplace and, as our scientists predicted, are a result of climate change, they are now a reality for us here in Yorkshire, just as much as they are in distant lands. If left unchecked climate change will make life on earth at best far less comfortable and at worst unbearable. There is however, still time to do something about it, if we can act more swiftly and implement the big global wide changes that are needed to curb fossil fuel emissions and boost nature recovery. These summits, known as the UN’s Conference of the Parties (COP) are where amendments to the global agreement on climate change are negotiated. The first COP was in Berlin in 1995 when most of the world had yet to register the significance of climate change. Twenty-six years later, COP26, co-hosted by the UK and Italy, will be the most significant since COP21 in Paris in 2015. What emerged from COP21 is referred to as the Paris Agreement, a landmark in the multilateral climate change process, because for the first time a binding agreement brought all nations into a common cause, to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects. The Paris Agreement was a breakthrough because it allowed all nations to make a pledge – or a nationally determined contribution – which if delivered (a crucial point) should start to slow the rate of global warming, with the ultimate aim of limiting the average level of warming to at least 2°C, and ideally to 1.5°C. These figures don’t sound like much, but they are massively significant for two main reasons. First, they are global annual averages and there will be big variations around the world, with the extremes being much higher and enough to trigger massive disruptions, including making some areas effectively uninhabitable. Second, the science is clear that 1.5°C of warming is a crucial tipping point. Stay within 1.5°C and we retain control of our future climate – but go beyond it and we risk triggering ‘run away’ climate change. In other words, if we go beyond 1.5°C of warming we lose control of our future, as a range of feedback loops kick-in where warming unlocks natural cycles that then drive further warming. One key natural cycle (there are many) relates to the melting of extensive areas of permafrost which currently contain huge quantities of methane that if released would drive further warming. Before the Paris Agreement, the world was headed to 4° or 5°C of warming – well into the range of runaway climate change. The pledges made at Paris (if they are delivered) should limit warming to around 3°C – still well beyond that crucial threshold. But Paris included provision for these commitments, and their delivery, to be reviewed after five years. Glasgow is the Paris-Plus-Five COP, where this review happens, so it is crucial that the commitments are upgraded and each country explains how it will deliver on these carbon cutting promises. The prospect of accelerating climate breakdown, caused by our fossil fuel emissions into the biosphere, and biodiversity loss, is an unpleasant one to think about. In its most extreme form, it would mean the end of organised human society. It’s not the earth we need to save - it will save itself – but ourselves, from being annihilated, as a result of making earth’s climate uninhabitable. Big changes are needed in humanity’s relationship with the earth - our only home. Our ancestors were not capable of affecting ‘earth systems’, but we are, and right now our fossil fuel greedy societies are doing just that. Times of change can be turbulent and hard for all of us, but pretending climate change will not affect us and delaying action, as we have seen with the Covid pandemic, will lead to harder and more costly decision further down the line. The good news is we have all the scientific knowledge and technology we need to transition to a thriving carbon neutral economy, powered by renewable energy. All that is needed is the political will to make it happen. At COP26 we will be looking to our global leaders for clear strategic action, based not on wishful thinking, but on proven pathways to rapidly curb fossil fuel emissions, and boost nature recovery, to be rolled out at scale and at pace. It is up to governments of the world to work together to forge these international agreements. Whilst we, as citizens, have a responsibility to remind our government - our political representatives - of the future we want for our beautiful Yorkshire and to show them that we are ready and willing to play our part by embracing carbon action each of our cities, towns and villages. A good COP would see a global commitment from all countries to stop subsidising fossil fuel industries and the setting in place of an equitable agreement, where the ‘carbon polluters’ support and finance those nations and areas of the UK where climate change will have the most climate impact. The outcome of a bad COP is not even worth contemplating. Jemima Parker is the Environmental Officer of the Diocese of Leeds, Church of England. She is also the Chair of Zero Carbon Harrogate. Parker, Jemima (2001 Sept). Zero Carbon Harrogate on why COP26 will be crucial for the future of humanity. Retrieved from https://www.harrogateadvertiser.co.uk/news/environment/zero-carbon-harrogate-on-why-cop26-will-be-crucial-for-the-future-of-humanity-3370598.
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by Vishvapani Blomfieldhttps://thebuddhistcentre.com/highlights/vishvapani-bbc-thought-day-remembrance-day-meditationSomething remarkable can happen in a sports stadium when a crowd observes a minute’s silence. Those present cease, for that moment, to be supporters and become reflective and respectful. When a particularly significant loss is remembered – as when Anfield commemorates the Hillsborough dead – the silence gathers the crowd into a shared emotion. Then the whistle blows and hostilities recommence.
The minute’s silence on Remembrance Day this Sunday probably can’t match that emotion for most of us. Yet the invitation to reflect is the same and, here too, silence is a fitting medium. The most intense experience I’ve had of remembrance was attending a weeklong interfaith retreat in the grounds of Auschwitz/Berkenau concentration camp. My grandfather and other members of my father’s family died in the Holocaust but my father was baffled that I would wish to go to such a place. When I found myself sitting in Berkenau, surrounded by barracks and barbed wire and shivering in the biting autumn air, I shared his perplexity. Why was I there? It helped that we performed rituals and recited kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead; and it also helped that I had time to simply sit in silence. I sensed that I wasn’t there for myself: I was there for the dead. I was there to remember because the alternative was to forget. I was there to bear witness to the suffering of others because it was the suffering of the family, the world and the life of which I’m a part. A minute is barely enough time for the chatter of our minds to begin to settle. All the same, Remembrance Sunday is an invitation to find a space in our harried lives for a silent opening to all that war has meant for the country. For me, it is a national meditation on what Wilfred Owen called ‘the truth untold / the pity of war, the pity war distilled.’ Attending to that untold truth requires that we become quiet, for just a moment, and bear witness to what happened. We don’t need to figure it out or think how to put it right. Then what? I think Owen’s word ‘pity’ is a clue, and ‘compassion’ – a word beloved by Buddhists and others – is another. We can’t force compassion into existence any more than we can force a flower to grow. But if we sit quietly in those silent moments at a football match, in a concentration camp, or on Remembrance Sunday, perhaps compassion will emerge; and, with it, a sense of what to do next. (https://thebuddhistcentre.com/highlights/vishvapani-bbc-thought-day-remembrance-day-meditation) A lawyer connected with the congregation shared this short piece from American writer and theologian Frederick Buechner on the theme of “Neighbour”: When Jesus said to love your neighbor, a lawyer who was present asked him to clarify what he meant by neighbor. He wanted a legal definition he could refer to in case the question of loving one ever happened to come up. He presumably wanted something on the order of: "A neighbor (hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more than three statute miles from one's own legal residence unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter to be referred to as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be construed as neighbor to the party of the first part and one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort or kind whatsoever." Instead, Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), the point of which seems to be that your neighbor is to be construed as meaning anybody who needs you. The lawyer's response is left unrecorded ~originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words Article (https://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2016/5/21/neighbor) |
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