Miss this chance and history will never forgive us
Mirror front pages reflect the full horror of rising temperatures
TORRENTIAL rain, raw sewage flooding homes and cars swept away in the torrent... the climate change crisis is happening here and it’s happening right now.
From London to Scotland via Cumbria and many other places in between, the environmental emergency destroying our planet is striking wherever people live.
No longer is anybody protected with a free pass.
Future generations will never forgive world leaders gathering in Glasgow for the UN’s Cop 26 conference if they fail to seize this golden opportunity to avoid potentially millions more deaths every year.
The threats are many and terrifying: rising sea levels, melting ice, floods, droughts, hurricanes and infernos
– a cataclysm of unbearably high and low temperatures.
The omens aren’t promising. China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are not only staying away but are refusing to commit to a 2050 goal to decarbonise their countries’ economies and reduce harmful emissions to net zero.
Instead, both are setting 2060 as a delayed target.
Yet we must never abandon hope in the pursuit of a breakthrough.
With the stakes so high, the calamitous cost of failing is ruinously unaffordable
The ignorant and cowardly who pretend we cannot afford to go green are defying reality.
The truly dire consequences of continuing to pollute our only home
are here for all to see. We lack another planet to inhabit.
Trashing this one, vandalising the environment, destroying species, wrecking nations and poisoning the air are a kamikaze recklessness that will end in tears, poverty and death.
Flunk this chance and the next one, whenever it comes, may be just too late. Scientists everywhere recognise that hell will be unleashed if the planet reaches or surpasses a 1.5C rise above preindustrial levels.
Here at the Daily Mirror we’re committed to factual reporting and speaking truth to the power of vested interests who for decades have falsely and damagingly denied climate change was man made.
We’ve also no time for greenwashers, posturing converts to the cause who lack the will and courage to take difficult decisions.
What is needed now to save the world is soaring imagination and great vision.
Confidence isn’t inspired by a Boris Johnson who built his career on clumsy showboating rather than diplomatic deftness.
Or by Alok Sharma, a middling former Business Secretary who set a poor example by regularly enjoying flights after his appointment as president of the Cop 26 conference.
But we’re willing this conference to succeed for all our sakes.
Should it flop, we will be damned by history.