What on earth does it mean?

THIS is the first COP since the Paris Agreement, which set out to radically decrease emissions. Members have returned to the table to set out exactly what they are going to do.

Adopted in 2015, the Paris deal is a landmark agreement to combat climate change which unites all the world’s nations in a single agreement for the first time.

The key points were to keep global temperatures “well below” 2.0C above pre-industrial times and “endeavour to limit” them even more, to 1.5C.

Another aim is to limit the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity to the level that trees, soil and oceans can absorb naturally, beginning at some point between 2050 and 2100.

CO2 emissions must be cut by 45% by 2030 to curb warming at 1.5C.

By 2050 we need to be at “net zero”, meaning any remaining CO2 pumped into the atmosphere needs to be sucked back out, either by plants or by technologies that capture carbon from the air.

DEVOID

Half a degree doesn’t sound like much but it is the difference between life and death.

A former president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, has warned that if the COP26 goal of limiting warming to 1.5C is not met, the paradise islands “will simply die”.

Once we hit 2C warming, the world will be a profoundly different place.

There will be almost no coral reefs remaining, the Arctic will be completely devoid of ice during summer at least once a decade, and huge numbers of animals and plants will become extinct as their habitats become too small to sustain them.

The impact for humans will be enormous, particularly in areas already vulnerable such as the low-lying coastal regions of Bangladesh and Vietnam, and island territories such as Kiribati and the Maldives.

Rising sea levels will drive millions from their homes, and crop yields will fall dramatically in sub-saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Central and South America.