On November 18, for Reuben College's weekly seminar at the Museum of Natural History, Dr Fredi Otto gave a compelling talk on the COP26 climate summit. Fredi was one of the inaugural Fellows (in Environmental Change) at Reuben College and has since moved to Imperial College London in September to take up a Senior Lecturership in Climate Science. She is a world-leading researcher on extreme weather events as a result of climate change. In 2021, she entered the TIME100 list of most influential people in the world.
In her talk, Fredi asserted that climate change is a fact and that, for the first time, COP26 has addressed global warming in such definite terms, leaving no room for doubt. Anthropogenic climate change has made extreme climate events not only more extreme, but more frequent and unpredictable, affecting every region across the globe.
In her opinion, the summit ended with some wins. For example, coal and fossil fuel subsidies were explicitly recognized as a major contribution to the problem. In addition, efforts to reduce national emissions, formally framed as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), were more ambitious and driven by net-zero goals.
Nevertheless, any cause for celebration is tempered by major losses in this year's COP26. A year past the deadline, the goal of developed countries to jointly mobilize USD 100 billion by 2020 for mitigation actions and transparency implementations has not yet been met. Equally disquieting, much emphasis has been put on intergenerational justice at the expense of international justice.
The Glasgow Package is far from perfect, but it represents important progress. Besides, it is not only within the confines of COP that progress can or should be made. Fredi ended her talk with an important message: it is our very own responsibility to hold our governments accountable for the implementation of COP agreements and fight for climate equity.
- Daniel Revach, MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology student
