Brighton Beach on the hottest day of the year and for many, the boiling temperatures are something to savor, but extremes of weather, made worse by climate change, have left the world in a climate emergency.
In just over three months time. The UK was due to host a make or break climate conference because of coronavirus. It’s been put back until November next year. The event would have come five years after the Paris Agreement, which saw an historic pledge to try to limit global warming.
But the man who drafted that landmark deal says there’s, already frustration about what britain should be doing as the host nation in waiting it’s, not taking the the bold leadership that we would expect in international fora and in its Diplomatic outreach um.
There is an opportunity for a more cohesive approach and a more visionary approach from the uk government, and you think that we should have seen that already. Even though we’ve had the devastation of coronavirus.
Well, I think there’s, uh uh. Clearly that’s, the number one priority for the government. It is now a point of transition. There’s, an opportunity for the government to press the reset button and get on the front foot and be proactive about its its international diplomatic agenda.
But Peter Betts says Britain can be a global leader on the climate. He was in charge of negotiations for the UK and the EU for six years, including in Paris. He says the 12-month delay buys time to win round countries dragging their feet and, crucially, could see a new U.S. President prepared to make a difference on the climate. I think it would have been quite a challenging scenario, so i think we would have continued to see you know very passionate demonstrations on the streets, particularly in europe and the uk, but i think there was a real risk that that wouldn’t have Been that kind of immediacy and urgency, wouldn’t have been felt in the same way by leaders outside europe.
Six months ago, Australia suffered from a devastating wildfire season and even whilst the world has battled coronavirus, the planet has got warmer from the melting antarctic to a heatwave in siberia. The coronavirus has been an utter catastrophe for the world, but i don’t.
Think it’s necessarily been a disaster just for the issue of climate change, um, you know the question. The key question on coronaviruses is yet to be decided as regards climate. It’s. How do we come out of it? Britain may not be on the front line of climate change, but it’s now expected to be at the forefront of tackling it. Lisa Holland, Sky News.
Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IwQJyQhW7A8
