Every year around this time the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) convenes in the hopes the global community can take meaningful steps towards combating global warming. Some annual meetings are more famous than others. (e.g. The Paris Agreement). This year, however, due to COVID-19, the conference schedule for Glasgow, Scotland has been postponed a year. There are pluses and minuses to this. On the positive side, it gives countries more time to hammer out some of the stickier details of the Paris Agreement that, until they are finalized, keep it from being a more effective document. Sometimes more progress is made in more intimate meetings. It also avoids one of the pitfalls of the Marrakech meeting in 2016. The incoming Trump administration, signalling its intended hostile position toward the entire process, created a contentious "every country for itself" atmosphere that is never conducive to building consensus. The incoming Biden administration has declared its intent to re-join the climate fight in earnest, something that, if given a chance to do so on a big state, the Trump administration might try to sabotage. We are spared that drama this time.
On the negative side of the ledger, lack of a meeting means the global effort to combat global warming falls further off the page, although everything seems to suffer that fate these days. It is important to keep this crisis on people's minds as it will be the type of emergency humanity will face for decades to come, and for which there is no immediate vaccine.
For now, let this image from Visual Capitalist be the annual reminder that we are the cause of - and solution to - the crisis. Visual Capitalist creates some of the most powerful graphic summaries of complicated challenges. If you have not spent time on their web site, take a few minutes and change that. They delve into myriad topics you may find interesting.
In the meantime, the climate fight continues. We created the monster. We can defeat it.
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