into rivers, ministers from more than 50 countries met to lay the ground work for november s vital climate summit in glasgow. this was the message from the british host. we are seeing in every part of the world, on each - of our doorsteps, what happens when climate change gets out l of control, and so what i hope that we have at this meeting i is an opportunity for us to shape | the vision of the final outcomes| from cop26 in glasgow, - and to build that unity of purpose amongst the ministers to deliver that. - world leaders are under pressure to phase out coal power and to set more ambitious targets on emissions, although that won t always be popular with voters. they can only commit to, or it doesn t matter what they commit to, if they can t get that through their parliament, so there is a very complex process behind all this. there is a continuing mismatch between science and policy. some scientists fear that with just 1.2 degrees of heating now, the world might already have entered
ice is melting and the pat certain clear, wormest records worldwide since 19 98 and global temperatures are the highest in 10,000 years. if we continue business as usual we will see temperatures rise that we haven t seen in millions and millions of years. it is just across the board, something civilization never today deal with before. october 2012, superstorm sandy barrels into the east coast from the unusually warm waters of the north atlantic. in its wake, at least 147 dead and $65 billion in damage. it s like, one minute your life is fine. 10 minutes later, you lost everything. new york s governor andrew cuomo has little doubt what s behind the devastation. climate change, extreme weather, call it what you will, it is undeniable. bloomberg business week
than stopping burning coal and gas and oil and doing it fast. we re past the point where we re going to stop global warming. we already melted the arctic, okay? so if we do everything right at this point, it will still be decades before we re back to 350 and a lot of damage will be done in the meantime. but if we don t do anything right at this point, that damage will escalate. it will be civilization scale. there s someone watching this right now who is worried about being on unemployment for three months, who has a dear relative who is fighting in afghanistan, who is worried about her own reproductive choice. what do you want to say to them about this issue and how to think about it in context of those things that seem much closer to the skin? first thing to be said is by now for hundreds of millions of people around the world, which is an incredibly immediate thing.
magazine puts it even more bluntly. across the globe a disturbing statistics. carbon is up 48% since 1992. we heard it many times before but it bears repeating because some people still don t get it. when coal, oil and natural gas are burned to create energy, carbon dioxide and other gasses are pumped into the air. they don t dissipate. they are trapped. if the heat stay is in, the planet gets warmer. if the planet gets warmer, ice cap melts. if ice caps melt they can no longer absorb the suns rayes. then there are storms like sandy. on the west coast you have fires bb draughts, and on the east coast you have storms. yet according to a recent gallup poll only one-third of mer cans are greatly worried about climate change. what can possibly explain this