Abstract
The most important meeting of the year will begin at the end of this month in Glasgow. It will decide the future of humanity. COP26, the international climate conference, will hear of the perilous state of the planet and demands for an accelerated response to rising global temperatures. Previous conferences have fallen short of achieving the necessary commitments to reset the trajectory of planetary destruction. Even when commitments have been extracted, they have not been universally implemented.
Too many national leaders, it seems, hear death riding in on the wind, briefly join the rallying cries to be one humanity, before deciding what matters most to them is their moment of power, the here and now of domestic politics.
Another meeting takes place next month that might be lost amid the noise of COP26. An emergency, ‘special’, World Health Assembly will review the world’s response to a global pandemic that, despite the trillions of dollars of costs and 5 million deaths, is merely the second most pressing matter of international concern.
The parallels, however, between COP26 and the special World Health Assembly are worrying. Just as COP26 seeks national commitments for climate action, the World Health Assembly will seek commitments to a global pandemic treaty, a binding agreement that demands non-negotiable actions from nations when the next public health emergency of international concern is declared.
Just as with COP26, there is no doubt what the correct course of action is for any leader. The only course of action is to commit, to unite in global solidarity, to accept that you have a responsibility to every other nation and inhabitant of this planet, to understand that making the world safer and healthier makes your country and people healthier and safer.
But just as with COP26, and every COP that has gone before it, and every World Health Assembly, the reality is that leaders will hear death riding in on the wind, they will briefly join the rallying cries for one humanity, one planet, and when they reach home their minds will be filled with hubris and power and domestic politics.
That is the fear, the very real fear, that our leaders will once more fail us. But the hope is that the leaders have seen enough death and destruction of people and the planet. It is, of course, the hope that kills you – but it is also what sustains you at this most dangerous moment in the history of the world, a moment that most people are either too busy, too distracted, or too downtrodden to even notice.