Dear World Leaders, please let us breath.

Dear Leaders of today’s world, you have catastrophically betrayed humanity at large by failing to protect people most affected by the climate crisis and instead caving into the interests of fossil fuel and other powerful corporations.

Your failure to commit to maintaining the global temperature rise at 1.5°C will condemn more than half a billion people, mostly in the global south, to insufficient water and hundreds of millions of people to extreme heatwaves. Despite this disastrous scenario, wealthy countries have failed to commit money towards compensating communities suffering loss and damage as a result of climate change.

COP 26 has clearly failed to deliver an outcome that protects the planet. Instead it has deceived the very foundations on which the United Nations was built – a pledge to the people. Throughout their negotiations, our leaders have made choices that ignore, chip away or throw out our rights as human beings, often discarding the most marginalized communities around the world as expendable collateral damage.

Neither have they committed to providing climate finance to developing countries primarily as grants. It is bitterly disappointing to see the many loopholes in the COP26 agreement which bow to the interests of fossil fuel corporates rather than our rights. The agreement fails to call for the phasing out of all fossil fuels and all fossil fuel subsidies – demonstrating the lack of ambition and bold action needed at this critical time. It is a hollow and unacceptable substitute for real zero emissions targets.?

Now it’s a straight fight for survival. The?Glasgow Climate Pact, for all its restrained and diplomatic language, looks like a suicide pact. After so many squandered years of denial, distraction and delay, it’s too late for incremental change.?What we needed at the Cop26 climate conference was a decision to burn no more fossil fuels after 2030. Instead, powerful governments sought a compromise between our prospects of survival and the interests of the fossil fuel industry. But there was no room for compromise.

The decisions made by our leaders in Glasgow have grave consequences for all of humanity. As they have clearly forgotten the people they serve, the people must come together to show them what can be achieved. We must stand together to call on our governments to take ambitious action on climate change that puts people and human rights at its center. If we do not put our hearts and minds into solving this existential threat to humanity, we lose everything.