Naturesteve Adventures @Cop26

So how did I get to sit at the same table with Bill Gates at the biggest?& most important?climate conference humanity has?ever?seen in Glasgow?

For those of you that haven’t heard,?COP26 is a climate conference, held by the United Nation. And since we are on such a turning point in history when it comes to dealing with the climate crises this conference really couldn't be more important. Because lets not kid ourselves, we have to take decisions right now if we want to continue the happy and somewhat comfortable life most of us know.?

COP26 entails two weeks of?Climate?"festival" in which world leaders, representatives of the?business and private sectors, environmental organizations, concerned citizens, children and adults gather?all together?to discuss one of the most important issues of our time: the climate crisis. The main goal of the conference is to prevent?global warming of 1.5 degrees.

So how did I end up traveling to Glasgow? I took part in the Israeli government delegation, around 150 representatives from different sectors (the second biggest delegation after the U.S.) and I traveled on behalf of my startup company that deals with renewable energies (stay tuned for news on that one!).

As I entered the compound on my first day at the conference, I felt good to be in a place where everyone around - from indigenous tribes in the Amazon rainforests to business people from Europe – seem to have shared a common interest. The first day was also accompanied by a serious sense of FOMO, there were hundreds of different meetings, lectures, complexes, 30,000 people attended, hundreds of booths from countries around the world, a city I never visited, and the first climate conference I was in, so you can imagine why I wanted to be everywhere and split myself up.

On the second day I already understood what I needed to do and it was just to go with the flow, and so I did. I joined a number of people who were with me in the Israeli government delegation and we went from meetings to lectures to inspiring conversations.

As part of these conversations, I met the Minister of Environmental Protection, Tamar Zandberg, the Minister of Energy, Karin Elharar, and the CEOs and VPs of the their offices as well as members of the business sector, investors from VC’s, reporters, and environmentalists, all from Israel and abroad. Interestingly, I sat behind Bill Gates in his speech in one of the panels where I also heard Prince Williams speak. Not to mention John Kerry, the U.S Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, Indian Prime Minister Modi, Prince Charles and many other leaders simply passed by me casually. One thing I realized from this, is that no matter what your social status is, in the end we are all humans, we will all suffer from the consequences of climate crises when “shit hits the fan”.

A group of people who is already deeply affected by the consequences of climate change are Indigenous tribes. Some of them were participating in COP26. I watched a community living in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil report firsthand the damages of human activity such as deforestation, burning up of crops and the loss of the natural world. The pollution caused in countries like the US or China has direct effect on them already today. Also representatives of the Maldives explained that their fear of the climate crises is all too real, as rising sea levels around the world will very soon make the islands of the Maldives a “fairytale Atlantis” story.

How committed is the COP26 to not letting that happen? First of all, there is the choice of location. Experts claim, that all the private jets used to fly hundreds of world leaders into Glasgow produced more greenhouse gas emissions from burning fuel than 1,600 Scots would be emitting in a whole year. Why not hold the conference in the middle of Europe, so people can reach the event easily by train? Also the food options during the conference were problematic: Most of the dishes served were containing meat (the number third most polluting industry worldwide is the livestock industry). I mean, “God is in the small details”, am I right? You would expect that the biggest climate conference would approach this issue and showcase innovation in this field, but it didn't. This, in a nutshell, is the problem of Cop26, or as Greta Thunberg called it, the “greenwash climate festival” Cop26. The fact that hundreds of delegates of fossil fuel companies, more than any national delegation, were welcomed at the conference added to this impression.?

Still, the first week of the conference did end with world leaders agreeing to the following three main issues –

1.?????The countries of the world pledged to reduce emissions of methane gas (one of the most harmful greenhouse gases) by about 30% by 2030.

2.?????Countries around the world signed and agreed to stop deforestation and preserve it until 2030 (but who says the worlds forests will remain until then?)

3.?????Various countries announced targets for greenhouse gas emissions, with some countries committing to 2050 and some to 2070, but without any real laws & regulations.

According to estimates and models conducted, the decisions that were announced during the conference prevent global warming of over 1.9 degrees, instead of the 2.7 degrees that was estimated before the conference in Glasgow. With 1.9 degrees we are still in the "Red Zone” for humanity as was described in the IPCC report published by the UN.

I also want to share some personal insights from the conference -

1.?????I continue to believe that renewable energies & technologies such as solar, wind, hydro are some of the most significant solutions to solving the crisis and I also believe that Israel can be in the forefront of this and export technologies in the field. Naftali Bennett is trying to promote this with the introduction of the Bill Gates Foundation on Climate Technologies to Israel, called Breakthrough Energy.

2.?????There is a massive awakening of people around the world and a desire to address the pressing issues. But: many people do not know where to begin from.

3.?????Education and a change of the way we live today is required - consumption, nutrition, transportation and more need to systematically be rooted & changed from the ground up.

4.?????The lack of female representation regarding world leaders and the business sector is troubling. This is a huge obstacle in the process of finding solutions for a crisis, that according to UN figures affects women a lot more than men. There is an urgent need for gender sensitive responses to the impacts of climate change, yet the average representation of women in national and global climate negotiating bodies is below 30 Percent.?

5.?????The climate crisis is also an economic opportunity for countries and companies, so we can really see a significant increase in investment in the field, it is a "rising stock" and it is good for us. However, it should be seen that business deals in the field really promote and help the environment and not just “greenwash”.

6.?????I recognized the rising social gaps between leaders / politicians / and business people to environmental activists. There were thousands of demonstrators outside the conference protesting against the leaders that aren’t doing enough and are mostly making statements without real commitment to solving the issues.

7.?????And the last and most important insight is that it is really in our hands: if we do not act in the right direction we will very quickly find ourselves in the extinction of all the biodiversity (which includes all living beings on Earth, yes including us).

During COVID-19 the world worked together to achieve a global vaccine, if it was possible in such a short period of time, then the same thing goes for the climate crisis. The question though is how much of nature will we lose along the way? I am an optimist and will always remain one, but this requires a massive mobilization of people from various sectors of society.

Anyone who has read this post until the end and still does not understand the climate crisis, and hasn’t asked himself/herself what they can do on this issue, I invite you to contact me.

#Let's come together and lead the world in the right direction