But I believe that the key reason for much of the current inaction — and the greatest threat to progress at COP26 — is a lack of empathy. It is the inability of some of the most influential leaders and of large swaths of the public on whose votes they depend, including in North America, Europe and Australia, to see the majority of the victims of climate change as fully real people, deserving of protection. And that is partly because of those victims’ skin color.
The only antidote to this ‘othering’, and to injustice of every kind, is a more radical empathy. If we are to succeed in fighting climate change, we need to develop deep empathy for all our fellow global citizens, and we should demand that our leaders demonstrate their ability do the same.
When we hear Pacific islanders explain how it feels to be facing extinction, we must be able to feel their dread. When we see climate refugees forced to leave Africa’s Sahel region, where unpredictable rainfall means they can no longer rely on their own crops to feed their children, we have to actually experience their anxiety, their despair, their hope.
Empathy requires work. It is not an easy task to really understand that a person who doesn’t look like you, talk like you or pray like you is, in fact, your brother or sister. It can be difficult, or even feel antagonistic, to be asked to glimpse the world through a stranger’s eyes, but doing it can lead us to recognize the beauty of our common humanity in ways that can transform the world.
The best way to open our minds and hearts and learn to empathize is to truly listen to others. That is perhaps the best opportunity that COP26 provides. We must give the people who have the most to lose from our climate inaction — inhabitants of the global south, members of poor and vulnerable communities and young people — an unfettered platform to express their fear and frustration and to share the solutions they know are required.
When they do, the rest of the world must pay very careful attention — at COP26 and beyond — and then act in unison to make social and racial justice a centerpiece of climate solutions, all pursued with renewed commitment.
If we can all take a leap of faith and start to perceive every current and future inhabitant of this fragile planet as being just as startlingly human as we are, then we may have a chance to avoid further climate disaster. We might also at last be able to build a new world in which racial and social injustice are things of the past. We all stand to gain from meeting that target. It seems to me that COP26 is as good a place as any to start.