“The journey to net-zero has to happen with and for our people, not to them,” warned Susan Aitken, leader of the city council in Glasgow, the Scottish city that will host the COP26 UN climate negotiations in November.
“It can't be about just telling our poorest residents what they have to give up ... has to show how to take advantage of this changing world,” she said during an online event marking 100 days until the key talks. More than a half-century later, Glasgow is still battling social deprivation as a result of the city's painful industrial decline starting in the 1950s, Aitken said.
That has made clear that as a new major economic shift gets under way to try to ward off surging climate threats, “anything but a just transition we will come to regret”, she said. Nigel Topping, Britain's high-level climate action champion for COP26, said failure to make sure the coming green shift was fair and benefited the poor as well as the rich would derail it.