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your Royal Highness excellencies distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen the pandemic has taught us that National solutions to Global
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problems do not work we come to Glasgow with global ambition to save our people and to save our planet but we now find three gaps on mitigation climate pledges
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or ndc's without more we will leave the world on a pathway to 2.7 de and with more we are still likely to get to two
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deg these commitments made by some are based on Technologies yet to be developed and this is at best Reckless and at worst dangerous on finance we are
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$20 billion short of the 100 billion and this commitment even then might only be be met in 2023 on adaptation adaptation Finance
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remains only at 25% not the 50/50 split that was promised nor needed given the warming that is already taking place on this Earth climate Finance to Frontline small
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island developing States declined by 25% in 2019 failure to provide the critical Finance and that of loss and damage is measured
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my friends in lives and livelihoods in our communities this is immoral and it is unjust what is absolutely clear from the maths and the science regardless of our
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political position is that we have no hope of holding to 1.5 or even 2 Centigrade of warming unless we address the really thorny difficult issue of equity headon now what do I mean here by
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Equity well most of the emissions over half of the emissions come from just 10% of the global population and a large proportion of those of course are in the wealthy parts of the world but let's also not shy away
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from the fact that some of the poorer parts of the world particularly some of the transition economies the very wealthy people in those societies are also incredibly High emitters so Equity between nations is absolutely key and that means that the
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wealthy Nations that have prospered on the back of fossil fuels and have actually been the primary reason why we are now facing the challenges that we face on climate change that these nations have to
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rapidly move away from fossil fuels ahead of the poorer Nations but that in itself will not be enough they also need to provide significant financial um transfer reparation as I call it is not
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Aid is what we owe the poorer parts of the world to one help deal with the impacts that we have knowingly chosen to impose upon them but also so they can leap frog over the fossil fuel era to
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have a very clean zeroc carbon sustainable energy system unlike what we have here in the in the global North where we still have a very fossil fuel Rich Energy
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System but the equity lens needs to go or needs to be focus in even further because even Within countries we see deep inequity if you take a country like the US the UK much of Continental Europe
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Australia many parts of the world they the high emitting countries within those countries themselves the emissions are driven come from the lifestyles of the relatively wealthy so even within
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countries we have to say well it's not that everyone is an equal part of this the emissions need to be driven out of the relatively wealthy in our society and who are the relatively wealthy in our society they're the climate
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professors they're the journalists the legal people the entrepreneurs the policy makers all the people that frame the climate debate are in the high meting category which is one of the
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reasons why we almost never hear about Equity within countries we barely hear about Equity between countries issues of fairness and issues of responsibility are really key we're not all in this
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together relatively small groups of people are responsible for most of the emissions and have also both geographically um and financially insulated from the from the early impacts of climate change eventually
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climate change will impact on us all but that particular group is of which of course I am part that particular group hopes to both be able to um put in place things to protect us from climate change
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and not actually change our behaviors and our lifestyles we like how things have turned out for us and we are reluctant to recognize that we and our lifestyles and our Norms are now the problem that
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needs to be addressed we hear about this 100 billion dollar perom that the rich countries should be giving to the poor countries now the first thing to realize the 100 billion is a small crumb that has fallen from
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the table where the feast is going on of the of the wealthy countries and the real skill of the wealthy countries of course is to get to be to argue about the crumb the 100 billion is irrelevant
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it is just a crumb the real issue we need to be arguing about is who is feasting at the table and how do we more fairly um spread out that Bounty that we have on the table and that's the
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question that we need to be asking and we've been distracted by this 100 billion we're talking about moving trillions of dollars from the wealthy parts of the world to the poorer parts
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of the world and I think it is again key here that the wealthy countries will not engage in this of their own valtion they all need to be dragged Kicking and Screaming so the poorer parts of the world need to be
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putting significant pressure on the wealthy parts of the world to really address the equity issue but also within the wealthy parts of the world those people who are deeply concerned about
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climate change need to also recognize how key Equity is to addressing these issues and should be pushing our own government to do far more than the lip service that they offered so far and this is true not just in the US this is
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true across the EU who's doing very little on this the UK that pretty much ignores these Equity issues so there there are no Progressive so-called Progressive countries that are showing lead ership either on climate change in
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terms of Technologies or in terms of this this Equity debate so the other key issue on Equity is to think about it within our countries and what you often hear is
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that policy makers or Business Leaders or even academics those of us who in the higher mitting group will say ah we can never sell that in our country you people people won't accept it who are
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these people if we are to solve climate change then what we're talking about are putting in place technologies that are going to improve the quality of our houses so to retrofit
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to make suitable for the 21st century for heating and for cooling our current houses so that's a lot of engineering work a lot of jobs we're going to have to put in place public transport we're going to have to Electrify a lot of our industry and our transport Network so
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what we're talking about is a whole sort of physical infrastructure that needs to be transitioned to become zero carbon now that's a great jobs opportunity secure longlasting high
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quality jobs now for most people in our society they would see that as a as a positive thing and that what goes along with that is an improvement in their air quality in the cities who lives in the cities the average consumer or below
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average consumer um it's an improvement in our public transport it makes um having living in warmer houses or cooler houses it makes it more affordable it's win-win-win for that particular group and that particular group of course is
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more than half of our population the problem is that who are the ones that have got to make the changes well they are the hitters in our society as I said before they're the they're the academics they're the
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barristers they're the entrepreneurs they're the policy makers they're the journalists and that particular group the last thing that they want is to make changes to their Lifestyles So within a society within a
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country like the UK for example but this is true for most industrial countries it is not one story the story there really is at least two that the wealth in our society will have to make rapid and and
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they won't make it voluntarily we need regulations that drive rapid social change in in our lifestyles and our norms what would the changes look like in a relatively wealthy country if we were to
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make our Fair contribution to staying within 1.5° Centigrade of warming well just to give a flavor of it what we're talking about is really being zero carbon by about 2035 for the wealthy parts of the world
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and I say the poor parts of the world get a little bit longer 2035 at the most sort of 13 14 15 years from now and now that's a very short period of time and
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so what that's going to mean is that a lot of the things um that again that this wealthy say onethird of our society has normalized will have to change the size of our houses
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we shouldn't be building really huge houses anymore I would also go further and say if we are really serious about climate change we need to think about the very large properties that we have which there are many of in our society
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that need to be divided to make good quality and reasonable sized houses for say three or four families rather than just one family no more second homes and where second homes are in areas where other
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people need to live they are no longer allowed to exist so no more second homes no more business or first class flights far fewer flights and again let's think about that that sounds
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terrible if you look at somewhere like the UK 75% of all our flights are made by just 15% of the population and we know who that 15% are you know they're not the average person or the poor person so we're not talking about
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someone who flies occasionally away on holiday we're talking about people who fly really regularly they have their second homes they have their big mansions they have their large cars and this particular group all of those
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things will have to change significantly what a lot of people say well that's not possible that's a revolution well I'm sorry we've left it so late so whichever way you go it's a
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revolution there isn't there isn't a neat evolutionary way incremental stepbystep way out of this in any direction being impacted by 2 3 4°
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Centigrade of climate warming will be utter devastating for many people in society for most of us all of us in society those sorts of temperatures so the responses that we have then will have to be revolutionary and there'll be
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revolutionary chaotic uncontrolled and full of suffering the revolution I'm talking about is one that would be very challenging still but it's one that we have some control over it's one that we
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can come out of the other side with a much you know a much more prosperous sustainable future for us our children and for living in harmony with the other you know more than human species around
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the planet and so there isn't a non-radical way out of this there would have been if we started in 1990 we chose not to we chose not to in 2000 we chose not to in
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2010 we chose not to in 2020 and we are now reaping the repercussions of not driving action over 30 years so radical change is inevitable now whichever way
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we go and I think to choose radical change that is um at least in some way organized and structured and involves much less suffering is is far more preferable than
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you know leaving the climate to to to run Havoc around the planet with all the suffering and ecological collapse that that will create
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