If a climate cataclysm does happen at some point in the future — and at the current rate of global warming it looks increasingly inevitable within the next few decades — we will not be able to argue that it took us by surprise, or to claim our innocence. We have been warned repeatedly that, environmentally speaking, our behavior is unsustainable but we have chosen to ignore all the hazard lights. Well, we have not completely ignored the fact that something unsavory is affecting our planet due to our patterns of production and consumption. After all, it has been discussed extensively on myriad platforms, our governments have agreed on far-reaching plans of action, and we constantly declare how worried we are about the future of the planet. We even recycle more, use more renewable energy, and consume less meat. But still, when it comes to the necessary drastic, hardcore behavioral changes, as individuals and governments we are falling way short of what is required to save the only planet we have. When the delegates at the Stockholm+50: A Healthy Planet for the Prosperity of All — Our Responsibility, Our Opportunity conference gathered last week in the Swedish capital, it felt as though even they doubted that there is still an opportunity to prevent the dreaded milestone of our planet warming by 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, given that all the evidence shows that global warming is continuing on an upward spiral. The event was more like a memorial service for a climate change age of innocence. The beginning of that age was marked by the UN Conference on the Human Environment, which took place in the very same city 50 years ago. It was followed 20 years later by the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, better known as the Rio Earth Summit, which brought to the world’s attention the severe consequences for humanity if we failed to care for our land, forests, oceans and the air around us. In the intervening years, scientific evidence has established that all around the globe, humans are causing unprecedented, and in many cases irreversible, changes to the environment, and that we are fast approaching a tipping point that no course of action will be able to reverse. Reaching this tipping point will leave us with very few tools to stop the inevitable catastrophe. In the meantime, global temperature rises are doing increasing amounts of damage at a rapid pace to biodiversity and ecosystems, which in turn threatens the lives and livelihoods of billions of people. It is a grim scenario that can only be contained, and eventually reversed, if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which in simple terms means reducing the amount of fossil fuels we burn. As a point of comparison, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now reaching levels 50 percent higher than when humanity began the large-scale burning of fossil fuels, chiefly coal, during the Industrial Revolution, and nearly a third higher than when that first environmental conference took place in Stockholm in 1972. This leaves no doubt about the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions and the devastating consequences that lie ahead. This week’s gathering in Stockholm took place at the midpoint between COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference, in Glasgow last year and COP27, which will be held in November in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. In the lead-up to COP27, world leaders need to convince us all that they will not lose sight of the dangers of unsustainable development. Yossi Mekelberg The meeting in Glasgow gave genuine momentum to the sense of global togetherness in tackling climate change urgently and with common purpose, including among those countries that account for the lion’s share of greenhouse gas emissions. But since then the global agenda has been turned upside down. Even before COP26, and ever since, one international crisis has been quickly followed by another in a seemingly endless series that has led to worldwide political instability. As the COVID-19 pandemic began to recede, the decision by the US and its allies to withdraw from Afghanistan created much indignation and a loss of faith in Washington and the West. This was followed by Russia’s unspeakable brutality in Ukraine, which threatens to spill over to other locations and also raises the specter of a third, nuclear, world war. The resulting increases in the prices of energy and food have hit us with a cost-of-living crisis. Meanwhile, efforts to tackle climate change continue to drop down the international community’s list of priorities. If anything, the current worldwide turmoil underlines the unquestionable necessity of switching to renewable energy, for political as well as environmental reasons. In the short term, however, governments continue to demonstrate a lack of capacity, resourcefulness and, above all, vision. They resort to mere patch-up policies to relieve political pressures, and addressing climate change has proven to be one of the first victims of this feeble response. The energy crisis exposed how ill-prepared are the countries that are most heavily reliant on fossil fuels and how far behind they have fallen in increasing the use of renewable alternatives, improving energy efficiency, and reducing our polluting habits when it comes to issues such as transportation, food consumption, home insulation and water waste. And now, when climate change means that global unity is paramount, the world is in the most divided state it has been certainly since the end of the Cold War, and arguably since the Second World War. As important as international environmental gatherings and the pledges the participants commit to are, particularly in keeping the issue of climate change alive in the public sphere and people’s minds, they are far from being the solution to the problem. More important is actual compliance with these pledges and commitments, without being side-tracked by other issues, however important they might be. In 1972, the UN Conference on the Human Environment brought to the world’s attention our unsustainable production and consumption patterns. But since then we have actually caused a threefold increase in the use of natural resources and by all accounts, including a recent report by the Stockholm Environment Institute, we have met only a fraction of the hundreds of global environmental and sustainable development targets agreed by countries, and made significant progress toward very few of them. It might not be too late to change direction and step up a gear in the drive for sustainable development to help reduce global inequalities and enable the planet to survive, but the timeline available for achieving this is becoming shorter and shorter. In the lead-up to COP27, world leaders need to convince us all that despite the multi-layered crises the world is facing, and with everybody’s unqualified support, they will not for a split second lose sight of the dangers of unsustainable development and a resultant catastrophe that would render all other problems insignificant. Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg