Thousands upon thousands of words have already been spilled over COP26 and the fact that these conferences lead to very little tangible improvements. Certainly there are a few positives, including laying the groundwork for more carbon pricing and shaming most but not all countries into reducing coal burning and deforestation. But the scale of the problem is just too large, to completely transform power generation in less than a generation. It doesn't help that most (though not all) environmentalists are passionately against nuclear power, which could have met some needs, particularly in countries that don't have abundant sunshine, though this would have had to have been done (carefully) over the past 20-30 years. Now it is too late to ramp up in any meaningful way.
Politicians are simply unwilling to face up to the fact that societies have to live within the earth's means and that means far less consumption than we have now, but then that means that a huge swath of the population (and not just the relatively small number of people employed in the fossil fuel sector) will be unemployed or underemployed. Our political system is simply not geared up for such an outcome, and that's why so much of the discussion ends up being around magic technological solutions that are simply never going to come true. I do think a lot of environmentalists simply don't see or acknowledge the upheaval that these fundamental shifts will require; it's not just the energy firms that will balk. Similarly, there are a lot of planners who say switching to electric cars is pointless and everyone has to walk, cycle or take transit. All I can say is that this will not happen, no matter how much they want this because metro areas are simply not set up in such a fashion to make this truly feasible.
Also, there is a lot of disagreement over just what has to be done. You have some experts calling for a gradual decline in aviation while alternative jet fuel is worked out, whereas George Monbiot is literally telling everyone to stop flying today. I feel in general I have lived a fairly low carbon lifestyle (for someone in North America that is) with no car for the last ten years, and indeed I have never in my life regularly commuted by car, though I did drive a fair bit in my teens. I've been vegetarian, though not vegan, for 30 years, which also is lower impact. But still I think about how hard it would be in my own life to completely give up flying, and I really don't travel that often, trying to take the train when feasible. Maybe they really will restore the train link between Windsor and Detroit, so that a Toronto-Detroit-Chicago train becomes possible (though still drastically slower than flying). I'd probably be willing to take that once in a while to lower my emissions, but I wouldn't take the train to Vancouver for instance. And I would like to make it back to Europe a few times before I die. So in that sense virtually everyone is a hypocrite and will not do "everything is takes," and it is the same story pretty much everywhere.
I don't think there is any sugar coating the fact that humans will not make the necessary sacrifices. That's not to say there will be no improvements, but we're going to have to figure out how to live with a planet that is going to overheat. I think moving to the GTA was probably the right move, as it won't flood (like Vancouver or even NYC) and the warmer weather isn't likely to be life-threatening as it will likely be in much of the US South. All things considered, Canada will probably come out ahead, but this is only relatively speaking. If some of the worst predictions come true, then even being up here only buys us another 10 or 20 years. Of course, it might not be that bad, and perhaps they will magically suck the CO2 and methane out of the air, saving us all, but I don't think that is particularly likely. I think the next 50-100 years are likely to be pretty grim indeed, at least at the global scale, though there may be places that largely ride out the storm (perhaps Ontario). For certain, this is one of the few times I hope to be proven wrong.
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