Countries like Pakistan end up paying the price for climate change – Yorkshire Post Letters

One-third of Pakistan is under water and the forecast is for the situation to get worse.

Nearly one million livestock have been lost and more than two million acres of farmland with 90 per cent of crops have been damaged.

So far, over 1,350 people have died and 33 million people, possibly more, have been displaced. Many of these will not survive this disaster.

Pakistan is about 2.6 per cent of the world’s population and contributes less than 1 per cent of global carbon emissions.

Pakistan’s contribution to climate change is barely measurable yet as a nation it is on the brink of devastation caused by the effects of climate change.

Scientists believe fossil fuel use is likely to have contributed to the extreme rainfall, and known to be a direct cause of the rapid melting of glaciers.

Industrialised countries like the UK have to take responsibility for the result of many decades of increasingly intensifying use of fossil fuels.

In 2008 the Labour government was the world’s first to legally commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Climate Change Act sought to cut emissions (from 1990 levels) by 80 per cent by 2050.

Then, in 2013 David Cameron famously cut the “green crap”, getting rid of state-funded energy saving measures that would have cut household bills and prevented more pollution.

In 2019, in preparation for hosting COP 26, the government upgraded the terms of the Climate Change Act to a target of 100 per cent without being clear on how it would be implemented or paid for.After a decade, nothing of any consequence has been done.

The intention of the Climate Change Act itself is now under attack by a group of Tory MPs who say that achieving net zero emissions by 2050 is too expensive and too rapid. Too rapid?

Surely, if one lesson has been learned it is that not taking rapid action at the right time amounts to deadly neglect. Spare a thought for people living in vulnerable countries like Pakistan.