Urgent Action for a Healthy Climate, COP 26, October 31, 2021
COP26: October 31-November 12, 2021
Healthy C Planet Action Coalition
Dear COP26 Delegates and Stakeholders,
We are an international network of scientists, engineers, physicists, biologists, and public policy
experts active in the climate change arena. We are extremely concerned about the accelerating pace
of climate disruption and are calling for your leadership at the COP26 in Glasgow and thereafter to
urgently mobilize an expanded global response. Immediate action must be taken to prevent further
catastrophic increases in temperature, weather extremes, sea level rise, and polar ice and permafrost
melt that could be leading to runaway feedbacks, making future climate stabilization almost
impossible to achieve. The reduced temperature difference between the poles and tropics created by
polar temperature rising three times faster than the global mean has already resulted in a deadly
disruption of jet stream behaviour. This has slowed weather patterns and caused increasingly extreme
weather events throughout the world. We must collectively commit to restoring a healthy climate
now.
The world needs broader international cooperation to protect humanity and to restore and regenerate
our ecosystems. We ask you to undertake an expanded set of effective climate interventions including
immediately launching an expedited, multi-disciplinary, and inclusive program to evaluate and
deploy measures designed to regenerate polar ice and reduce extreme weather. All options must be on
the table and evaluated for effectiveness, feasibility, equity, safety, timeframe, and the potential for
unintended consequences. This program would be accompanied by rapidly scaling up efforts to
prevent dangerous global heating and to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) concentrations to levels at
which civilization has historically developed and can flourish.
We ask that COP26 adopt a resolution committing to develop a climate restoration plan no
later than 2023 to limit global warming to well below 1° C. An effective and responsible plan
will need to integrate three approaches:
1. Cooling the planet, particularly the polar regions and the Himalayas,
2. Reducing GHG emissions, including methane and other short-lived warming agents, and
3. Removing legacy CO2, methane, and other GHGs from the atmosphere.
