The message to Cop26: Climate action has to be now or never

We may have put our climate ambitions into law in Ireland, but as world leaders gather in Glasgow for this week’s crisis conference, environmental scientists argue that radical action is needed to meet the challenge, rather than more words and promises

Climate conferences have so far failed to see any follow-through on their ambitions. Paris promised, but Glasgow has to deliver. Picture: Jane Barlow/PA

Lazarus Chakwera described the immediacy of the climate crisis facing his country with chilling clarity last week.

"Already we have suffered a great deal. People dying. Crops destroyed. In some places, flooding. In other places, drought,” the president of Malawi said.

"If you have more floods, that's more death. If we have more droughts, that's more death. If we have cyclones, it's more death. So it's death, death, death."

As world leaders travel to Glasgow ...