A farmer from the Delisle area is in Scotland for the COP26 conference.

Glenn Wright is a member of the National Farmers Union and hopes the two weeks of meetings will kick-start the process to reduce carbon emissions.

He says all countries need to make a contribution.

“China is certainly the largest emitter in the world now, and so to pretend that we can do this on our own or wait until China acts, neither of those things are going to work,” Wright said. “It goes back to that word of trust that we all have to do some heavy lifting and accelerate that transition.”

Wright says it wasn’t an easy decision to participate, but hopes a consensus can be reached to reduce carbon emissions.

“I really struggled with it because there’s a lot of emissions associated with flying thousands of people from all over the world to go to a climate change conference, there’s a certain amount of hypocrisy there,” Wright said. “I do find hope in action, I’m hopeful that we’re going to have more ambition coming out of this COP26 Conference than we have ever collectively had before because the situation is more dire than ever before.”

Wright says climate change has become more extreme and damaging, pointing to this summer’s drought over most of Western Canada as an example.

(CJWW)