COMMENT | The climate crisis is a code red for humanity.

World leaders will soon be put to the test at the UN Climate Conference - known as COP26 - in Glasgow.

Their actions - or inactions - will show their seriousness about addressing this planetary emergency.

The warning signs are hard to miss - temperatures everywhere are reaching new highs; biodiversity is reaching new lows; oceans are warming, acidifying and choking with plastic waste.

Increasing temperatures will make vast stretches of our planet dead zones for humanity by the century’s end.

And the respected medical journal The Lancet just described climate change as the “defining narrative of human health” in the years to come - a crisis defined by widespread hunger, respiratory illness, deadly disasters and infectious disease outbreaks that could be even worse than the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite these alarm bells ringing at fever pitch, we see new evidence in the latest UN reports that governments’ actions so far simply do not add up to what is so desperately needed.

Recent new announcements for climate action are...