Climate Change: Your questions answered by our Cambridge University expert
Climate change expert Dr Emily Shuckburgh answers questions from ITV News Anglia viewers
Ahead of the COP26 climate summit, ITV News Anglia produced a special programme looking at the impact of climate change on the Eastern Region.
Dr Emily Shuckburgh is one of the world's leading experts on climate change, and will advise the UK government at COP26. She's also the head of Cambridge Zero and a fellow at the University's Darwin College.
The special programme marks the beginning of our coverage of COP26, which will take place in Glasgow in November - it's billed as the most important climate summit since a landmark agreement was signed in Paris in 2015.
Throughout our coverage of COP26 we will be put viewers' questions to Dr Shuckburgh - from the small changes we can make in our lives to help benefit the planet, to the bigger impacts of climate change on our region.
Send them to us via Facebook, Twitter or email us: anglianews@itv.com
How do you get so many different countries to agree on taking action? China, in particular, just may not agree to cut its carbon emissions. (Eddie, Northampton)
Climate change is a global problem that requires a global response. And it really does need all countries to step up and to agree to cut their emissions so that we're on a global pathway to a net zero future.At the moment, the pledges that countries have put forward are not sufficient to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. China has agreed to do something. They've currently agreed to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, so to cut their emissions by 2060.But what we're looking for, in Glasgow, in the coming weeks is for every country to come along with increased pledges in terms of their emissions reductions.
If and when Sizewell and Bradwell nuclear power stations start working, they will raise the temperature of the sea. Is this going to have an effect on climate change?
So there's a set of issues to do with nuclear power. One is what role nuclear power has in a de-carbonised energy system. So is nuclear power part of the future energy mix as we're trying to eliminate the use of fossil fuels?The other question is that, as the question points out, nuclear power stations are often located on the coast, and that's infrastructure that is at risk from sea level rise and so at risk from the impacts of climate change.So all these different considerations need to be taken into account.
Is the ozone layer damaged by the space rockets using fossil fuels?
Ozone used to be talked about a lot, didn't it, that there was the ozone hole? Perhaps it's less so now, but it's still a big concern.
It is a different environmental problem from climate change. And the ozone hole was largely created by our use of particular chemicals in spray cans, which ended up destroying the ozone in certain parts of the atmosphere.
The key issue to do with the ozone hole was that there was around about 15, 20 years when those chemicals were in extensive use globally before they were phased out by international agreements. But it's taking a really long time for the atmosphere to recover so you can damage the environment rapidly and it takes a long time for that to recover.