Greening the Planet Must Not End in Glasgow

Glasgow, the location of COP26, officially known as the 26th Session of the Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, was once a very dirty city. In the 18th century, tobacco, sugar and slavery transformed it from a small market town to a merchant capital.

But it was the completion of the Monkland Canal in 1791, connecting it to the iron ore and coal mines in Lanarkshire, that placed Glasgow at the heart of the world’s first industrial revolution. Within a century, its population had increased tenfold and it had become the shipbuilding capital of the British Empire.

Steam-powered factories making textiles, carpets and leather goods filled the air