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On Sunday, a historic deal was agreed by COP 27 establishing a “loss and damage fund” to compensate developing countries for climate disasters caused by centuries of fossil fuel use. But the UN Secretary-General acknowledged there was little progress on crucial issues such as ending use of fossil fuels and limiting global warming. COP seems to have addressed some of the symptoms but not the causes. When I hear COP’s aim of reaching Net Zero by 2050, I immediately do the mental maths – will I be alive then? The Hebrew Bible in the Book of Ecclesiastes assures us “there’s a time to be born and a time to die.” But this may be a false security. I wonder if we turn away from painful but necessary changes because we think that the world will progress as it should, and we’ll be saved somehow by human ingenuity, by some brilliant innovation. We’ll live and die in the right way. I remember being jolted out of this comforting assumption by the topsy-turvy timing of deaths in our family. Our youngest daughter was born just a few weeks after my mum died, whilst her mum was still alive. On the day of our daughter’s birth, our oldest child then aged 5, asked if they could give their little sister a bracha, a blessing. They must’ve absorbed that something out of the natural order was happening to us. They gently put their hands on her sister’s head and said, “I want to give you the blessing that you should die when you should.” In Jewish funerals we quote the Psalmist, who warns us not to take tomorrow for granted, “We’re frail, our days are like grass, we may flourish like the flower of the field; but the wind passes over it, and it’s gone.” I believe our lives are sharpened, given meaning, through understanding the reality of death. It might help inject a sense of urgency and agency. If we see our lives through the reality of death, we may be gifted the knowledge that some of our actions can influence the quality of life and the timing of our death, and the life and death of future generations. The world’s current trajectory will not enable us to flourish like the flowers of the field. We don’t need to delegate this just to an international annual conference. We can, even if only partially, enable our families, our friends, our world to live and to die, when, and how we should.