United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has been getting increasingly strident about his chiding the international community about not doing enough to stop climate change. For good reason of course.
Guterres said this to the assemble representatives in Berlin:
“We have a choice. Collective action or collective suicide. It is in our hands,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told leaders from more than 40 countries who had gathered in Berlin for the Petersberg Climate Dialogue.”
He seems to have taken a cue from Greta Thunberg that this is an emergency but no one is treating it like an emergency. In reaction to the recent wild fires in Europe and the UK suffering the highest temperature in its history Thunberg tweeted as follows:
“This is not “the new normal”. The climate crisis will continue to escalate and get worse as long as we stick our heads in the sand and prioritise profit and greed over people and planet. We are still sleepwalking towards the edge.”
Guterres also said:
“Half of humanity is in the danger zone from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires. No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction.
What troubles me most is that, in facing this global crisis, we are failing to work together as a multilateral community. Nations continue to play the blame game instead of taking responsibility for our collective future. We cannot continue this way”.
What troubles me most is that nobody is complaining about what he said. The leaders and the countries around the world, including Canada, are treating the climate crisis as business as usual. No one seems upset
Those are all pretty strong words. Where is the pretty strong action? Does anyone care? This was the theme of the brilliant recent film Looking Up–i.e. no one cares. In that film which is a spoof on the climate crisis, the world is coming to an end literally no one cares. No one takes it seriously. TV newspeople try to make it into a fun fact. How is that possible? Nobody cares about environmental apocalypse. Can it be true that no one cares?
It must be true.
I think your comment is dead on John. My biggest concern is tied to the fact that people in developed countries continually express their great concerns that the steps needed to actually prevent the worst aspects of climate change will impact negatively on the lifestyles they have grown very comfortable with (eg. I won’t be able to travel 1000 km a day in an EV when I want to get to my condo in Florida). They fail to see that the current lifestyle is the problem! It is completely unsustainable. The only way we will “make it” with climate control is to accept that certain aspects of the way we live will have to be dialed back somewhat. This is going to be extremely difficult to carry out in countries that believe that “freedom” begins with me being able to live however I want with as much as I want.
I agree completely. And–sadly–I am not without sin