PEACE-MAKER
Former Speaker of the House
Indeed, our planet Earth and humankind have been suffering from the devastating effects of climate change.
And we certainly need all the solidarity and sense of purpose we can raise since global warming is the most potentially catastrophic of the dangers threatening all of us.
Scientists have pointed out that since the late 19th century, there has been a marked rise in the average temperature of the atmosphere and the oceans, because of the increasing concentration of “greenhouse” gases that trap the sun’s warmth.
Already people are experiencing more frequent occurrences of extreme weather: heat waves, droughts, heavy rainfall, deadly tornadoes, and snowstorms caused by shifting temperature regimes. And already rising water temperatures have disturbed the food chain in the Pacific, causing the dramatic decline of creatures crucial to the survival of species.
Experts have warned that if governments’ promises to fight climate change are not met, our planet could expect mean temperatures 4.0 degrees Celsius (7.2 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels as early as the 2060’s.
And the immediate impact may be on food production. Already the global community is having difficulty meeting the food demands of a growing and increasingly wealthy population eating more meat. Climate change threatens to put prosperity out of reach of millions still kept down by poverty and to roll back decades of development.
More aggressive concerted action by the key states is necessary. Ironically, rising living standards in the emerging countries make them reluctant to accept restraints on their initial taste of prosperity, which will radically increase their people’s demand for electric power and the burning of fossil fuels.
The global community must step up efforts to reduce “greenhouse” effects and emissions from powerhouses and other industrial energy sources.
Then it needs to cut down the use of polluting coal, which is right now the prime energy provider for large economies like America and China. In wealthy countries, economic and political conservatives not only reject higher-cost energy alternatives to coal, there are those who still cast doubt on the science of global warming.
The international community had agreed to complete a binding agreement for greenhouse gases for all countries by 2015. But, so far, our need for a binding agreement has been frustrated by self-pleading on the part of some of the powers. The common fear is that environmental strictures will slow down economic growth.
Indeed, to mitigate the pollution of the atmosphere, global civil society needs to summon a degree of moral anger.
The international community must set more rigorous, indeed tougher standards against which to measure and penalize carbon emissions.
We see our shared task as that of generating preventive action against global warming. Awareness of climate change and its cause by human activity is certainly growing worldwide. But it is not growing fast enough to get people to demand immediate and decisive action from those who lead them.
We ourselves believe governments and political parties must deal with the threat of climate change and global warming with a greater and more sustained sense of urgency than they have done so far, because the stakes are higher than in any political or economic crisis of the moment.
We need to match with our efforts the dimensions and the gravity of the ‘clear and present’ danger humankind faces.
