EXTRA, EXTRA!!!!! There Is No Planet B

I perfectly remember my first contact with climate change as a child: it was October 1998 when the powerful and destructive Hurricane Mitch literally blew away thousands of lives in Central America. As a little girl, I felt the urge to do something for the planet and those people who were struggling at that time, so I asked my parents to give away all of my savings so I could do my bit to solve this terrible situation.

As you can imagine, the life savings of a seven year old girl didn’t change the situation in the Caribbean, but from that moment something switched on in my head.

It was just a little later on in time when my mom showed me the video of a girl just a few years older than me, she was speaking to adults who listened to her very carefully, they looked worried rather concerned about what this twelve year old Canadian girl was putting on the table.

I saw that video a few years after the Earth Summit took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, so I could understand it, but even nowadays –twenty four years after- Severn Cullis-Suzuki had such a powerful and challenging message to the world.

This U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 (best known as the Earth Summit) was an historic event and among other outcomes, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) was created.

Five years after the summit in the Brazilian city, the scientific community, -some- governments and the civil society in general, started realizing the dimensions of the impacts climate change could have on livelihoods across the world, so was during this COP3 in Kyoto when the Kyoto Protocol was established, which went into effect in 2005.

Despite the noble intentions of this agreement, it was not only weak but far from being ratified by the biggest Green House Gasses emitters (GHG from now on), such as United States, China or Australia.

After this event in 2005, summits have been happening year after year without noticeable changes occupying the headlines of the newspapers although, let’s face it, issues such as climate change or sustainability never do. And I ask myself, how costly might be getting together leaders from almost 200 countries in some beautiful city to not agree absolutely anything convincing that will change our roadmap towards collapse?

It is a matter of fact that civil society is aware of climate change and its consequences, but we are only starting to realize the power we have as inhabitants of the planet and as consumers.

For instance, on the road to Paris (Cop21), things began to switch the year before when hundreds of thousands of climate activists (people, businesses, schools and other organizations) gathered in for the People’s Climate March in New York for the largest climate march in history. This was nothing but a great prelude to the summit which would change the rules of the game.

The Cop21 established more tangible indicators and roofs to contamination levels, being the main topic –and resolution- of the discussion “To avoid that the increase of the average global temperature exceeds 2ºC with respect to the pre-industrial levels and also seeks to promote additional efforts that make it possible for global warming not to exceed 1.5ºC”. One of the ways how they will try to make this happen is through a “review cycle or system of ambition that states that every five years (starting in 2023), it is necessary to take stock of the state of implementation of the Agreement”

The Paris Agreenment established the framework for international climate action. But setting out the details is a longer process, which the countries participating in COP22 have decided should be completed by 2018, with a review of progress in 2017.

This timeline channels that few of the loose ends left by the COP21 in the French capital were tied up in Marrakech this November.

On the other hand, another mayor event took place during the summit: during the first session everything went as planned, but on Tuesday the US elections took place and despite the hopes or previsions of many, Mr Trump was the president-elect, making the whole thing shake and the biggest question hanging over the summit was whether he will pull out “the land of opportunity” out of the Paris Agreement.

The effects of climate change are now more tangible than ever, and even this is an event without historical precedents, we must face it without contemplations.

Moreover, even looking at this issue with selfishness and taking out of the equation the global welfare of the planet itself and all the life in it –from plants to human beings passing through animals-, we need to have in mind that each of the countries on earth are struggling due to climate change through a wide range of reasons: floods, hurricanes, desertification, hunger… everybody suffers, somehow. So, if we stop trying to individually patch our local situation and we row together towards a better solution for all of us?

No hay comentarios / 30 Nov 2016 por Cristina Kirkendall
IMSD /

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