Let’s keep our fingers crossed. At long last, almost all of the countries of the world are taking man-made global-climate change seriously.
What’s better is they seem serious about taking action to stop it – at least to stop it from getting any worse. Long overdue. As I’ve often said, there are two good reasons to push for better, greener energy sources. For one thing, pollution – especially in some cities, like Beijing – is so bad its toxic smogs are killing people and debilitating others, such as asthma sufferers. It’s mordantly amusing some people who are so down on tobacco-smoking rarely if ever rail against the carbon-based fuel pollution that surrounds us all. This is a good move even if one doesn’t think man-made climate change is a fact.
The other good reason – another life-or-death reason – to go green as much as possible is to slow or stop man-made climate change. I’m one of the many people who happen to think 97 percent of scientists are correct in warning us that man-made activities are rapidly making this planet extremely dangerous and most probably, if nothing is done, virtually uninhabitable as this century stumbles on.
Science deniers, of course, continue to scoff at climate change. Well, let them scoff, along with those who insist Planet Earth is only 6,000 years old. Nobody should waste time trying to persuade such unbelievers; instead, precious time (which is running out like sand in the hour glass) should be spent on working toward climate-change solutions.
That is why it’s so good to know there are this week leaders from 196 nations gathered in Paris for the United Nations Convention on Climate Change. They include the United States and China, which, along with India, are the world’s biggest “emitters” – that is, those whose production activities release the most carbon dioxide and methane into our atmosphere.
The goal of the Paris convention is to create a binding agreement among all nations to keep global temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees F. from pre-industrial levels (early 1800s). Already, China and the United States have agreed to switch their industries to use lower-carbon fuels and other forms of power over a period of time. Let’s hope other nations sign on to those kinds of agreements.
If ever the sentence “We’re all in this together” made sense, it’s now, with rapid climate change threatening our Earth and all who inhabit it, including our fellow inhabitants, the animals. We have made a rotten poisonous mess of this planet, and it’s time all nations fess up and do something about it – working together.
The warning signs are there, all around us, and climatologists and even untrained weather observers have noticed in just the past decade or two, weather patterns are so out of whack that deadly extremes are happening with greater frequency and severity: monstrous hurricanes, devastating floods, massive droughts, widespread fires, the faster-than-usual melting of glaciers and polar ice, the rise of the ocean level, swings in extremes of temperatures.
Climate change causes more than deadly weather events. It’s also a dire threat to plant and animal species, pushing many to the verge of extinction. Furthermore, climate change can and will increasingly cause horrific instabilities in regions of the world: droughts or floods causing loss of crops, competition for dwindling food supplies and scarcer resources, severe disruptions and inequalities in over-populated countries, fierce fights and even outright wars over inhabitable lands. It’s the nightmare stuff of those doom-filled science-fiction movies.
Weather-related catastrophes during the past 20 years have caused an estimated 606,000 deaths and billions of injuries, with a total estimated cost approaching nearly $300 billion. With 178 of the countries at the conference pledging to reduce pollution and specifying ways they will do that, there is cause for hope because it appears a critical mass of leaders and nations have awakened to see the handwriting on the wall.
The Paris convention includes hundreds of delegates such as scientists, political people, leaders of businesses and industries, and people dedicated to preserving this planet’s interconnected complex ecosystems.
In the wake of the butchery in Paris by vicious terrorists, wouldn’t it be a wonderful outcome if those at this conference counter the forces of darkness by initiating a new collective light in this world. Paris is, after all, the “City of Light.” Let us hope the good forces of worldwide civilization will prevail, that a powerful light will counter this terrible darkness that has reared its ugly head so often in recent years. A strike against climate change would be, ultimately, a plus for enlightenment, a boost for world peace.
