Advertisement
Opinion | Climate change must make activists of us all, not just nations and business
- Commitments made by countries and corporations, even if implemented, are too weak to avert the looming disaster on our current trajectory
- The onus is on us, as members of societies facing the very real impacts of floods, fires and drought, to act as if our lives depend on it
Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
4
It would be a better world if nations tackled the potential devastation of climate change the way they averted nuclear war over half a century ago – as if their very existence depended on it.
Advertisement
Back then, it was known as mutually assured destruction, which led to the nuclear weapons treaties. The world needs that level of fear again to take action against climate change. Unfortunately, it is not the world we live in today.
There is much to fear for the world on a pathway to catastrophic ends, not by missiles, but by a slow moving tide of damaging change in the air, the sea, and across lands that have no political boundaries.
A recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said that sea level rise is “irreversible” for centuries. UN Secretary General António Guterres called this a “code red for humanity”. Glaciers are calving. Fires are raging. Yet they have not spurred countries to act fast enough.
The upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, a two-week long soirée bringing together an estimated 25,000 participants, is an opportune time to go beyond lofty goal setting. There is no more time left for open-ended pledges that merely satisfy the global optics of cooperation. The fever pitch of climate change has to be broken and that requires action more than words.
Advertisement
Advertisement