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Pressure builds for global battle plan on climate change
Written by: Megan Rowling
Virgin Group chairman, Richard Branson (L), speaks with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon over lunch during a U.N. General Assembly debate on climate change, New York, Feb. 11, 2008.
REUTERS/Chip East
REUTERS/Chip East
Just how big a threat to the world is climate change? Listening in to a press conference at U.N. headquarters in New York on Monday, you'd have heard British billionaire businessman Richard Branson describing it as "a crisis that is bigger than World War I and II combined". Or New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg emphasising, "This is just as important as stopping nuclear proliferation. This is just as important as stopping terrorism." The sociologist Ulrich Beck argues that huge global risks like climate change are so different from what we've experienced so far, it's more accurate to describe them as "unknown unknowns". Whatever your favourite soundbite, there are signs that we're finally reaching the point where we no longer need international celebrities and politicians to scare us into realising how bad things could get. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon suggested on Monday that the battle of persuasion has been more or less won, and it's high time to get on with the job of responding. "If the year 2007 was the year when climate change rose to the top of the global agenda, 2008 is the time we must take concerted action," he told the opening of a two-day General Assembly debate on climate change. At the meeting, the world body set itself the tasks of developing partnerships and coordinating its own strategy better. "The U.N. cannot address climate change alone. No one can," said General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim. "Inevitably, we need as many actors as possible to get involved and unite in order to address its effects." He also appealed for the United Nations to streamline its many climate change programmes and target its resources where they will be most effective. A report published in late January offers some clues as to how that might happen. The U.N. message for 2008 seems to be that, if the world is going to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, it's going to have to come up with a international battle plan behind which everyone can unite, and fairly sharpish. Part of that is the daunting job of working out a new international agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But what else might it entail? 'WAR ROOM' On Monday, Branson called for the creation of a global environmental "war room". By bringing together scientists, engineers, government agencies and civil society, it would identify the best ideas for tackling climate change and devise implementation plans in partnership with the United Nations and others. "History has taught us that, in times of peril, when all seems lost, bringing together the greatest minds ... to work together, with one common goal - survival - is the most effective way to prevail," said the entrepreneur, who's also offering a $25 million prize for scientists to find a way to remove carbon dioxide from the environment. While technological advances no doubt have a major part to play, there's growing recognition of the need for a new political approach to what Britain's international development secretary recently described as a "defining global social justice issue". Last July, sociologist Beck argued in the Guardian "...if we want to survive, we have to include those who have been excluded. The politics of climate change is necessarily inclusive and global - it is cosmopolitics." Global warming has bolstered the case for distributing the planet's resources responsibly and equitably (not to mention righting historical environmental wrongs). But it's an old aspiration. The world has been talking about sustainable development for two or three decades now. Will climate change prove to be the one threat that's big enough to start making it happen?
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2 responses to “Pressure builds for global battle plan on climate change”
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19 Feb 2008 18:23:23 GMT
Climate Change ââ¬" the first job is to challenge what we believe in! The three major areas we need to address immediately are: 1. We believe it is our right to take from this planet whatever, whenever and however we choose, without any thought or responsibility for managing what we are doing ââ¬" and it still continues today in spite of accelerating climate change. 2. If we now place in this equation our belief in financial management and the law of supply and demand to regulate what we use, then a growing shortage of food means ever increasing prices. This is already becoming a problem and is further exacerbated by the growing demand for ethanol. Financial mechanisms are also prone to abuse, as we have already seen in the infant ââ¬ÅCarbon Trading Marketâ⬠, and we should seriously heed this course of action - our history as a species shows we are incapable of effectively policing our financial markets 3. With an increasing number of people unable to feed themselves our traditional political institutions and beliefs will need to be seen to be doing something, and so we lapse into blame as one race accuses another of hoarding. Increasingly aggressive blame will deteriorate into conflict, further expanding the threat to our existence as a civilisation through the powerful and sophisticated weapons we have now developed. The most powerful nation may come out on top by annihilating everyone else - but as global war escalates, who can say with any degree of certainty that they too will not blow themselves off the face of this beautiful planet, given the nature of modern terrorist warfare and the inability to determine who is the â⬠enemyâ⬠? I do not believe I am exaggerating anything within this scenario, but simply illustrating the application of our traditional values on this growing problem. After all it is these values which have created the problems we now face and so how can they possibly provide the solution? I would ask those in power to consider the following two simple first steps towards combating climate change: 1. By challenging the above beliefs we embark upon a process of change in our relationship with each other and our surroundings. 2. By admitting that political and corporate judgement over scientific and environmental findings is not working, we also make a major and positive admission - that the natural world is far more powerful than all governments and multinationals put together, or anything else we might devise ââ¬" bringing us closer to managing, rather than abusing this planet. We are at a truly unique moment in time in our history. We desperately need leadership now which understands that embedded within this era are the ingredients for our destruction, or survival ââ¬" the choice is ours.
24 Feb 2008 09:15:29 GMT
I agree completely. THe TRUE "can do" spirit that is AMerica and is indeed the history of humanity as we evolve, must now evelve our understanding of our way of life. Going beyond the "me versus you" model and into a brave new world where we all exist as "neighbors" on a shared planet. ANd we must come together to "rebalance" the Mother Earth. Not heal, for she is not ill. SHe was born in a nuclear fire, and a fire burns in her center as hot as or hotter than the heat of our sun. It our precarious bio-diverse environment that is at risk, and thus our survival being dependent on the chain of life being unbroken. I believe this new "end of time" as we know it is an evolutionary or "paradigm shift" into a planetary identity and beginning to think in terms of a single Global Identity Awareness: A "GiaMind." It's time to come together and be honest with ourselves and each other.... way past time....