I did it. I joined an online protest to advocate mitigating the drastic climate changes that are causing environmental mayhem and loss of life in all the kingdoms of life on earth.
Joining mass protests is not something I often do, because one needs to be vigilant about being manipulated, but this time it is different. I’ve become part of a movement of 65 million people internationally who have joined the voices of young people calling for change at the top, ie among the current political leaders whose decisions, or lack of them, will determine how we survive on earth in generations to come.
In case anyone missed it, last Sunday was the start of 12 very important days in our lives.
COP26, the 2021 UN world climate summit, hosted by the UK in Scotland, has brought together leaders from almost every country. It is the 26th UN annual Conference of the Parties (COP), and this year the leaders know they have to do more than make promises. Even Chinese leader Xi Jinping realised that as the biggest polluter he had to beam in his participation, although not physically present and offering nothing.
It has taken a long time for the many sceptics to accept the inconvenient reality of climate change, but now that almost every nation is being affected by erratic weather patterns that erode economies and steal lives, not believing and not acting have become luxuries few can afford.
Events in Glasgow are encouraging, although much is still at the level of pledges. Even Brazil, under its egregiously dismissive and irresponsible current president, has signed up to stopping and reversing deforestation by 2030.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who was criticised for his recent short space sojourn, has pledged US$2 billion to restore landscapes and transform food systems and will spend another US$8 billion on other save-the-planet projects. Being outside Earth’s atmosphere, looking in, made him realise the extent of the planet’s vulnerability, he says. It’s an expensive, belated insight – Amazon staff had been complaining about the company’s negative environmental policies – but it carries weight and lends a lot to the push to extract reluctant commitments from governments and others.
Tesla founder Elon Musk, currently the world’s richest man, has already committed US$100 million to funding inventions that will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and oceans.
Leaders are finding it difficult to withstand the growing power of the young climate warriors such as teenager Greta Thunberg, who has inspired other young people to take the fight to the people she berates, with huge effect. In Scotland, she accused world leaders of pretending to change the status quo and threw down the gauntlet, challenging them to actually get carbon emissions down by the 1.5 degrees Celsius they promised in Paris, in 2015.
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The creation of a youth-led arm of the UN project on climate change was a good move t
