An emotional and impassioned speech by teen activist Greta Thunberg in the opening session of the United Nations Climate Action Summit on September 23 provided an eloquent voice for the reality of the climate crisis. At the Summit, Greta confronted the world leaders by saying, "How dare you?" and condemned them for failing to take strong measures to combat climate change. Greta’s speech was a historic turning point where for the first time the power of ‘we’ met the power of ‘you’ without artifice, without compromise and with a ferocious courage. Now the question is what can we do today to leave the planet a better place than we found it?
The idea of climate justice has been around for at least two decades. Initially it was used to describe an approach that placed inequalities between countries at the front and centre of climate negotiations. At its simplest, it means that cutting carbon emissions can’t be done without regard to fairness, and thus that the burden of change should fall differently on rich and poor.
We hope this latest round of talks on climate
change would not be yet another exercise
in making hollow commitments
There has been a big dissonance between every leader saying to Greta ‘we hear you’ and the commitments they are putting on to the table. China said absolutely nothing new, India mentioned commitments made in the past. There is a feeling that the big emitters are holding things back. There were a few signs of progress. A group of nearly 90 large companies promised to reach net zero emissions by 2050, while a handful of countries said they will be winding down coal use. But it became apparent that most of the ambition was coming from developing countries, rather than the major polluters. We wonder how the “catastrophic warming” that is causing extreme weather conditions like thawing of the permafrost and alarming sea-level rising at much faster rates than expected, can be ignored by people heading some of the biggest economies of the world.
We hope this latest round of talks on climate change would not be yet another exercise in making hollow commitments. Let the urge and anger of 16-years old Greta Thunberg persuade the first world countries to step away from their earlier stance on not revising current climate plans by 2020.