According to climate activists and liberal-leaning politicians, the world is in dire need of change, from how we get around and what we eat to how we use water and heat our homes. I know, you’ve heard it all before. In fact, the same old “the world will end soon unless…” prognoses have been spouted about for a few decades.
As a result, we have changed a few things.
Every car manufacturer in the world is moving to produce more electric vehicles. You can now buy toilets that use less water. And there has been a massive influx of solar and wind power in the United States.
But according to those at the top, it’s still not enough.
Take United Nations Secretary-General Antonia Guterres, for example.
According to remarks made at a meeting in Congo’s capital Kinshasa on Monday, the UN chief claimed that thanks to nations like the US, one of the world’s 20 richest countries, the temperature of our planet’s atmosphere is heating up faster than ever. As a result, Guterres says it has placed the world in a “life or death struggle” just to survive.
Guterres and the rest of the United Nations are preparing for the COP27 climate conference, which they lead and will take place at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in November. And so, he’s making sure that moving toward that date, the world is made aware of the issues he finds most relevant, namely that we need to do more about earth’s rising temperatures and how it is affecting our nations.
But, of course, what Guterres suggests take place first is that countries like the US 1) take responsibility for our disastrous ways and 2) pay for what those ways have done to poorer nations who tend to bear the brunt of climate change impacts.
Yep, you read that right.
He and other world leaders are now of the mind that the richer nations of the world need to pay for “loss and damages” seen in countries who have more recently seen a bevy of natural disasters, which of course, Guterres blames on climate change.
According to him, Europe has experienced its hottest summer in 500 years, Pakistan saw a flood that covered one-third of the nation, and island nations like the Philippines and Cuba have been hammered by tropical storms and hurricanes – all of which are supposedly caused by the poor life practices of richer countries like America.
And so it’s time for a “quantum level compromise” between those poorer economies and richer, more developed countries.
According to Guterres, “Failure to act on loss and damage will lead to more loss of trust and more climate damage. This is a moral imperative that cannot be ignored.”
And that action needs to start at the upcoming COP27 conference.
If such a compromise is not made and action not taken to cover loss and damage, Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University says the world is “headed for interminable gridlock.” He explains that poorer countries could refuse to talk about anything but the monies they and Guterres believe are owed to them. And the richer ones could simply continue to find ways to ignore the situation.
Oppenheimer further explains that richer nations sending the lesser developed ones money to help lessen future disaster impacts aren’t good enough either. And neither is making promises and empty policies, naturally.
One climate scientist from the Bahamas says the impacts of climate change have “disproportionately” affected more vulnerable communities for decades. And it’s time those effects stop being ignored and for developed countries to “respond.”
The only problem is that natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, etc. have been happening for far longer than any of us even know, regardless of how warm the earth’s atmosphere may be. And yet suddenly, we are blaming each other for those and expecting others to care for ‘mother nature?’
Not only does it not make sense, but it just isn’t practical.
I mean, sure, if we have the means to help a nation in need, especially after what some would call an “act of God,” we should. But the sad fact is we can’t.
Have you heard what our national debt is up to these days? We simply cannot afford to make everything right in every other nation in the world, and neither do we have the responsibility.
What do you think?
