The Katowice climate change summit this month and the IPCC report in October have caused climate change to grab a few headlines at least briefly. The summit made some progress but the pace of progress stands in sharp contrast to the messages given to the summit. David Attenborough at the age of 92 and Greta Thunberg at the age of 15 gave some stark messages. Together they are a real spur to action as we move towards a new year.
You may have seen Greta’s speech to the summit. If not Its key messages addressed the adults attending:
“You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children. You say you love your children above everything else. And yet you are stealing their future We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis”
A slightly longer TED talk by Greta is worth spending 10 minutes or so to view TED talk 12th December 2018. It concludes with this:
“We do need hope. Of course we do but the one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere so instead of looking for hope, look for action then and only then, hope will come”
At the start of the Summit, David Attenborough gave the ‘people’s address’
His key message:
“If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of most of the natural world is on the horizon…Leaders of the world, you must lead.”
Here are some other links relating to the Summit and the IPCC report if you want a bit more background
https://unfccc.int/katowice
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/16/what-was-agreed-at-cop24-in-poland-and-why-did-it-take-so-long
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46582265
https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/
Now to action:
- There is a global petition to banks you might like to participate in: Fossil Banks – No Thanks
- If you’d like to follow up yourself, or for your household on the Cut and Offset pats of Geetotal, you will find guidance on our website
PS We have just tallied up carbon emissions for last year using the link from the Geetotal website. This just took 10 minutes – its about making reasonable guesstimates. This year for our household, we have used the UN carbon offset site.
We selected this Malawi safe cooking project as our carbon offset project. Its listed under Project Type in EE (energy efficiency) households
Geetotal 