One protest that distinguished 2019 and resonated global proportions was one carried out over the past few years and which intensified in 2019 was by a gutsy and determined Swedish teenager named Greta Thunberg
by Dr. Ruwantissa Abeyratne
Writing from Montreal
You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe…Greta Thunberg
Rachael D’Amore, in Global News of 26 December writes: “In Bolivia, thousands protested after claims of election fraud led to the ousting of the country’s president. In Chile, a proposed subway fare hike unravelled into a cross-country demand for income equality. In Egypt, rare protests were held in big cities over allegations that top officials used public funds for personal gain. In Canada, protests erupted over the approved expansion of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline. In Hong Kong, a proposed extradition law turned to wider calls for democracy, drawing millions over a seven-month period. And that’s just to name a few of the protests that took place this year”.
One such protest that is not mentioned above occurred when “more than 800,000 people marched in cities across France as railway workers, teachers and hospital staff held one of the biggest public sectors strikes in decades against Emmanuel Macron’s plans to overhaul the pension system” as reported in The Guardian.
These were all protests against the establishment, as they were in 1968 – another year known for global protests – but that year’s protests were largely against race, war in Vietnam and the denial of free speech.
One protest that distinguished 2019 and resonated global proportions was one carried out over the past few years and which intensified in 2019 was by a gutsy and determined Swedish teenager named Greta Thunberg (named Time’s person of the year for 2019). Greta’s passionate protest was replete with indomitable conviction against the present generation for having ruined the future of her generation by arbitrarily and capriciously polluting the world over the past decades. Greta’s protests were not aimed – as the others mentioned above were – against a single country or government. It was not against living wages, or pensions or even wars, but the systemic and systematic destruction of the ecology of the world and the causing of drastic global warming resulting inter alia in climate change by the present generation. Underlying her message was the seminal definition of sustainable development – that it is meeting the needs of the present generation without jeopardising the needs of future generations.
At the 25th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP/25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Greta said: “ People are suffering and dying from the climate and ecological emergency today and we cannot wait any longer.", going on to say: “ "Without pressure from the people, our leaders can get away with not doing anything!"
Earlier, in September 2019, addressing the United Nations in New York, Greta said: “My message is that we'll be watching you. This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!
You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!” Greta is joined in her protest by millions around the world”.
If domestic protests against State administrations are against serious incursions on human rights – as they indeed are – the protests against the feckless insouciance of the international community in allowing global warming to go unchecked is against a global calamity that is taking place. The enormity of the problem is reflected in the fact that, as The Washington Post reports, the climatic tipping point would have started in in Manokwari, Indonesia; by 2023 in Kingston, in the Caribbean; by 2029 in Lagos; by 2047 in Washington; by 2066 in Reykjavik; and by 2071 in Anchorage, Alaska. A Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) study reports: “by 2020, human-caused warming will move the Earth’s climate system into a regime in terms of multi-decadal rates of change that are unprecedented for at least the past 1,000 years. All scientific indications are that climate change would bring significant adverse effects on the world in 2020 onwards and that the rate of climate change, which has risen sharply in recent decades, will soar by the 2020s”.
The solution lies seemingly in the fact that substantial technological, economic, infrastructural changes would be needed to attempt reaching the target of the 2015 Paris Agreement of an increase in 2 degrees centigrade (and ideally 1.5c) warming against pre-industrial levels. The Paris Agreement’s central aim, as stated, is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5°C.
Additionally, the agreement aims to strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impact of climate change. To reach these ambitious goals, appropriate financial flows, a new technology framework and an enhanced capacity building framework will be put in place, thus supporting action by developing countries and the most vulnerable countries, in line with their own national objectives. The Agreement also provides for enhanced transparency of action and support through a more robust transparency framework.
Climate Change is driven by regulations on emissions; alternative fuels and renewable energy sources; carbon trading; extreme weather; water and food supply; rising sea levels. The problem is that when On 4 November the Paris Agreement entered into force where at least 55 countries, accounting for 55 percent of the total global greenhouse gas emissions, deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance or approval with the United Nations, it was evident that the 1.5 percent could be easily reached since the biggest polluters, The United States, China, countries of the European Union and India together account for 42% of the greenhouse gases emitted on the planet. However, although to date 187 countries have become parties to the Agreement, leaving just a few countries yet to participate in it, there is seemingly little to show for concrete measures and actions taken by them to achieve collectively the 1.5% goal.
The bottom line is that, while domestic squabbles and protests of the people against a government or administration – be it in France, Chile or Hong Kong - can hope for negotiated settlements, the climate change issue is immutable and is in need of a global fix. Until then, there is every possibility that the protests against this apathetic and neglectful approach of the international community in this regard will pour over to the next decade.
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