Madam, – I’ve just returned from Copenhagen where I was campaigning for climate justice as part of a group of volunteers. Last Saturday we walked for 6km to the Bella Centre where the climate change conference is being held, standing shoulder to shoulder with some 100,000 campaigners from all over the world. It was one of those rare moments when you feel you are a part of a larger family.
One of the campaigning slogans that struck me was “system change not climate change”. It was honest and spoke of the root causes of climate change. Today, as I read the latest blogs and articles relating to the conference, most of which allude to the possible failure of global leaders to agree on a legally binding deal in Copenhagen, this slogan comes back to me.
Rich nations are refusing to cut emissions to the amount that is urgently recommended by scientific reports. They are also saying they cannot provide all of the money that is needed to help developing nations to adapt to climate change. Why? Could politicians’ decisions largely be based on corporate concerns as your correspondent Harry McGee has reported?
Having seen how passionately people demonstrated in Copenhagen, acting in solidarity with millions of those who could not make the journey there, I come home believing that this issue needs action on a local scale. It seems we cannot rely on politicians to take care of this immense problem. Furthermore, each of us has a moral responsibility to do something about it on a personal level. We have each individually contributed to the problem through our carbon-intensive lifestyles. Although international agreements such as Copenhagen are important, the knowledge that death, hunger, disasters and large- scale displacements are occurring now and will occur on a catastrophic scale in our lifetimes, should be enough to spur us into action.
We need to inform ourselves about climate change and how it is affecting human populations. We need to make changes in our lives that are significant and will reduce Ireland’s emissions.
It requires a large and sometimes uncomfortable effort but if we, the people of Ireland, don’t lead on this, who will? Not our politicians, it would appear. If we care about the human family, the natural world and animals, we need to change the way we live now. Our politicians are failing to lead on this issue, but we should not be afraid to lead. – Yours, etc,