I agree with you that it’s best to stay positive and remain optimistic that we, as a collective, will make things better. However, we can’t let that optimism downplay the urgency of the situation.
The world will not end but we’re well on our way to making it a much, much worse place to live for billions of people.
We are not making huge changes, at all. We’ve hardly scratched the surface of the climate change issue. It doesn’t matter that a few developed countries are taking steps in the right direction: it’s nowhere near enough. Even if all of the Western world went 80% carbon neutral next week, it wouldn’t amount to much as you still have countries like China, who singlehandedly pollute more than most other developed countries combined; or developing countries with huge populations and industrial output and scarce renewable infrastructure like India, Pakistan or Brazil.
Of course it doesn’t help either when you’ve got countries like the UK watering down their climate targets with regards to petrol cars, building new oil fields in the North sea, or Saudi Arabia lobbying for climate warnings to be suppressed for the sake of making a few bucks. They’re not the only ones to do this, I’m sure.
Reality is the wheels are beginning to turn in the right direction for some countries (albeit nowhere near fast enough) but net progress towards addressing climate change remains zero, if not negative because the message that climate change is here and we need to do something about it NOW is still falling on deaf ears in most of the top polluters.
Let’s remain positive, sure, but we can’t fool ourselves and think at this rate we’ll fix the problem.
I agree with you that it’s best to stay positive and remain optimistic that we, as a collective, will make things better. However, we can’t let that optimism downplay the urgency of the situation.
The world will not end but we’re well on our way to making it a much, much worse place to live for billions of people.
We are not making huge changes, at all. We’ve hardly scratched the surface of the climate change issue. It doesn’t matter that a few developed countries are taking steps in the right direction: it’s nowhere near enough. Even if all of the Western world went 80% carbon neutral next week, it wouldn’t amount to much as you still have countries like China, who singlehandedly pollute more than most other developed countries combined; or developing countries with huge populations and industrial output and scarce renewable infrastructure like India, Pakistan or Brazil.
Of course it doesn’t help either when you’ve got countries like the UK watering down their climate targets with regards to petrol cars, building new oil fields in the North sea, or Saudi Arabia lobbying for climate warnings to be suppressed for the sake of making a few bucks. They’re not the only ones to do this, I’m sure.
Reality is the wheels are beginning to turn in the right direction for some countries (albeit nowhere near fast enough) but net progress towards addressing climate change remains zero, if not negative because the message that climate change is here and we need to do something about it NOW is still falling on deaf ears in most of the top polluters.
Let’s remain positive, sure, but we can’t fool ourselves and think at this rate we’ll fix the problem.