Monday, December 7, 2009
Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency. Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers are apparent for our generation. Now the facts have started to speak: the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. So far, the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.
We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone and must be solved by everyone. The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rise. even a small increase would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea.
We will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. we will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy and use less of it. But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. we have now started to invest in renewable forms of energy rather than producing electricity from fossil fuels. Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.
Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over shortsightedness. It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done, then surely our leaders can too. The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.
Adapted from 'The Hindu' - December 7, 2009
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