Tough action

The UN Climate Change Summit held from September 21-23, ahead of the UN General Assembly meeting, has brought more action this year than any time since it was first held in the mid-1990s. Much of this is due to a 16-year-old. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg's speech to UN leaders shook the watching world. She angrily argued that what was happening ‘is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean”. She asked the leaders how they dared to come to children for help – and pointed out that people were suffering, ecosystems were collapsing and yet economic growth was all that mattered to much of the world. She also warned them that the young people of the world would keep a watch on them for the future.

Greta’s speech summed up some of the themes which underlie the Climate Action Summit and the factors behind it. The reality is that the few leading corporations in the world produce well over half the pollution that is destroying the Earth and making it a place where it may not be possible to live in the near future. The summit had its successes. Russia ratified the Paris Agreement on climate change and, perhaps inspired by Greta’s powerful approach, 15 nations led by the Marshall Islands committed to delivering new emission reduction targets in early 2020. They pledged that by the end of next year, they will produce longer-term strategies for achieving net zero emissions by 2050. A new Climate Ambition Alliance bringing together 59 nations including France, the UK, Argentina, Costa Rica and New Zealand plans to be strengthened. India, China and other countries have signalled they are ready to consider their own future strategies while five new countries, Austria, Chile, Italy, Japan and Timor Leste have joined the Carbon Neutrality Coalition, which aims to help countries move towards zero emissions by 2050.

But behind the technicalities, there is one underlying issue. It is focused on an economic system which promotes greed and profit and holds this up as a god millions of people around the world worship. This is the real core of the problem. Nations need to unite to defeat it and build a new system which is more humane, and kinder to the planet we call home and to the people who live on it. Pakistan can too find its ways to achieve this. PM Imran Khan, to his credit, attended the summit and from this we hope will arise a new era indeed watched over by young people who have already achieved a great deal more than the adults that run the world.