A Time to Save the Sick and Rescue the Planet

The Covid-19 pandemic is the biggest test the world has faced since World War II. There is a natural tendency in the face of crisis to take care of one’s own first. But true leadership understands that there are times to think big and more generously. Such thinking was behind the Marshall Plan and the formation of the United Nations after World War II. This is also such a moment. We must work together as societies and as an international community to save lives, ease suffering and lessen the shattering economic and social consequences of Covid-19.

Smoke and steam polluting the air over Poland in 2018
from PGE’s Bełchatów power station, Europe’s largest
power plant fired by lignite, also called brown coal.

The impact of the coronavirus is immediate and dreadful. We must act now and we must act together. Just as we must act together to address another urgent global emergency that we must not lose sight of — climate change. Last week, the World Meteorological Organization released data showing that temperatures have already increased 1.1 degrees centigrade above preindustrial levels. The world is on track for devastating climate disruption from which no one can self-isolate.

Now, on every continent and in every sea, climate disruption is becoming the new normal. Human conduct is also leading to severe biodiversity loss, changing animal-human interaction and distorting ecosystem processes that regulate our planetary health and control many services that humans depend on. Science is screaming to us that we are close to running out of time — approaching a point of no return for human health, which depends on planetary health.

Read the story from The New York Times by António Guterres - “A Time to Save the Sick and Rescue the Planet.”

The climate crisis is our third world war. It needs a bold response

Advocates of the Green New Deal say there is great urgency in dealing with the climate crisis and highlight the scale and scope of what is required to combat it. They are right. They use the term “New Deal” to evoke the massive response by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States government to the Great Depression. An even better analogy would be the country’s mobilization to fight World War II.

‘The war on the climate emergency, if correctly
waged, would actually be good for the economy’

Critics ask, “Can we afford it?” and complain that Green New Deal proponents confound the fight to preserve the planet, to which all right-minded individuals should agree, with a more controversial agenda for societal transformation. On both accounts the critics are wrong.

Yes, we can afford it, with the right fiscal policies and collective will. But more importantly, we must afford it. The climate emergency is our third world war. Our lives and civilization as we know it are at stake, just as they were in the second world war.

Read the option piece from The Guardian by Joseph Stiglitz - “The climate crisis is our third world war. It needs a bold response.”

Ocasio-Cortez says we need World War II-scale action on climate. Here’s what that looks like

The Green New Deal resolution introduced last week by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) states that fighting climate change requires “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II.”

Rep.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed
Markey (right D-MA) announce the Green new deal
legislation outside the U.S. Capitol early in February.

The world’s leading climate scientists agree. In 2015, for instance, they called for a sweeping mobilization — “a radical transition (deep decarbonization now and going forward),” as they described it — to avoid catastrophic impacts of climate change. And last October, the world’s nations unanimously agreed with our top scientists that preserving a livable climate requires “system changes” across the economy that “are unprecedented in terms of scale.”

Read the ThinkProgress story by Joe Romm - “Ocasio-Cortez says we need World War II-scale action on climate. Here’s what that looks like.”

Residents fear anarchy as Cape Town water shut-off looms

Cape Town: It sounds like a Hollywood blockbuster. "Day Zero" is coming to Cape Town this April. Everyone, be warned.

Residents collect water from a communal tap in an
informal settlement in Mitchells Plain outside of Cape Town.

The government cautions that the Day Zero threat will surpass anything a major city has faced since World War II or the September 11 attacks. Talks are underway with South Africa's police because "normal policing will be entirely inadequate". Residents, their nerves increasingly frayed, speak in whispers of impending chaos.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Residents fear anarchy as Cape Town water shut-off looms.”

U.N. delivers 'hope and healing' in Paris - Bank Ki-moon

Bank Ki-moon.

Seventy years ago, the United Nations was created from the ashes of World War II. Seven decades later, in Paris, nations united in the face of another threat – the threat to life as we know it due to a rapidly warming planet.

Governments have ushered in a new era of global co-operation on climate change – one of the most complex issues ever to confront humanity. In doing so, they have significantly advanced efforts to uphold our charter mandate to "save succeeding generations".

Read the ABC opinion piece by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Bank Ki-moon - “In Paris, the United Nations showed its ability to deliver hope and healing to the world.”

'Existential threat' of climate change like World War Two battle

O

n Tuesday, Gov. Jerry Brown compared the “existential threat” of climate change to the fight against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Brown made the comparison while addressing a crowd of climate scientists who had gathered at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for a two-day University of California Summit on Carbon and Climate Neutrality.

According to the Times of San Diego, Brown said addressing climate change is the moral equivalent to building the atomic bomb first in World War II, and said he couldn’t “emphasize enough how important the University of California is in meeting this existential threat.”

Read the Breitbart story - “Jerry Brown: climate change fight like World War II.”