It is no wonder that the world has made little if any progress in reducing emissions and the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, nor in supporting the people who are most vulnerable to the effects.
The above article title is straight out of the mouth of the president of Azerbaijan, the host country, during opening remarks at COP 29, the current UN conference on climate change. He goes on to portray all of the planet's resources in the same vein (no pun intended), and really he has a point, although whether or not it is God’s special endowment or just our lucky universal sweet spot remains a mystery.
All of the wonderful technology that we, through science, have learned to develop and apply, and the wealth we have created to support billions of people are the result of human ingenuity in the discovery, exploitation and utilization of these natural resources. Realistically though there is a limit.
But, and this is a big but, it is not about these natural resources as much as it is about how we humans are using, overusing or abusing them. It is about the damage we are doing to ourselves and many other forms of life on this planet by not disciplining ourselves to live within the natural laws science has unveiled to us.
We are drastically upsetting the very fine balance established over millennia to make Earth such an abundant habitat for living things, including us. As far as we know, this is not something common, not something readily available. Nothing out there is a cabin in the woods.
Every aspect of this planet is miraculous and precious. Yes, it is beautiful to our eyes and many of us rave about it, the spirituality of it, but it is in the biology, the physics, the geology, the structure of the planet itself where equal beauty lies, which we cannot see every day without our science. There is no planet B.
Today, there is a fairly small group of individuals, wealthy, powerful and influential, who are calling the economic shots, primarily around the continuing development of fossil fuel resources, which, ironically enough, are the decomposing remains of living things, plant and animal, from millions of years ago.
Their fear is that they stand to lose their power and wealth, to the point where they are now invoking God. That is why they are spending so much to slow down the necessary and inevitable transition to clean, sustainable, renewable energy, and that is what they are doing at COP 29.
At this moment there are huge questions being asked about why fossil fuel states and corporations are involved at all in developing policy trying to get climate change under control. Just ask the citizens of Valencia, Spain, or California, or Pakistan, or Greece, or Lytton, or Jasper, or Abbotsford for that matter.
We need a new process to get emissions under control. And it isn’t happening with the major economic stakeholders at the table.
Around the world there are currently many examples of extreme weather made worse and more frequent by the influence of fossil-fuel-emissions-generated climate change. These are the floods, the crop destroying droughts, the hurricanes, the wild fires, the sea level rise, the melting glaciers, the deforestation, the rapid loss of species, et cetera, all directly impacting the lives of our fellow human beings and other living things for the worse.
Our uniqueness, our intelligence, our consciousness and our love may also be seen as gifts from God, so where do those fit in?
William Lytle-McGhee is a member of qathet Climate Alliance.
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