The IMEDD, research institute in environment and sustainable development would like to underline a fact for the earth that occured in the past weeks which goes against the environmental preservation and whose goal is only to foolish the people, mixing them in mind.
The IMEDD recalls that the important remains to keep the line for environment and sustainable development in the framework given by the U.N Sustainable Development Goals.
Since the recent events and publication of the IPCC report 2019, the climate sceptic community is back spreading ink on papers to say that climate change is unreal, or they even detract the researches of the scientists. Destroying is so easy, much easier than bringing solutions. The method used by the climate sceptic community is so well known in the world who has been showing evidences for years and sending the Call for the Earth.
When we look a little bit further on who are the climate sceptic leading voices, they belong to the places that refuse to commit or even worse, that have economic interests not to act as they are fed by a system anti climate-change and anti-environment.
Today, indeed, the question is not about asking ourselves if we go through a climate change or not. That is not the essential question anymore, the evidences are there. The earth already faces, at the scale of humans, its own burden to solve: the preservation of environment.
There is a difference between climate change and environment/sustainable development and indeed, the second is a tool for the first:
- Climate Change is a global phenomenon, not only driven by life on the earth, but also from its own evolution, its own position in space and from its shifting. The earth is alive and has its own rhythm of evolution alternating various periods of climates, and it happens that we entered in a phase of deregulation compared to what we used to monitor before.
- Environment/sustainable development are about preserving nature and reducing the impact of human activities on nature: not polluting the waters, avoiding sources of energies that can damage the environment like oil or even nuclear, reducing pollution from transports, managing better the waste, preserving the lands, the rivers, the seas and oceans, the species, the biodiversity, the forests, etc…
For all those environmental concerns, the humans are responsible, it’s a fact beside climate change, and when the environmental community warns about the risks for future, it’s about the way we manage our world society regarding social and environment, which is not sustainable anymore considering the events to be faced. We know it from the key figures, from the forecasts and going on the way it is today will just cause more damages on people and the environment, also because the world population carries on its increase and its concentration in cities.
Regarding Climate Change, some human beings are already living the effects in different parts of the world. The scientists are clear, they assume that the populations in some places of the world, mostly those situated at the sea-level, will be exposed to the effects and damages until the point of being displaced. It’s not anymore, a question of “If it will happen” but “When it will happen”.
The video below is an awareness campaign about Climate Change designed by IMEDD with events that happened on the Mediterranean Sea.
Even not talking about sea-level rise due to climate change, we see today much bigger and frequent storms than before.
They create very big destruction because our models of societies have developed on the shores and are exposed to sea submersion. When a big storm makes the sea expands (as in Haiti, New Orleans and more recently in the Bahamas). The sea creates massive effects of destruction for people, for economy and environment. If we can’t really do something directly to fight against those events, we can act with precaution and in anticipation and forecast the damages, so we can undertake some fast and adapted public responses, like building dams, to protect the shores, anticipate the evacuations and even organization transition plans, meaning that in a scale of a few generations, some populations will need to be displaced from the areas at risks. Concretely, as an example, the villages we have on the white cliffs on Normandy will no longer exist in future due to the sea erosion that slowly “eats” the cliffs.
The case of the Kiribati Islands is very crucial: “The Kiribatians have already begun to emigrate. Others cling on to their land, looking for temporary solutions: residents have begun building walls out of coral rocks which are then destroyed by the high tide. Some towns have shifted a few metres inland, and mangroves have been planted to protect the soil from erosion and mitigate storm surges. If the predictions are accurate, the atoll of Tarawa will be uninhabitable within a generation. The possibility has also been discussed of building an enormous floating platform, similar to those used by petroleum companies, or temporary sea defences; however, both options have been ruled out due to their high cost—the platform would cost around 2 billion dollars, which is 10 times Kiribati’s GDP”.
We also need to understand that sea submersion has an economic cost: for the people, banks and insurances, building sector… As the weather events will be more frequent, the costs of reaction will increase in an exponential way until the point when it becomes unaffordable to rebuild. That will be the time for people’s displacement in certain regions.
As we talk about a warming on earth, it also means the release of natural gases that were stored into the ice. When there are too many gazes in the air, they burn by themselves. This is what is forecasted for the areas that are recovered by ice up north. Us, as humans, what can we do to fight? Our human tools are not in equal size to a boreal forest that burns. What can we do? Plant trees in other parts of the world. Because when we lose trees somewhere on the planet (from fires or deforestation), we lose some of the capacity to create the balance between oxygen and CO2.
This is when and why the international community relates climate change to human activities because if we face the natural life cycle of the earth + the starting occurring effects of climate change + the loss of trees + the acidification of the seas and oceans + the damages on the environment + … etc…, we have a loss of balance on the profit of CO2 and in time, if it increases, it will cause more and more damages, until possibly reaching the 6th mass extinction, as it starts to happen with certain species. A project started in 2006 in Norway in the Svalbard Global Seed Valut. The goal is to store some seeds to preserve the genetic diversity.
If we talk about the bees, they severely disappear in numbers due to the massive use of pesticides and the loss of a balanced nature (with less flowers to attract them). The bees are an indicator of the human impact on environment. We know that pesticides cause damages to environment and waters. We also know how to do sustainable agriculture, though this virtuous agriculture is not supported and promoted enough yet. The issue, in this case, is about avoiding the use of the toxic products to implement natural ecosystems.
Today, the truth is that a part of the world economy is not sustainable at all.
It produces too much pollution, too much CO2, damages too much the environment. The past and actual world models have not proven their success in improving people’s life in time and it even damages more and more the environment. The quality of life decreases for everyone, everywhere.
Let’s take another example of a meat from Argentina sent to Europe…
First, are we all sure that the meat is pure from any pharma products? No. Second, do we realize that a meat from Argentina travels the whole Atlantic Ocean until Europe to be served to people? Do we realize the carbon footprint of this meat? The meat example shows two red signs: the risk for people of ingesting pharma products through the meat and the increase of CO2. Knowing these two facts, do we want to pollute our bodies with pharma products that are injected into the animals? Everybody understands how even a slow reduction of consumption of meat brings positive effects on health and CO2.
They are many examples like the meat that are totally absurd, all based to earn more money and finance very particular economies that don’t serve the world. It’s not a question of preaching for a vegetarian or vegan world or even avoiding all kinds of meat. It’s a question of doing things in a balanced way in order to reduce the risks and effects. It’s just a change from a poor beef raised in a 1000 oxen farm to some good veggies planted in a pure soil with maybe eggs and bacon from the local hen and pig, themselves fed with natural food on a clean soil (like we did before). Natural Agriculture and farms show the sustainable way to the world.
Another example is about plastic and our consumption.
Each time we buy something in plastic, each time we finance the oil economy. Knowing the amount of plastic in the oceans, the difficulties of the world cleaning boats to filter the tiny pieces of plastic and their impact on marine species, everybody can act.
We need to rethink the raw materials we buy.
We need to see a product on the sight of its row-materials, because depending on the raw-material, the environmental impact can be “damaging” or “sustainable”.
A concrete example is that we see a great return of wood as a raw material.
Let’s take a good example: the toothbrush. Do we prefer buying a plastic toothbrush and put money in the oil industry or do we prefer buying a wood or bamboo toothbrush and put our money in the forest industry? The difference between plastic and wood/bamboo is huge and it mainly concerns the treatment of waste. A plastic toothbrush will be incinerated or it will need to be remelted to be recycled and it causes an important environmental impact in terms of energy and transport which is not sustainable. With the natural wood or bamboo toothbrush, it can be composted, just the little filaments need to be cut before compost.
We could think that a simple wood or bamboo toothbrush has no impact, but we need to realize that 7 billion people use a toothbrush and at this scale, changing the raw material from plastic to wood has an impact, the same for the cotton-buds.
Many things can be done, and they start to be done because many industries are aware that they are the ones to drive change being more virtuous and sustainable in their development.
So, things are easy for people. It’s about a global disengagement of the era of oil and its derived products through our consumption towards more sustainable raw materials with the goal of supporting fair economies, innovative people for the earth and preserving environment. It’s about decarbonating the everyday life through the things we buy and through our energy, transport, water and waste behaviour.
It would be unrealistic to say that today in our world we can be totally virtuous in our consumptions or behaviours. However, a great part can be changed with big efforts to avoid CO2, helping each other by creating innovative projects each in various fields to federate people around those issues of environment, sustainable development and climate change.
We need to understand that regarding our individual scale of humans or even organizations, the only thing we can individually and collectively act for is our environment. We need to understand that each of our little act contributes to global advancements. We need to understand that those who commit are the ones to drive change.
We are not in a time when it would be still justified to fight against those who pollute nor to ask them to change. They will go until the very last drop of oil. What we need to understand is that the fight for a better future must be driven from the inside in our everyday life and it’s about taking freedom for the earth.
The aware people need to make their own decisions, decide on which side they want to be, choose the future they want to live. The real issue is about freedom. If we don’t make the world change for ourselves, we will never succeed in changing the world; that’s the way it goes on earth.
There is a plan for the earth: the U.N Sustainable Development Goals for a Better Future.
