An appeal to governments and businesses around the world to act on climate ... NOW

Later today (July 20, 2022), President Biden is expected to announce a few executive actions to address climate change ... largely focused on enhancing a few ongoing actions to at least address the immediate heat wave and such ... but way short of going into emergency mode! Today Europe is hitting record temperatures and seeing unheard of forest fires, last year it was Australia and California, and so on! And its not only about forest fires and summer temperatures .... we've been CODE RED for some time now!

The past 3 decades of discussions have made some progress in understanding and awareness - but clearly not enough - and the halfhearted and uncoordinated actions by governments and multilateral institutions have only meant that we may hit the 1.5 Celsius goal not by 2050, but maybe by 2030! That's BAD and we can only says that our governments have generally gotten a failing grade of "F" (not only on this but many other matters too).

If governments are failing, who else can take on the responsibility? Businesses normally plan ahead but here, while there are many commendable actions from many leading companies (not all), it’s not enough and certainly not an orchestrated plan. Just because this existential crisis does not seem like it is happening today, ESG has been treated as a “nice to have” by most …while the reality is that our climate and planet are facing an emergency. Are we waiting for a dystopian movie plot to unfold before we act?

Climate champions such as Greta Thunberg have been shouting from every global platform for the past few years … that THERE IS NO PLANET B ... but we are not listening! Bill Gates' recent tweet reiterated his, John Doerr's, and several others' commitments and plans … which now need to be collated, actioned, and managed globally ... on a similar if not higher priority than how we're targeting inflation and supply chain shortages! Clear thinking, urgency to act, plan for action, and global "project management"!

As David Wallace-Wells says towards the end of his book, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, “The emergent portrait of suffering is ... horrifying. It is also, entirely, elective.” Our actions will determine if humanity is wiped out in a 100 years, or survives for another million years.

#climatechange #climateemergency