Dear Heaven Maker:
The following is an edited version of an editorial in the New York Times on Oct. 8th.
Please read it and my response, following it.
“When a cautious, science-based and largely apolitical group like the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world must utterly transform its energy systems in the next decade or risk ecological and social disaster, attention must be paid.
“Frankly, we’ve delivered a message to the governments,” said Jim Skea, a co-chairman of the panel and a professor at Imperial College, London. “It’s now their responsibility … to decide whether they can act on it.”
…”The report, written by 91 scientists from 40 countries, came about at the request of several small island nations that took part in the Paris talks, where 195 countries pledged their best efforts to limit increases in global warming to 3.6 degrees (2 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels. Fearing that their countries might someday be lost to rising seas, they asked the intergovernmental panel for further study of a lower threshold, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius). The panel’s report concluded that the stricter threshold should become the new target. The alternative is catastrophe — mass die-offs of coral reefs, widespread drought, famine and wildfires, and potentially conflict over land, food and fresh water.”
…” The panel said a mammoth effort is needed, beginning now and carrying through the century, to decarbonize global energy systems. The next 10 years are absolutely crucial: Emissions will have to be on a sharp downward path by 2030 for any hope of success. Greenhouse gases must be cut nearly in half from 2010 levels. Renewable energy sources must increase from about 20 percent of the electricity mix today to as much as 67 percent. The use of coal would need to be phased out, vanishing almost entirely by midcentury.”
“The bottom line: We’ve got a decade or so to get climate change under control, and there is no such thing as a gentle glide path. We have to take a firm grip on the emissions curve and wrench it downward.”
As I read the editorial my first reactions were:
- It’s so overwhelming.
- What difference can I, just one person, make?
- Only governments or large corporations can do anything about this.
But then I sat and thought that if everyone had the same initial reaction as me, we’d only make things worse.
We can make a difference. We must make a difference…and the time is now, today.
How?
I pledge to do one thing, a minimum of one thing, every single day to change this direction.
In the same way I brush my teeth every day, or kiss my wife every day, or look at the news every day, I can and will add this to my daily routine, to my daily habit.
Will you join in this daily habit?
What’s one simple action you can and WILL take in the next 24 hours?
Will you join me and a growing number of others all around the world who are taking a daily action.
The time is now, the person is you.
We can and we will turn this from an “It’s all over” story into a “We are co-creating Heaven on Earth story”
Thank you,
Martin
Martin Rutte
