A brief thought on the thirteenth goal

Sustainable Development Goal number 13 is about Climate Change.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, if you had asked me to order the goals by my perception of importance, climate change would have featured somewhere between the middle and bottom of my list. At the top, I would have health and education and peace, but I would fairly easily have dismissed climate change as something that only fanatical environmental types would be concerned with.

As seems to have happened many times in the past couple of years, my preconceptions have been battered down by reality. Barack Obama said, “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change”. Many are calling these times the “climate crisis”, and a crisis is exactly what it is. It is not simply a matter of trees being cut down and running out of fossil fuel; it is a matter of shrimp farmers being forced into poverty as their livelihoods are destroyed; of increasingly regular and forceful typhoons flattening villages; of droughts that make it difficult for thousands to get the basic food and water they need; of wildfires wiping out forests and endangering lives.

And it is usually the people who are already in the midst of poverty, already fighting to survive, who are the ones to suffer. We saw the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, showing that few are completely free from the threat of extreme weather. However, it is often the case that, if a storm hits a developed city with good infrastructure, the worst effects are localised flooding and short term power cuts, but If the same happens in the developing world, the results can be catastrophic as they are often unequipped to deal with it.

There are many people who publicly and unashamedly deny the existence of climate change. There are others who simply ignore it. There are still others who are convinced that as the world becomes more technologically advanced, humans will develop some sort of solution. But their solutions rarely involve what is actually needed: reducing CO2 emissions, reducing waste, decreasing reliance on fossil fuels. What they want is to continue their lifestyles in the same way, the way that is causing the problem, but find a way to put a band aid on the problem, rather than reducing it at its source. This will not work.

The UN climate conference is occurring in Paris from 30th November till 11th December this year, and positive steps must come out of it. There is no other option. When the implications of continued climate change are poverty, disease, hunger, death, it is not something that we can ignore. Leading up to the Paris talks, support for climate action needs to be noticed. It might just be putting your name on an email to your local and national politicians (check my Facebook page for links) or going along to a climate change event — they’re happening all over the UK in November. These things are just some of the ways in which you can take action. Many others have been suggested (click on one, two, three). Whatever you do, do something. This will not only affect future generations, it can and will affect all of us. It is too important to ignore.