Are we doing enough to save Mother Earth ? - EDITORIAL

We focus today on 16-year-old Swedish Environmental Activist, Greta Thunberg, who was featured on the Time’s cover page of May 27, 2019, as the ‘Teenager on Strike for the Planet’ and currently on the cover page of Time magazine as the ‘2019 Person of the Year’, an honour that US President Donald Trump is nown to have coveted for himself.   

The teenager, who is said to have told Associated Press she was “a bit surprised’ at being bestowed this honour, started the global climate strike movement when she sat alone, outside the Swedish parliament in 2018. 

“Greta has succeeded in creating a global attitudinal shift, transforming millions of vague, middle-of-the-night anxieties into a worldwide movement calling for urgent change,” Time wrote. “She has addressed the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, spoken to European and United States lawmakers and has sparred with US President Donald Trump, while urging people to “listen to scientists.”   

Climate change or global waming is not an environmental phenomenon being experienced in the abstract; it is palpable, real and happening here and now. We in Sri Lanka like those the world-over are feeling its effects such as shifting weather patterns, torrential rains, droughts and rising temperatures.   

An overwhelming scientific consensus maintains that climate change is due primarily to the human use of fossil fuels, which releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the air. The gases trap heat within the atmosphere, which can have a range of effects on ecosystems, including rising sea levels, severe weather patterns and droughts that render landscapes more susceptible to wildfires.   

Reports say, there is broad-based agreement within the scientific community that climate change is real. The US Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concur that climate change is indeed occurring and is almost certainly due to human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, which emits greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- mainly carbon dioxide. Other human activities, such as blatant deforestation, also contribute to the proliferation of greenhouse gases that cause climate change.   

They say climate change deniers often claim that recent changes attributed to human activity can be seen as part of the natural variations in Earth’s climate and temperature, and that it is difficult or impossible to establish a direct connection between climate change and any single weather event, such as a hurricane. While the latter is generally true, decades of data and analysis support the reality of climate change -- and the human factor in this process.   

Time said, Greta was awarded the honour after she “began a global movement by skipping school. Starting in August 2018, she spent her days camped outside the Swedish Parliament, holding a sign painted in black letters on a white background that read Skolstrejk för klimatet: ‘School Strike for Climate.’”   

The global strike movement has since picked up steam, with Greta inspiring schoolchildren around the world to strike on Fridays, urging their governments to take action to address climate change.    “In the 16 months since, she has addressed heads of state at the UN, met the Pope, sparred with the President of the United States and inspired four million people to join the global climate strike on September 20, 2019, in what was the largest climate demonstration in human history,” Time wrote.      

She has repeatedly urged lawmakers and the public to listen to scientists, pointing out that she doesn’t want the spotlight. “I don’t want you to listen to me, I want you to listen to the scientists,” she told US lawmakers in September.   

Noting how Greta has inspired teenage activists across the planet, Time said: “It all happened so fast. Just over a year ago, a quiet and mostly friendless teenager woke up, put on her blue hoodie, and sat by herself for hours in an act of singular defiance, 14 months later, she had become the voice of millions, a symbol of a rising global rebellion.”    `Let us hearken to the clarion call sounded by Greta Thunberg and begin today to reduce our carbon footprint and help save Planet Earth; it is our home, we have nowhere else to go.