The United Nations Climate Summit
ENVIRONMENT, 29 Sep 2014
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service
On Tuesday, the 23rd of September, 2014, Leonardo di Caprio made a really excellent speech to the United Nations Climate Summit in New York.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/23/leonardo-dicaprio-un_n_5868718.html
Despite the extremely high quality and genuine conviction of his speech, di Caprio failed to mention the terrible long-term threat which the world faces from the methane-hydrate feedback loop, which threatens to produce a human-induced 6th geological extinction event comparable to the Permian-Triasic thermal maximum. Here is a link to a video describing the threat:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRGVTK-AAvw
Leonardo di Caprio’s failure to mention it in his otherwise excellent UN speech is surprising, since he and his family were closely involved with the production of the video.
My own discussion of the dangers from a future methane hydrate feedback loop, and the consequent urgent need for renewable energy, can be found in the following article;
http://eruditio.worldacademy.org/author/john-scales-avery
Delegates at the United Nations Climate Summit were shown images of the inspiring and heartfelt People’s Climate March, which took place on Sunday, September 21st. The organizers of the march had expected 100,000 participants. In fact, more than 400,000 people came, and the march was unique in its artistic brilliance and its ethnic diversity. It was one of 2,600 events in 170 nations, in which a total of half a million people participated.
The slogan of the march in New York was “To change everything, we need everyone”, and in fact everyone came!
http://www.democracynow.org/live/peoples_climate_march
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5YaqcPEUNc
The United Nations Climate Summit was certainly a success. Much was achieved:
http://mashable.com/2014/09/24/united-nations-climate-summit-takeaways/
http://mashable.com/2014/09/23/un-climate-summit-country-promises-map/
And yet, much was missing from the results:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/09/23/UN-Demands-Stricter-CO2-Enforcement-But-Exempts-China
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/China-and-India-snub-climate-summit-at-the-United-Nations-32232.html
China and India are now the world’s two largest emitters of CO2, but they did not make firm commitments to abandon the burning of coal. In fact, these two countries will suffer greatly from climate change, perhaps already in the near future. The present floods in Kashmir are a warning of what is to come. Summer temperatures in India may soon become so high that people without air conditioning will be unable to survive. In both China and India, summer water supplies will be threatened by the melting of Himalayan glaciers.
Throughout the world, peoples of all countries need to act with urgency to switch to an economy that aims at sustainability rather than endless consumption and growth, an economy based on renewable energy rather than fossil fuels, an economy devoted to life rather than to profits.
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John Scales Avery, Ph.D., who was part of a group that shared the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for their work in organizing the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and Associate Professor Emeritus at the H.C. Ørsted Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy and received his training in theoretical physics and theoretical chemistry at M.I.T., the University of Chicago and the University of London. He is the author of numerous books and articles both on scientific topics and on broader social questions. His most recent book is Civilization’s Crisis in the 21st Century http://www.learndev.org/dl/Crisis21-Avery.pdf.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 29 Sep 2014.
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