A rapidly growing number of people all over the world are becoming aware that Climate Breakdown is most probably the planet’s greatest threat and, indeed, an emergency. Countless movements have sprung up, especially in Europa, to urge governments and industries for real and drastic action.
Three major international citizen’s initiatives for Climate, Nature and Planet
Fridays For Future – FFF
A part of the people decided to engage actively in the peaceful, weekly strikes each friday or in the four global strikes organized by FFF. The third strike(s) on 20 and 27 september 2019 gathered over 7 million people worldwide. This is already 0,1% of total global population… the other 0,1%! The number will steadily grow and reach a critical mass within the near future.
FFF basically wants to increase awareness on the Climate Crises as a collective global problem and has just two very simple demands to world political and industry leaders:
- Recognize the science of the IPCC and their latest report of 2018 (summary) – full report with specific reference to page 108, chapter 2
- Comply with the COP21 Paris agreement of 2015 (at least)
IPCC and COP are two fully recognized official international institutions, but even so most governments and industries don’t listen and just continue business as usual.
Since august 2018 FFF is succesfully raising the awareness that drastic change is needed now, both amongst the public as in the institutions, through repeated and continued peaceful protest.
Extinction Rebellion – XR
Over the decades it has become clear that most institutions, industries and other people in power simply show absolutely no interest and take no, little or false, greenwashing actions. Driven by these facts another growing group of global activists have come to the conclusion that only disruption, very specifically economic disruption, can bring these entities and people to act for real. Causing this disruption in a peaceful way has proven to have good results in the past: Mahatma Ghandi, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King are the best known examples. Their own major blockade of London in april 2019 was a huge success. This is why XR calls out for more disruptive, but always pacific, civil disobedience on a mass scale all over the world.
StopEcocide
The third way to more drastically ‘persuade’ industries and governments to stop destroying nature, is to turn Ecocide into an international crime. This means that companies don’t ‘just’ get a fine, which they are prepared for, but that CEOs, directors, managers and also ministers can actually end up in jail.
Initiated in 2010 by late Polly Higgins and now continued by co-founder Jojo Mehta, StopEcocide is making great progress in getting an Ecocide Law accepted by the International Criminal Court of the United Nations.
From Wikipedia (EN): Ecocide had already been proposed as one of the international crimes against peace in 1996, but failed to be included in the final Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The IPCC is the Intergovernamental Panel on Climate Change. This is a group of about 2.000 highly qualified international climate experts, who have been specifically selected to investigate and monitor Climate Change. Together they represent the world’s highest level of knowledge in this area. Their science, numbers, reasoning and conclusions can be found in the report of 2018. IPCC’s main conclusion is that, in simple words:
Climate Breakdown is very probable by 2030 if we don’t take drastic measures now.
The COP21 Paris agreement of 2015 starts article 2 (article 1 is a short intro) with:
Long-term temperature goal – The Paris Agreement, in seeking to strengthen the global response to climate change, reaffirms the goal of limiting global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees.
IPCC and COP of the Paris Agreement are both fully recognized official international institutions. Yet, governments and industries are hardly acting to avoid the threat.
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