1 – Nature First

La bellezza della natura

La natura viene distrutta dalla società industriale

Planet Earth with all of Nature is the mother, the cradle and home of the human species as it is of all life. It should be loved, protected and taken care of. More than ever, this is the highest global priority. However, in less than a century our industrial society has led to serious harm to Nature and Planet. Now, drastic measures are urgently needed to try and turn this around:

• Climate emergency must be recognized and acted upon
  – stop emission of greenhouse gases: reduce fossil fuels, air travel, industrial meat production and “fast fashion”
  – change to renewable energy
• Ecocide Law to turn mass destruction of nature into a Crime against Humanity
• Minimize use of non-degradable plastic
• Stop deforestation
• Stop loss of bio-diversity
• Clean up the oceans
• In general, reduce pollution of air, water and land
• Abandon economy based on (unlimited) growth and substitute by circular, sustainable economy.

Climate Emergency

A rapidly growing number of people all over the world is 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.

Casually and unfortunately, the emergence of the Corona Crisis, being a shorter-term emergency (~ 1 year), has temporarily pushed the Climate Crisis to the background, which is of longer term (~ 10 years), but which will also require proportionally more time to solve. Once the Corona Crisis has been overcome, with more reason and more speed it will be necessary to act with the same impetus for the Climate Crisis, since there will be even less time left until 2030 to avoid the collapse of the climate. The main hope is that the things that have been done for and learned from the Corona Crisis, will serve to know how to act with more awareness and wiser in the face of the Climate Crisis. It will be essential and even more important.

StopEcocide
The most effective and drastic way to get industries to stop the destruction of nature (Ecocide) on a global scale, is establishing a law that turns it into an international crime. This means that companies do not ‘just’ get a fine, which they are prepared for, but that CEOs, directors, managers but also ministers and other responsible people can actually end up in jail.

Based on the original initiative in 2010 by late Polly Higgins and now taken forth by co-founder Jojo Mehta, StopEcocide is making great progress in getting an Ecocide Law accepted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Once this law is in place Ecocide will be considered a crime against peace.

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 (not mentioned: due to just four countries who opposed the proposal)

Fridays For Future – FFF
Many conscious people decided to actively engage in the peaceful, weekly strikes each friday or in the four global strikes organized by FFF. The third combined strike of 20 and 27 september 2019 gathered over 7 million people worldwide. This is already 0,1% of total global population… they could be called the other 0,1%! A number that will steadily grow and reach a critical mass in the near future. FFF basically wants to increase awareness on the Climate Crises as a collective global problem and has just two and very simple demands to world political and industry leaders:

1. Recognize the science of the IPCC and their latest report of 2018 (summary) –  full report with specific reference to page 108, chapter 2
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
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 reached 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. Also XR’s 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.

IPCC science and Paris agreement

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.

The Paris Agreement | UNFCCC

The Paris Agreement builds upon the Convention and for the first time brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries to do so. As such, it charts a new course in the global climate effort.

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.

Supporting initiatives

Europa.is fully supports any intiative that has the intention to protect or restore Nature, our Planet and an honest and just global society, some in particular:

• StopEcocide – Initiated in Stroud, England, by late Polly Higgins from Scotland. She declared herself lawyer of the Earth and is recognized as such by many. She aimed to establish an international Ecocide Law to criminalize mass destruction of nature, generally by big industry.
• Fridays For Future #FFF – Protests initiated in solitary by young Greta Thunberg, Sweden, to guarantee a healthy Future on a healthy Planet with healthy Climate and Nature for current and all coming generations.
• Extinction Rebellion #XR – Founders Roger Hallam and Gail Bradbrook, Stroud, England, together with many others argue that peaceful but disruptive civil disobedience is the only way to get politicians to truly act instead of just talk and promise, as in the case of Mahatma Ghandi, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.
• Den Haag Fossielvrij – Femke Sleegers, the Hague, Netherlands. A small but active and effective group against fossile fuels in Den Haag, Netherlands home to both Shell’s global main office and the International Court of Justice
• The Ocean Cleanup project – Boyan Slat, Delft, Netherlands. Advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic.
• Survival international – The global movement for tribal peoples protects their natural (living) surroundings at the same time, from the Amazon to the Kalahari.
• The Orang Utan project – While protecting the Orang Utans it is also protecting the world’s greatest forests after the Amazone, in Borneo, Indonesia.