"These are the realities that make me wonder at how corrupt must be the souls of people who have the power to stop this and fail to act."
As Australia endures ongoing wildfires that have choked out cities with smoke and are incinerating wildlife habitats, Prime Minister Scott Morrison made clear that he would not entertain any curtailment of coal production—a signal to observers that the country's leader isn't willing to take seriously the threat of the climate crisis.
Take a walk in downtown Toronto and you may not fully realise what’s around you. In the bustle of the city, it takes effort to dodge streetcars, noisy traffic, bikes that rush past and other pedestrians surfacing from underground subway stations. You may not pause to look up. But you should.
To build the power to take on climate change, we can’t simply validate individual movements or assume single-issue struggles will add up to something greater than the sum of their parts. We need class politics to connect the dots of our many struggles — and to save the planet.
A reduction of economic activity is necessary and just – and can lead to human flourishing.
To sustain the natural basis of our life, we must slow down. We have to reduce the amount of extraction, pollution, and waste throughout our economy. This implies less production, less consumption, and probably also less work.
The United Nations climate talks went into record overtime and then ended in failure on Sunday. The countries gathered in Madrid for COP25 were unable to agree on the main objectives of the negotiations and kicked the most important decisions down the road to next year’s meeting in Glasgow, Scotland.
Members and allies of Climate Action Network Canada made the following statements at the conclusion of COP25:
Catherine Abreu, Executive Director of Climate Action Network Canada:
“You know something is broken when those demanding climate justice are pushed outside of the climate conference - as hundreds were this week - and those delaying climate action are allowed to stay inside.
"This is a wake-up call to world leaders that they must take far more decisive action to tackle the climate emergency or risk betraying younger generations further."
As rights groups around the world marked Human Rights Day on Tuesday, Amnesty International released the results of a survey of 10,000 young adults regarding their top global concerns heading into a new decade, reporting that the climate crisis is what a majority of young people see as a major threat to their human rights.
