Politicians Chose to Ignore the "Red Alert" on Climate Change

COP29, Guterres, environment, and week 12 (March 18-24)

Not a steep climate graph, but an evening in week 12 on the island where I live (all photos in this article taken by me, except for the one in the tweet)

"Keep your eyes on the bigger picture; never forget what's at stake. This is a COP to deliver justice in the face of climate catastrophe".

António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, spoke these words today in Baku. Never in the UN's history did its SG have an easy job, but when political tensions are heating up in parallel with the planet itself, Guterres faces numerous challenges on many fronts.

In those few famous months of multilateral optimism in late 2015, all nations adopted the Global Goals, a set of 17 goals such as food, water, climate action, or peace, that formed the strategic agenda for all countries for the next 15 years. But now that we have passed the midway point on the road to 2030, there is hardly reason for optimism.

Take two of the goals I just mentioned: climate and peace. There is so much warfare that one of the three major wars taking place right now, the one in Sudan, hardly ever makes it to the evening news. Meanwhile, the climate crisis is developing faster than anyone has imagined. The predictions about temperature rise were remarkably precise, even if you work with the limited data and knowledge of the 1980s. However, the global ecosystem proved to be more dynamic than most scientists had expected.

The evening news has too many wars, extreme weather events, and structural climate change-related disasters to cover. So, it caters to what gets instant attention. Cars floating down the streets are always popular. I noted this recently when I posted such a photo on social media; 352,000 people saw it, mainly because the platform formerly known as Twitter is now populated by climate-denying trolls who missed the irony.

Unfortunately, no news channel reported today about the thousands of families in countries like India or Bangladesh who gave up farming today and decided to move to the city since the farming conditions have structurally deteriorated over time. Thousands more will follow tomorrow.

We live in dangerous times when the American president-elect picked fracking CEO Chris -"There is no climate crisis"- Wright to head the Department of Energy.' I have no words except to share another quote by the UNSG I admire for his consistent, brave, and outspoken positions, António Guterres: "I urge every party to step-up, pick-up the pace, and deliver. The need is urgent. The rewards are great. And time is short." The risk is that Chris Wright may take these words to heart but with the wrong "drill, baby, drill" mindset.

Crisis multiplier

I haven't forgotten about the annual review, where all of us in this Planet community look back at the past year, one week at a time. We have arrived today in week 12, March 18-24.

The week started with news that, in hindsight, is relevant to where we are today. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke about the need to tackle global warming and called climate change a "crisis multiplier" with implications for international security.

There was more news in week 12 that is still highly relevant today. It was the week that the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) issued a "red alert" on climate change. It mentioned "record-smashing increases last year in greenhouse gases, land and water temperatures and melting of glaciers and sea ice.”

Now, some eight months later, we know that the 'red alert' was highly relevant and entirely ignored by increasingly more populist and anti-science political leaders. The EU's space program just published a report that says it is "virtually certain" that 2024 will be the hottest year on record.

And you?

How was your life in mid-March? Did you notice climate change? And did you notice that your political leaders didn't seem to see any red alert on climate change?

We are all in the same boat or on the same planet, marooned in a cold, hostile, and endless universe. We should be so happy to live on this beautiful planet. Instead, we created interconnected societies that all contributed to ruining this paradise-like planet by destroying the essential factor that lifted us from hundreds of thousands of years of hunting and gathering into thriving societies: the stable climate of the Holocene.

Since we are all in the same boat, please join the chat and share your memories, photos, stories, and experiences of mid-March 2024.

I will end with a few photos I took in week 12:

These magnolia flowers herald the arrival of spring. My photographs are often inspired by paintings; I wouldn't have captured this tree like this if it wasn't for Vincent van Gogh's Almond Blossom. I would probably have singled out one or two flowers like this:

The church of Burgh.

New life in mid-March.

Since some of you mentioned peacocks in the last chat, I will add one of mine. I took this photo a few weeks earlier, and the quality proves you pay a price for zooming in too much.

There is no story; just enjoying the composition and colors.

Please join the chat. Even if you have ignored the chat function entirely until now, look at how it works. Instead of commenting to a writer as you do in the comments, the chat is for all of us to chat with each other.

And please…