At COP27, a REUTERS story from William James, Valerie Volcovici and Simon Jessop framed climate change as battle for survival:
“Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres told delegates, urging them to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels and speed funding to poorer countries struggling under climate impacts that have already occurred. . .
Despite decades of climate talks so far, countries have failed to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, and their pledges to do so in the future are insufficient to keep the climate from warming to a level scientists say will be catastrophic. . .
Land war in Europe, deteriorating diplomatic ties between top emitters the United States and China, rampant inflation, and tight energy supplies threaten to distract countries further away from combating climate change, Guterres said, threatening to derail the transition to clean energy. . .
Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. Global temperatures keep rising. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible,” he said. “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”
Climate change has been finally acknowledged as, perhaps the greatest threat confronting the sustainability of life on earth.
Wether or not the window for corrective change by human activity is still open is unclear. The environment is in free – fall. Critical patterns of elemental natural factors have been destabilized and the behavior driving these changes has stepped up rather than diminished.
The “leaders” whom we have entrusted to manage our welfare clearly . . . stunningly . . . operate on the mandates of their own egos, self interest and the profit driven industrial entities that put them in power and float them as stewards of their activities. Activities which are shaped exclusively by profitability and untempered by collateral damage to the host environment . . . the platform upon which all life takes place.
Right / wrong, good / bad are misplaced sentiments that play into the situation with absolutely no power. This is simply the way it is.
The only “success” in nature is the ability to adapt and survive against a background of ever changing conditions, i.e. to evolve. In this, the arena of true success or failure, we are clearly on our own, as individuals, with the ability to take responsibility for our own lives and actions.
The search for answers, leads only to choices. The only instrument that we have to guide us in making successful choices appears to lie within us . . . our connection to nature . . . to the unfolding totality.
This connection is basic . . . energetic and manifests, not intellectually but as feelings.
We are on our own.The environmental collapse that we have set in motion is no longer merely sending a signal. The wake-up call has escalated to a blaring, continuous alarm that mandates choices. Our actions are our choices. They are irrevocable and final. It’s up to you.
It has become difficult to continue upholding the view that the world is our gift to use as we please and that we are the ordained wardens and managers of the planet . . . monopolizing and consuming everything, reflexively exterminating anything else that we see as competition for what we are deluded into believing has been placed on the table solely for us.
Again, not a matter of right or wrong, good or bad . . .
It is simply a perspective that does not work and results in the path to extinction that we find ourselves on now.
It’s up to you.
Everything is connected in the living connective tissue of nature.