Conference season has pushed climate change up the news agenda lately. Recent headlines in the UK press have been more climate-focused since the UN summit on climate change that took place in the middle of September in New York. This conference was then promptly followed by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s conference the World Summit of Regions for Climate in Paris, and the International Water Association’s World Water Congress in Lisbon.
The Lisbon conference gave us scare mongering yet thought-provoking headlines such as “UK must be ready for worst droughts in modern times”. Climate change has truly been on the agenda in recent weeks and months, but the momentum cannot stop now. There is too much at stake.
It is so easy for us to forget the real stories, that there are two key features critical to the future clean-up of our planet – water and carbon. Both are products of the earth – we depend on water to live, while if we produce carbon in excess it will threaten us. As the planet warms, water supply is affected in many areas of the globe. Due specifically to climate change, we read of extreme weather events that will shake our planet if the severity of global warming continues at this fast pace, and global temperatures continue to rise.
About 1% of the Earth’s water is readily available for human use, while the rest is either undrinkable or locked in our ice caps. About 750 million people have no access to safe and clean drinking water. I look at the world we inhabit, and I do not want my child to be brought up in a world where there is insufficient water for ourselves and our fellow species.
The plethora of species and variety of plants that we cherish, from the humble bee to the food we produce, the ripe fruits, the rolling countryside full of earth’s crops and bounty, will all be gone. This makes me deeply unhappy, and deeply afraid for future generations. What will they eat, with the world’s population projected to explode to 9 billion by 2050, most of them urban dwellers? Where will all these human beings go to get away from the mighty metropolis of consumerism?
We have to have a clean conscience that the companies we buy from are taking an active role in the green metrics of accountability alongside corporate sustainability and ethics. We need more focus on actionable, quantifiable and meaningful issues such as water trading, and making the cap-and-trade system that carbon already has in place more effective.
These are the real stories I hope to see more of in the future, reassuring me that the future of sky and earth, water and carbon, are the real stars of the news headlines.