Editorial: 5 reasons for frustration — and hope — as the world prepares for another U.N. climate summit
Published: Tuesday, February 15, 2016 at 07:28 PM.
We’re all accustomed to sitting across the table from each other in a conference room, discussing how the world can get along together.
With the “Global Climate Action Summit” that began February 1 in New York City, the world is being forced to confront an issue not much discussed. It’s the problem of planetary climate security, which as the world has been reminded is possible.
We’re all accustomed to sitting across the table from each other in a conference room, discussing how the world can get along together.
With the “Global Climate Action Summit” that began February 1 in New York City, the world is being forced to confront an issue not much discussed. It’s the problem of planetary climate security, which as the world has been reminded is possible.
In the midst of all this, many of us are frustrated. I am very impatient. I’m not one who likes to wait, especially on something as big as what we’re trying to decide.
This is the third U.N. climate summit since the Earth’s first Earth Day in 1970. The previous two have been a joke and the current one won’t be any more.
I wrote a column in 2014 about this process, using the climate summit process from its inception in 2009 to the present.
This year’s meeting, like the last two, is being forced to make a choice: Do world leaders and activists really get it that the world will be forced to confront the question of planetary climate security?
The reason they have been forced to deal with this issue: It’s not going away.
What is a planetary security issue?
Think of it as the next step to a global economic and security system that takes into consideration the sustainability of life on our planet.
This would be the first time we’ve taken a global approach to something as big as global climate control. And it would be the first time we’ve had a global focus on the future of our biosphere.
The term planetary security refers to the future of life on the planet, and how that relates to the future of human civilization.
The
