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Three days of peace, love and climate awareness in Wales
We found ourselves in a renovated barn, surrounded by the rolling hills of the Welsh countryside, being lectured by one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century. Michael Wadleigh, best known for directing "Woodstock", the most popular documentary of all time, has in recent years been dedicating his
life to acute environmental crises such as resource depletion, climate change and overpopulation.
In the three days spent with Michael, he offered us some insights into the deep cultural and political problems he faces when informing the general public of the IPCC’s scientific facts about climate change.
Whether by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Green Party MEPs, or even NGOs such as Oxfam and Greenpeace [sic], the Nobel Prize winning scientists that Michael Wadleigh represents are being side-lined. The
general consensus is that the disturbing scientific evidence which they have unveiled presents people with
"too much reality". (Although an email from the Dalai Lama whilst we were there indicates that he is willing
to take a stand on the issues)
Organisations and politicians do not wish to confront the western world with their culpability in contributing
to climate change and resource depletion: North America, Europe and Australia are responsible for 76.8%
of the world's CO2 emissions. With this in mind, instead of donating money to charitable organisations in an
attempt to buy back our clean conscience, we should radically change our energy policies and seriously
overturn our own way of living and thinking. We, the western world, have to admit to the fact that we are
guilty of mass resource depletion and climate destruction which will most severely affect the poorest majority of humanity. Unless the western world squares up to these raw scientific facts, "we're toast, man" - M.
Wadleigh.
The goal of the climate summit in late September this year was to limit the atmospheric temperature rise to
2°C by severely reducing our carbon emissions. But the summit was another political farce as no politicians
answered Ban Ki-moon's opening statement inviting them to have “a clear vision, anchored in domestic
and multinational actions, for keeping global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius". Politicians prefer to leave their voters in the dark than to present them with difficult truths. Failure to comply with the 2°C
limit will inevitably lead to fundamental problems such as severely reduced plankton levels due to ocean
acidification, large-scale melting of polar glaciers and the release of devastating amounts of methane
gasses trapped under thawing permafrost.
Whilst many people might accept that climate change will entail increased hazards such as hurricanes
and floods, if we surpass the 2°C limit, we will be leading the planet towards catastrophic system's failure.
Climate change is not just an issue of wearing more sun-tan cream.
The Nobel-prize winning scientists urge us to acknowledge information which is kept from the general public: the fact that we have until 2035 to reduce our carbon emissions to zero. There is only one solution:
adapting our energy sources from fossil fuels to renewable energies, and generally limiting our excessive
consumption of finite resources. Far from increasing, in the past 25 years, the percentage of our energy derived from renewable sources has in fact diminished, contrary to popular belief. All of these things are not
just the sentimental concerns of organic carrot eaters and tree-huggers, nor are they just from the froth of
youthful minds. These are radical problems which require radical solutions.
Laura Marenco and Sebastian Kaye (on behalf of the s7 Eco Ethics Group)