Now Is Our Moment for Action

Image: Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament

Yesterday (23 September) was the opening of the United Nations Climate Summit 2014, over 100 Countries and Governments’ head gathered in New York to attend this meeting. World-renowned actor Leonardo DiCaprio was appointed as the United Nations Messengers of Peace, has given a remarkable 3 minutes speech which marked the highlight of the event as well as being widely spread across social media channels.

“As an actor, I pretend for a living. I play fictitious roles solving fictitious problems. I believe mankind has looked at climate change in that same way, as if it were fiction … I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned citizen who wants to solve our climate crisis.” “None of this is rhetoric and none of this is hysteria, it is fact”

“Now Is Our Moment for Action”

“How we respond to the climate crisis in the coming years will likely determine the fate of humanity and our planet.”

Image: Rappler

The fact is, 2 decades or even long ago, environmentalists already shout loud encouraging human beings to take action to save the planet or the result will be devastating. Today, people are still working on it, some people already change their habit of living, some established their green corporate but many are still “unaware” or refuse to “aware”, as if they are not part of the earth or they don’t believe climate change will cause us serious damage.

“There is no plan B because we don’t have Planet B”

“Climate change is the single greatest threat to a sustainable future. But, at the same time, addressing the climate challenge presents a golden opportunity to promote prosperity, security and a brighter future for all.” — Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General, United Nations

Image: WWF

As an individual, we must give up our irresponsible habits, waste less, pollute less and support sustainable ecological development. On Government level, legislation must be applied to corporate to eliminate the carbon emission. Countries should encourage corporate to develop technology and skill on sustainable, renewable resources. If the major carbon-emission-polluters reject to perform big changes, holding climate meeting, summit will just be a waste of time.

‪During the summit, it was announced that public-private partnership of multinationals, governments, civil society and indigenous peoples have pledged to cut the loss of forests in half by 2020 and end it a decade later in 2030. This will eliminate the emission of between 4.5 and 8.8 billion tons of CO2 each year. That is equivalent to removing the carbon emissions produced by the one billion cars that are currently on the world’s roads. The pledge was similar to the one made at 2009 at Copenhagen.

Just 2 days before the summit opened, 4 hundred thousand people participated in the People’s Climate March in New York which marked the largest climate protest in history. In Asia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Australia and so on had also started different activities in various scale. As one of the stakeholders of this planet, all of us can help making our right choice to help protect the environment, for example, buy less (shop for necessities, stay away from fashion items), waste less food (the production of food, from growing, transportation to retailing, all involved large carbon emission) etc. We can further support green corporate which help attract more people to invest in green business.

Now Is Our Moment for Action as Leo said.