In the year of 1979, the First World Climate Conference was held in Geneva, Switzerland. During this conference, a multitude of scientists heralding from different areas of expertise as well as nations discussed and gathered data and information regarding a topic that has been a protagonist in current global issues: Climate Change. This conference was one of the first international forums of discussion held on this topic. This World Climate Conference was held over four decades ago, yet the global community has failed to stop or even delay the problem; climate change has, in fact, been aggravated in the years between that conference and today.
The fact that the international community first took notice of the climate change problem (in a larger scale) over forty years ago poses, of course, an alarming question: How is it possible that we are still dealing with this?! During that time, we have successfully cloned animals, actually took a picture of a black hole and even made 6 full-fledged “Sharknado” movies (yes, there are over 9 hours of “Sharknado” franchise films currently in existence). What is keeping us from solving this problem? Sadly, it isn’t the production of another “Sharknado” spin-off.
To answer this question, one must ask what fuels change. Many factors are involved but an undeniable truth is that money is almost always the MVP when it comes to any type of investigation and infrastructural change. According to the World Economic Forum (and virtually every other institution that conducted similar studies), it will be much more economically beneficial to make big investments in the green transition of every sector (energy, city planning, food, etc.) since it will cut costs in healthcare, waste disposal and climate adaptations. Keeping that in mind, one would not be wrong to think that change would be not only possible, but imminent. In spite of that, this seemingly simple economic decision was not carried out properly.
That was due to the fact that economically powerful entities that can sponsor this economic strategy (big corporations and countries with a lot of resources) would benefit in the short term by not committing to the change since all major economic shifts warrant a significantly large investment to “jump-start” the transition to a greener world. This results in doing all that is possible to save these dying, unsustainable industries, through measures like bailouts and tax cuts (achieved through lobbying).
To sum up: we have known the problem for over forty years, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) submitted its most alarming report yet, communities are already suffering from catastrophic climate disasters but bailing out unsustainable corporations is still a common practice. Perhaps we would do well in reflecting on how much responsibility do big corporations have and how can we, as well as our governments, interact with these same companies in a more conscientious manner.
If we play our cards right, we might stick around for a future Sharknado – Fast & Furious crossover. I’ll let you decide if global warming is worse or not.
Francisco Moura
Comments