Climate crisis: ‘Everyone is an actor in this great planetary drama’

These are the closing remarks of chairman Pat Cox at the Dublin Climate Dialogues conference, which set out actions to scale up the global response to the climate and biodiversity emergencies – for consideration at the COP26 summit in November:

“The challenges faced today as a result of global warming pale into insignificance compared to what is likely to come if we do not get our act together, according to the scientists whose climate prediction record is unimpeachable.

“The next business cycle and the next electoral cycle are horizons whose tragedy is that they fail to encompass the intergenerational consequences of failing to act with determination now.

"To paraphrase the Schuman Declaration of May 9th, 1950, the foundational document of the European Union, our planet 'cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it'.

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“Many feel that sustainability is a global issue but worry it may be beyond their personal agency to effect change. That is why government leadership is essential – to act as a moral multiplier and mobiliser, as a bridge to close the gap between vague goodwill and concrete choices and action. But we must recognise also that this problem, as many of our speakers have said, is too important to be left to governments alone.

“This is not someone else’s problem, it is ours. We are not bystanders, each in our own way is an actor in this great human and planetary drama. Each can do something.

" 'There is a nobility in the duty to care for creation through little daily actions,' is how Pope Francis puts it. Such actions embrace empowerment over fatalism and hope over despair.

“This is a humble acceptance of an interdependent destiny in the natural world, not an arrogant presumption of human exceptionalism. It is a call for stewardship and not dominion over nature.

“Mother nature is speaking to us in increasingly threatening and angry ways. In the end we each remain totally dependent on the bounty of this one small planet that offers us a place at nature’s feast. We should treat this bounty with the care it deserves.

“We are the beneficiaries of human ingenuity but also the inheritors of human folly. How this duel between ingenuity and folly is fought out will determine our planet’s and our own future course.

“For the bountiful biodiversity which enriches our lives, for the soil and oceans that nurture and feed us, for ourselves, for our children and grandchildren, we are embarked on the battle of a lifetime for the sake of their lifetimes. We must not fail.”