We must stand up for rights of the earth

How do you turn a country respected as the land of opportunity, the home of democracy and the cradle of innovation into a closed, isolated, inhospitable place all in a hundred days? Answer: Elect Donald Trump as your president and your world changes overnight. His slogan, ‘America First’, has come to mean everyone else last as he builds walls and bombs to keep his citizens safe and ‘undesirables’ out.

Just before World Environmental Day, Mr Trump did what everyone concerned about the planet feared most – he announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change. He is thus making America a pariah State while ignoring the threats of climate change is surely a Crime against Humanity. He has not yet denied the reality of climate change but in effect is saying he doesn’t care about the next generation, he is only thinking of the next election – if he survives that long.

HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

Ninety-seven per cent of climate scientists agree that human behaviour has caused climatic change. Pope Francis says that “on climatic change, there is a clear, definitive and inescapable ethical imperative to act”. Those words made little impression on Mr Trump during their recent meeting. Yet Trump cannot deny that USA contains five per cent of the world’s population but is responsible for 25 per cent of Greenhouse Emissions. The evidence of climate change is very obvious in America with longer, hotter summers and shorter, warmer winters as well as melting glaciers and horrific tornadoes. A recent poll indicates that 69 per cent of Americans support the Paris Agreement but their president is not listening.

Under the great pretext of freedom and sovereignty, Mr Trump is freeing up the rich to ignore mother earth’s rules for survival. He is allowing them to exploit the poor and the earth. Pope Francis says that the first victims of climate change will be the poor. Africa may contribute a mere three per cent of global gas emissions but suffers the most from climate change.

The Pope points out that there are not two crises in the world, one social and the other environmental. They make up one single crisis and “strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded and at the same time protecting nature”.

CLEANER OPTIONS

The truth is that if we don’t leave 80 per cent of coal, 50 per cent of gas and 30 per cent of oil underground then we have no hope of meeting the Paris target of reducing temperatures of two degrees by 2040. But there are many cleaner options for renewable energy that Mr Trump chooses to ignore. Solar energy dropped in price by two-thirds between 2009 and 2014 and locally Turkana Wind Farm will be the biggest such producer on the Continent. Even in the USA solar energy employs more than even Trump’s favoured coal industry.

Yet Kenya is following Trump’s route to doom, insisting on the coal power plant going ahead in Lamu despite serious reservations and better options. The common denominator, however, is greed, profit and corruption. But citizens will fight back and win. As Francis says, “While the existing world order proves powerless to assume its responsibilities, local groups and individuals can make a real difference”. Activists today must defend the rights of the planet.

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@GabrielDolan1