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Act now to address climate change and its impacts. Don’t leave our children and grandchildren to clean up, pay for and suffer the consequences of the huge climate mess we have helped create and failed to address
KEY MESSAGES
1. Our activities (such as the burning of petrol and diesel in vehicles and other engines) are responsible for most of the increasing levels of the ‘greenhouse gas’ [GHG] emissions that are the reason our planet is getting hotter. We all need to act to reduce our ‘carbon (GHG) footprint’.
2. We have known what to do to address climate change and minimise its impacts for several decades but have failed to act on this information with enough resolve or courage. We are now at a point where we have, at most 10 years (i.e. until the mid-2030’s), to urgently reduce emissions in order to avoid catastrophic local, national and global impacts over the coming decades and longer.
3. As well as taking personal action to reduce our GHG emissions, we need to use our influencing skills to ensure that decision-makers, and especially those in central government, demonstrate the climate leadership that is now needed. This may include voting for candidates who can commit to take the measures that are now needed.
4. Generations of human ignorance and selfishness, especially in developed countries, have set a climate change process running that is unresponsive to both our needs and desires and how deserving our children, grandchildren and their descendants are for a habitable world to live in. The severity of the impacts they will experience will be determined primarily by the actions we take (or do not take) to tackle climate change over the coming decade.
5. Environmentally speaking, we have enjoyed a free climate change ride for a long time but the “bills” for this thoughtlessness are increasingly coming due. We can choose to start to pay this bill or leave it (and the associated increasing costs) for our children and grand-children to deal with.
6. If we choose the second option we should at least be honest with our (grand)children and tell them that we couldn’t be bothered to do what is needed to secure a liveable, future world for them to enjoy. They can do this work instead and pay for it - as well as suffering the consequences of our failure to act.