Climate crisis is here

THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) launched a report that made sober reading this week. It said that unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gases, then limiting global warming to close to 1.5 degrees or even 2 degrees will be impossible.

The stark comments were no surprise to anyone, though. The world has known this for some time. It is hard to see why this report would succeed where so many others have failed up to now.

But succeed it must, in engendering some kind of urgency upon the world’s nations.

The vast majority of world leaders are of a generation that really doesn’t feel this issue is going to affect them, however. We hear so much talk of the ‘next generation’ bearing the brunt of our mistakes that many feel it is not their problem to solve.

But if there is a positive element to all this, it is the knowledge that today’s young people have climate control firmly in their sights. They do not need to be told twice.

Here in West Cork we have many young voices intent on spreading the message that climate change is not the future – it is here and now. But we must not make it an ‘us and them’ issue – every generation and every nation must unite now to help and turn around this juggernaut before the worst case scenario happens and the demise of our once great planet is an inevitability.