Everything has to start somewhere

Whatever your job description, as a parent or an adult you are a tutor and influencer.  It’s accepted that we learn better from mistakes and things running amok than from success.  How we behave teaches more than words unsupported by deed, and nowhere is this demonstrated better than the state of the planet.  If governments can have State of the Nation addresses, then the planet deserves one too.   

I was blessed beyond my imagining to be selected to attend the first African Climate Reality Leadership course held in March at the Sandton Convention Centre.  Listening to veteran Climate Reality leaders such as Al Gore and Kumi Naidoo, Dania Gurira, Patrick Ngowi, Evans Wadongo and Ikal Angelei amongst many others was more than inspiring to me and hundreds of other delegates – we felt truly at home amongst likeminded souls.

Whether a professional environmentalist or an ordinary person whose interest and passion for the wellbeing of our earth beats strongly through your veins, nearly 900 people were held spellbound for three days. Everyone took so much away with them, inspired and motivated to continue on our path.

In 2006, An Inconvenient Truth woke a slumbering public up to climate change and caused a flurry amongst politicians and scientists, many eagerly disputing the film, the science and the man.  In 2014, this group of dissenters, referred to as climate denialists, is melting faster than the arctic ice pack as scientific evidence continues to land on the climate change side of the scale.  And weather events throwing up chaos, change and confusion across the planet are now the norm.

So what, then, is the State of the Planet in 2014?  

-       -   2013 was the 37^th consecutive year with the average global temperature above the 20^th century average.

-       -   February 2014 was the 348^th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20^th century average

-     -   Higher temperatures and warmer oceans evaporate more water vapour into the sky. Global humidity has increased by 4% in 30 years.   Every 1⁰C increase in air temperature increases the capacity of the atmosphere over the ocean to hold water vapour by 7%.  This water vapour has nowhere to go but down, hence heavier downpours of rain.

I’m not going to attempt to share three twelve hour day’s worth of lectures and discussions in depth with you here, that’s an impossible task.  All I can do is to spark your interest to investigate and research this further yourself.

Climate change is a fact, a reality we are living.  Respected scientific research from across the globe continues to heap more proof onto the climate change pile – the facts are indisputable. 

The questions and the arguments now are about the way forward – how to secure food and water for mankind into the future.  Renewable energy, resource conservation and safeguarding what we need to survive as a species. 

Wars have always been fought over resources of some kind – land, slaves, minerals, oil, and access to water as a transport medium.

Al Gore maintains that the war in Darfur will be seen as the world’s first war over food.  Be assured that it will not be the last ‘food’ war, and since we can’t drink oil or eat coal, a time will come when fighting over mineral resources will take a backseat to waging war over drinking water and arable land.

One of the most exciting thoughts I took away from the conference was the conviction that the solutions will be found by Generation X & Y.  Not merely because their predecessors have left them no alternative but to eventually begin hugging bunnies and clean up our mess, but because the future expansion of knowledge, research and development lies in renewable energy, food and water security.

Man has discovered that the earth isn’t flat, landed on the moon, created babies in test tubes and cloned sheep.  So what’s left for this and future generations to change and discover?  

Listening to the bright and enthusiastic ideas and thoughts of the students from schools such as St Stithians and Beaulieu who attended the conference and the passionate speech from the young Egyptian delegate describing the climate change computer game he is busy inventing, it is obvious that these young people don’t see green living and thinking as some sort of tedious punishment for their parents ‘sins’ – they are embracing the opportunity to invent, discover and change society and the world around them.