Climate change is happening faster than anyone thought it would. Our governments are not being honest about the speed and the scale of the breakdown.
Half of the carbon emissions that are currently heating our planet have been emitted over the last thirty years – when we’ve known what we were doing. Despite the Paris Climate accords, emissions are still rising.
A rise in temperature of 1.5 degrees would be disastrous – it now seems very unlikely that we will avoid a rise of 2 degrees – a difference that will cost 100s of millions of lives.
They will be lost to drought, floods, wildfires, shortages of fresh water, sea level rises, mudslides, famine, disease and the conflict that will accompany those disasters. If we carry on as we are now, the BEST case scenario is that our world, our only habitat, will be 3 degrees warmer by the end of the century, with catastrophic consequences for humanity and all living things.
This crisis is too big for an individual nation to tackle. We need international cooperation now more than ever. Just as our societies are being torn apart by the nationalist and right wing forces unleashed by the likes of Nigel Farage and his millionaire backers.
The Green Party will resist such divisions. We need to be in the EU, and we need to send Green MEPs to represent us.