We’re All in This Together
Pushing Global Leaders to Address the Climate Crisis
By Dr. Susana Hancock
Hallå from Sweden. I’m spending the winter riding the rails of Europe having been invited to help global leaders understand the global connectivity of the climate crisis. Despite more signed pieces of paper to the contrary, 2022 marked another year of record emissions. Our leaders’ repeated refusal to implement immediate (or frankly, any) change is creating a world that, within 50 years, will have three billion refugees.
Over the past year, I have attended ten global forums specifically to tackle the climate crisis.
Yet, at each, the topic was left to boil over on its familiar back burner. Why? Because December’s floods in southeastern Australia were the continent’s most costly global disaster. Because the summer drought and heatwaves that dried Germany’s Rhine stalled the global supply chain. Further because Hurricane Ian had a total price tag of $100 billion. Because 7 million people were displaced by four months of flooding in Pakistan. And because 36 million people went through 2022 food insecure as another year of droughts dehydrated the Horn of Africa.
All but the last is counted among last year’s ten global environmental disasters that left an insurance bill exceeding $3 billion (a financial threshold that doubled over the 2021 list). Despite the connectivity of our planetary systems, we treat each as an independent catastrophe. Consequently, we find ourselves playing an urgent game of Whack-A-Mole, while the global systems—and human actions—are saved for “another time.”
Yet, when is this other time?
As we come into a year that promises even more climate disasters, we need to push through legislation on climate. Did you know that the first two universally ratified treaties in the history of the United Nations were environmental? The fact that we know the steps needed gives me hope. And the fact that we have done it before with proven results internationally gives me drive. Some legislation, such as carbon pricing, can even work in our favor as border adjustment taxes are beginning to be levied against us.
Do we want to see the next spate of global disasters and know they could have been prevented?
Dr. Susana Hancock
Dr. Susana Hancock is an internationally recognized climate activist and transdisciplinary polar scientist. When not traveling around the world [by train], she spends half the year in mid-coast Maine where she volunteers with Citizens’ Climate Lobby and has founded her own climate organization.
