The UN Climate Change Summit begins on Dec 10th in Katowica, Poland and is sponsored by two coal companies according to newspaper reports.

Every day there is some mention of climate change in the news. We have heard the dire warnings from respected sources. An overwhelming 97% of world scientists now agree that climate change is the result of human greenhouse gas emissions: cars, trucks, airplanes, industry, burning of fossil fuels, intensive cattle farming, all of it. And more recently, about an acceleration of melting ice in the arctic, occurring more rapidly than previously predicted.

The warnings have been around for a long time and for too long there was debate about the truth of this and uncertainty fueled by the industry and those in power. But that’s over now. It’s here and it’s us. That is now widely accepted. Among the recent statements from the UN: We have only 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe.

So why are we not talking about this every day? Someone tell me how we can go on listening to our governments’ plans for future development? How can we go on pretending or believing that further development of the fossil fuel industry and a gradual reduction in emissions by 2030 is enough to solve a problem that is already here?

Or have many of us given up? Thinking how impossible it is to turn this around? Easy to feel defeated. Our elected leaders do not reflect this urgency. There are so many other pressing issues to resolve. Reminds me of the musicians who kept on playing on the deck of the Titanic.

When I talk to my son on the phone about his future and he reminds me of what it holds, I have few meaningful words of comfort for him. Only that the least we can do as a community is to talk openly and to each other about the impact of climate change on our lives and the planet now and in the future, find out more about what is going on, raise our voices, and demand action.

“If we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves.” Edward Burtynsky

Danuta Valleau
Georgian Bluffs