You’re going to be hearing and reading a lot about Copenhagen in the next couple weeks. Every day you open your newspaper or switch on the television news it’s going to be up there in the main headlines. So why is Copenhagen such a big deal?
It’s a big deal because it affects all of us. Climate change isn’t just something that happens to other people. Those melting glaciers and raging forest fires may seem a long way from where you’re sitting reading this on a bus or train on the way to work, but they’re happening on somebody’s doorstep. Maybe you’re lucky enough not to be directly affected — yet. But you will be.
Over the next two weeks, Metro will be featuring some of the creatures around the world already suffering because of global warming. Some of them may be familiar — polar bears struggling on the melting Arctic sea ice, or delicate coral reefs killed off by warmer oceans. But there’s one species that stands to lose more than most if climate change isn’t brought under control — humans.
We’re already seeing the terrible consequences of runaway global warming. Many thousands of climate refugees forced to flee their low-lying coastal homes from India to the Pacific islands. Bush fires causing millions of dollars of damage every year from Australia to California. Hurricanes of increasing severity and frequency battering cities from New Orleans to Taiwan.
Climate change could wreck the global economy. It destabilizes food, water and energy supplies, and makes it more difficult for us to pull out of recession. That’s a direct threat to our jobs, homes and security. And all the time the cost of doing nothing is going up — a cost that has to be borne by all of us.
That’s why Copenhagen matters to us all. The great and the good meeting over the next fortnight have the power to lead us into a clean, sustainable future or into ever-more catastrophic global warming. Big deal? You bet it is!
