What It Means to Put Future Generations First
The upcoming climate talks in Paris mark the next step in a longer journey.
Seventy years ago next month, with much of the world still smoldering in the ruins of World War II, the United Nations was formed to foster peace over war, cooperation over conflict, respect for human rights, and fundamental freedoms over repression, disorder and tyranny.
The institution is no more perfect than its 193 member states. Over the past seven decades, though, the U.N. has become a powerful force for good and a forum for international leaders in an often-troubled world.
On Monday, President Obama lent new meaning to that mission, defining 21st-century leadership as a willingness to work and invest today to create a brighter more hopeful tomorrow. “There’s no stronger sign of leadership,” he said in his annual address to world leaders attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York, “than putting future generations first.”
That means bringing peace to war-torn lands. It means dealing in a humane and comprehensive way with people forced to flee their homes. It means ending global poverty, hunger, and disease. And it means protecting future generations from the widening dangers of climate change.
“We can roll back the pollution that we put in our skies and help economies lift people out of poverty without condemning our children to the ravages of an ever-warming climate,” Obama said, rejecting the false choice between responsible development and a reckless reliance on fossil fuels. “The same ingenuity that produced the industrial age and the computer age allows us to harness the potential of clean energy.”
He then helped to rally his fellow leaders around the call for needed action at the U.N. climate talks this December in Paris. “The United States will work with every nation that is willing to do its part,” Obama said, “so that we can come together in Paris to decisively confront this challenge.”
With two months left, the global conference has already been the catalyst for historic progress, prompting pledges for the largest cuts ever in the dangerous carbon pollution that’s driving climate change. As part of the lead-up to the talks, the United States, China, Mexico, Japan, European Union, and others that together account for roughly 80 percent of the world’s carbon emissions have pledged to cap or curtail that pollution.
Obama, for instance, has pledged to cut carbon pollution and other U.S. greenhouse gases up to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, and he’s put in place credible policies to put us on track to attain the goal by cleaning up our cars, big trucks, and power plants.
Just Friday, China announced it will set legal caps on carbon emissions for key sectors and introduce affirmative market incentives to help promote a transition to clean energy at home and abroad, part of that country’s efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 60 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, as a share of economic output.
Taken together, the commitments promise to cut annual emissions by billions of tons worldwide, the largest reductions in climate change pollution ever. That, though, is just the beginning. We’ll need continued leadership to build on those gains and avert the worst dangers of climate catastrophe.
Paris is an important milestone along a much longer journey. It’s vital that we travel together and all move forward now. We need to consolidate the progress in Paris and make ready for the road ahead.
Companies, cities, states, and financial institutions are helping to show the way forward, with innovative projects and real results that prove we can build the low-carbon economy of the future. Paris must help to accelerate this growing momentum for action and change.
We’re reminded of the urgency of continued leadership with a new report that came out Monday from the influential analysis group Climate Interactive, whose work is relied on by U.S. climate negotiators and many others that will attend the Paris talks. While the historic carbon cuts already announced will slow down climate change, they won’t stop it by themselves. According to Climate Interactive, even with the cuts announced as of mid-September, the planet is still on track for potentially catastrophic warming by the end of this century.
Over the past century, average global land and sea temperatures have risen about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit, triggering global changes in climate. We’re on track now, though, for an additional 6.6 degrees of warming, or 8.1 degrees in total, by century’s end. The countries’ reduction pledges in the run up to Paris will make a big difference, but it will take much more to protect our children and grandchildren.
If countries were to implement these pledges and cut no further, temperatures would still rise by a planet-roasting 6.3 degrees overall. That’s more than hot enough to force rising seas, widening deserts, and raging fires, storms, and floods that would threaten many more millions of people worldwide. To avert the worst that climate change holds in store, we’ll need to hold total warming down to about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
That’s going to require additional cuts in the fossil-fuel pollution that’s driving climate change. We need to invest in efficiency to do more with less energy. We need to build better all-electric and hybrid cars. We need to get more of our power from clean energy sources from the wind and sun. And we need to stop going to the ends of the earth to dig up the dirty fossil fuels that lock future generations into the cycle of destruction that has brought us to the brink of climate catastrophe.
The Paris talks need to be about putting in place the mechanisms we need to drive continuing progress in the fight against global climate change. It’s taken us more than two centuries of intensive fossil-fuel burning to get here. We won’t solve this problem overnight. Over time, though, we must get it done. That’s what it means to put future generations first.
