When Leonardo Di Caprio won his first Oscar for his role in the film Revenant, he said “Making The Revenant was about man’s relationship to the natural world. A world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people out there who would be most affected by this. For our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed. I thank you all for this amazing award tonight. Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted”
I was not taken aback by what he said initially because I didn’t understand it entirely but ever since then, I wondered why he said that on that particular moment. He could have just thanked everyone and returned to have a fantastic party of his lifetime. But he said something that created a spark.
In the recently held Third R20 Austrian World Summit which took place on May 28th at The Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria, over 150 speakers from 30 countries shared their views and presented several thought-provoking intel about the deterioration of Climate.
Legendary Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke to a huge crowd of eco-warriors in Vienna and called upon global leaders to take better&effective steps to control climate change and urged them not to lie to the people about the dire climatic situation that prevails at present. Arnold said “stop lying to the people about pollution and about the climate change” and asked them to “invest in the green energy of the future”
Antonio Guterres, General Secretary of United Nation delivered a special address in the event. He said, “All around the world, people are now losing their homes and being forced to migrate because of climate change. The sea level is rising and we see floods, drought, wildfires and extreme storms appear everywhere. What is needed for effective mitigation and improved resilience is quite simply a rapid and deep change in how we do business, how we generate power, how we build cities, and how we feed the world.”
True to what Antonio said,we are witnessing terrible climate changes and the rise in temperature could set a trend for natural disasters to occur every year and become a naturally accepted pattern of nature but on the other hand it is an artificial means of catastrophe that is cooked by us.
Antonio extended, “I am asking leaders not to come with beautiful speeches but to come with concrete plans to promote the climate action we need. We need to tax pollution, not people, and to end subsidies for fossil fuels. The story of subsidies for fossil fuels is not usually well-described. Many people still think that to give fossil fuels subsidies is a way to improve living conditions of people. There is nothing more wrong than that. What we are doing is using taxpayers’ money – which means our money – to boost hurricanes, to spread droughts, to melt glaciers, to bleach corals. In one word – to destroy the world.”
Again, Antonio has hinted that the need for alternatives in fuel industry is high through his speech in the Summit. For instance, in India, we have several crores of LPG connection and the government of India provides us a good amount of subsidy and has lowered our financial expenditure. But by making the world’s second largest population follow LPG, India is actually and unknowingly releasing a plethora of CO2 (which comes out when LPG achieves combustion) that increases the severity of global warming.
Antonio requested the world leaders saying “Let us show the world that climate action is good for the people, is good for the planet and if you are smart, it can also be good for business.”. He highlighted that the source to huge redemption and recovery of our climate stability remains in finding alternatives to fossil fuels and also exercising the will to act .
The Best and Brightest speech came from Teenage Climate Activist Greta Thunberg. In her address,she conveyed that it is time we start treating climate change like a crisis. Greta, who has been school-striking for almost 9 months on Fridays mentioned that most of the people don’t exactly know how cruelly the climate change could affect them. “We have never seen the graph which shows how much the CO2 emission needs to be reduced for us to stay behind the 1.5 degree limit”
Greta called upon the global leaders for not conveying the facts to the people. “We are social animals and we are naturally drawn to our leaders.”Greta and thousands of children like her skipped their classes on Fridays and protested outside parliaments to stress about global warming.”We received attention but we are not leaders or scientists but you all (who are watching the event) are.” She said Politicians, Celebrities, Journalists, CEOs have the responsibility to convey to the people about the details of climate change but they have failed to do so.
“You need to tell them no matter how uneasy the data is” Politicians for a moment say that they have taken global warning seriously but on the next moment expand airports, establish fossil fuel powered industries and fly in a private plane to other side of the world, she said.
As long as you don’t convey it to the people about the disaster that will arise if they follow the same path, then people will continue to do what they do and that is remain ignorant to the impending catastrophe, Greta thundered.
She asked the politicians to not think that they can end the climate change by implementing solar panels, electric cars and closing coal dependent power stations in future. The world needs awareness and until they receive it, they will always think that any crisis could be averted by implementing technology.
For her visionary speech, she received a standing ovation from the gathering.