The two-week UN Climate Change Conference opened today with fanfare in Copenhagen, Denmark, where several thousand government, non-government organization, and other delegates are in attendance from 192 countries. The conference opened amidst both optimism and skepticism. A great number of the delegates are optimistic that a uniform policy will come out of the conference resulting in regulation of greenhouse gases and lessening of global warming.
On the opening day of the conference, 56 newspapers in 45 countries published the same agreed upon editorial, "One World, One Voice." The editorial said, "Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has bee feeble and half-hearted."
At the conclusion, the editorial said, "Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness.... The Politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice."
You may read the full editorial in
The Toronto Star today.
