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#COP21 Delivers On Its Promise And Really Changes Everything
#COP21 Delivers On Its Promise And Really Changes Everything
After reading the reports out of Paris today I think we can call this #COP21 (even though its not quite over) as nothing short of a miracle. An amazing victory for diplomacy, common sense and the collective will of Civil Society throughout planet earth,
To re-use Naomi Klein's book title "This Changes Everything."
Even non-binding global commitments to take the world to Carbon Zero by 2050 will be enough to start real change occurring everywhere, to everything. And that is what the world is about to agree to. The detail isn't yet done which will enable us to deliver on this objective but rather than aim low the world has in Paris agreed to aim high.
Two weeks ago global hope in diplomacy and our ability to act collectively in everybody's best interests was suffering something akin to cardiac arrest. This past week Paris has delivered some much needed CPR to the hopes and dreams of 7 billion people.
Meanwhile back in NZ, while our Government may have been one of the last nations on the planet to join the "High Ambition" group of nations which agreed to the Pacific Island's push for a 1.5 degree temperature target - even we eventually did so.
And in doing so the NZ Government's approach to climate change will need to be sent back to the drawing board - where it most definitely belongs.
Well done France. Well done world.
Well done activists. Well done diplomats. And even well done to the hitherto fossilised democracies of the western world which have till this past few days shown very little capacity to address serious issues without nit-picking about everything through a self-interested lens.
We all need this. Each and every person on the planet.
Thankyou universe.
Today (well actually tomorrow - when these talks conclude) will be a day to remember for generations to come.
- News Comment from
Out-going Scoop Editor Alastair Thompson, posted from Gili
Trawangan in
Indonesia.
Alastair Thompson
Scoop Publisher
Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.
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