Nepalese Climate Campaign join h

21^st century, Global Greens and duty of the human kind

By J.A.M.S.C. Abayawardena,

From the 1^st of May to 4^th of May this year in Brazil, Green political parties, movements, activists and young greens from all over the world are about to get together for the 2^nd Global Greens conference. This is considered as a land mark, since the 2001 first global greens conference managed to most highlighted charter of Canberra. This is due to take place in a time where the climate change has caused a massive catastrophe in a global scale. Greens have been in the forefront of highlighting of the seriousness of the situation and also in the forefront of combating parties who is directly and indirectly responsible for the catastrophe.

From the Canberra conference of Global Greens in 2001, the movement has grown to a greater extent. Recent achievements in grass root levels in France to the achievement in Japan and around the world are hinting that Greenism I going to be a large Global Power in the very near future. At the moment, the preparation for the Global Greens Conference-2008 is in full swing and green activists are showing a high level of motivation to show their activation during the time of conference. Most importantly many are showing their interest in contributing to the drafting of the 5 year action plan which going to be the highlight of the event. Considering the current situation among policy makers in regard to climate change this is real positive side.

Many green parties including the ones from Australia, has shown some considerable amount of interest in promoting Solar technology over coal power or any other non-cleaner energy generation methods. In the middle of the petro economy, more and more energy authorizes are considering coal power as a solution. This is really the case in countries like Sri-Lanka (Sri-Lanka gets many Billions of dollars from housemaid in Middle East and spend the exact amount on oil.). China has taken the lead in supporting Sri-Lanka to built coal power plants and two such plants are being built, (Everybody seem to be forgetting the fact that we have a real large potential in solar energy due to the very large initial and maintenance costs.). Also the increasing prizes of crude oil just hit 110 USD’s per barrel and inevitable deteriorating US economy has caused many Asian export economies to be fallen in ill.

In USA coal power plants are the prime reason for massive amounts of CO₂ emission. In Europe also the EU has been failed to come to a agreement to cut down emissions by 30% by the year 2020. The most unfortunate fact is USA and their trance national industries, that are responsible for the very larger piece of Global Warming, are trying to dominate post-Kyoto regime. To face this challenge, it is absolutely necessary that less powerful parties who bare the biggest burden of the problem, agreed to a one strong voice of action. This is where the Global Greens “21 points for the 21^st century” come in to play.

There is no suspicion that, Climate change is the top most priority of the conference. Henceforth, it’s absolutely important to use this opportunity with the maximum productivity. For the first time in the modern history, a global political movement is giving a real value to the catastrophe of Global Warming; the most serious problem mankind has ever faced thanks to the western way of living. As far as Sri-Lanka is concern, we are now experiencing what it’s known to be effects of Global warming. Heavy rains in the off season have already destroyed almost all the crops in the Anuradhapura and polonnaruwa districts. Destruction of agriculture is far worse than we could expect. Sri-Lanka is not the only country who’s experiencing this. It won’t be long that millions of Bangladeshi people have to leave there home in the costal low lands and start to move upland.

Likewise millions in the African region and millions in central Asia will go out of water, if we won’t use our every available source to combat Global warming in an effective way. The biggest burden will be put on to the poorest parties in the stage by the parties directly responsible for the emissions. To overcome this dark future, we all must ensure Global Greens conference-2008 meet the call of mother earth. It is absolutely important that we won’t be waiting for others to put the input needed but we put the input ourselves. That is the only way that we can make the event an all out success.