In November 2015, more than 140 nations put pen to paper in Paris to agree to scale down greenhouse gas emissions and to set the course on turning back — or at least stopping — the environment clock before it runs out on irreparable damage to our global climate. All of the science, weather data, empirical and anecdotal evidence points to the gradual warming of this blue planet, which we all share on its annual trips around the Sun — and mankind collectively is to blame. Our dependence on carbon-based fuels and our emissions from workplaces, cities, vehicles and from virtually everything we do from waking to sleeping, has set nature on a course where our world is gradually getting warmer — and there is but a limited window to limit the damages of our collective actions or face dangerous and uncharted weather change and climatic catastrophe. Simply put, the future of this planet rests in the hands of the nations meeting now in Bonn, Germany, to draw up the changes and rules that will effectively implement the ideals of the ground-breaking Paris climate deal, reached to much acclaim and fanfare in November 2015.
But a lot has happened since then and the task that lies ahead now is more difficult. The election of President Donald Trump in America has given voice to those who believe in the “alternative facts” on climate-change denial. The optimism of Paris has been replaced by opportunism, science by scepticism, research by reactionaries and evidence by everyone with a dollar to make from exacting fossil fuels without a care for their environmental consequences.
These are worrying days for governments, officials, agencies, scientists and researchers who are committed to making our Earth sustainable and tempering temperature rises.
In the less than three months since coming to office, Trump has removed environmental regulations, rolled back long-standing policies prohibiting the exploration for fossil fuels in environmentally sensitive areas such as Alaska and the eastern Atlantic seaboard, openly pushed for resuming coal production and its burning for power plants in the Great Lake states, and reduced the power and effects of the US federal Environmental Protection Agency. And he has vocally ruminated on pulling the US out of the Paris agreement. Simply put, Trump has reversed decades of accepted thinking and accumulated wisdom on climate change.
The task facing those gathering in Bonn was previously daunting. Now, their task is not to be deterred by the doubters. There is too much to lose.