Prophecy...!

26 years ago, it was a Canadian girl Severn Cullis-Suzuki who spoke to the United Nations at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in the year 1992 and left the audience completely silent and speechless for five minutes, when she was twelve years old. After about quarter of a century, once again it’s a 12 year boy Timoci Naulusala from Fiji who spoke at UN Climate Change Conference 2017 in Bonn, Germany with almost the same effect. The audience comprised of leaders of national governments, cities, states, business, investors, NGOs and civil society who gathered to speed up climate action to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

This time, ‘Climate Change’ is not just the hot topic of discussion but Sustainable Development Goal No.13 that calls for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. It is intrinsically linked to all 16 of the other goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. To address climate change, countries adopted the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius. United States of America has already withdrawn from the Paris Agreement arguing that this agreement puts US at a permanent disadvantage and will undermine US economy!

After about 25 years of ‘evolution’ adults of the world, particularly leaders of the world didn’t seem to have answers to the questions and concerns expressed by 12 year olds, on the contrary, have created a situation that generates more concerns and questions every passing day rather than the solutions to the old problems, let alone the new ones. How many more years and how many young kids would it takes us to answer two simple, basic and fundamental questions that I am putting forward for over a decade now at this same place -

Is it all worth it?

And if yes, 

At the cost of what? 

I would like to reiterate one more time a prophecy, as it is generally attributed to, for every conscientious, honest and sensible mind's identification, reflection and action -

   

[A conscious] Way to go...!