Humanity is today facing one of its biggest threats - Climate
Change. It can be viewed as a
polymorphic organism that props up in different forms at different locations.
Beneath water, it manifests as bleach, at the surface, it expresses as elevated
temperature, level rise, etc. On land, it is shortened winter, droughts or
deluges. Climate change is neither the first, nor will be the last test for
humanity. On many occasions during the course of human evolution, humanity found
itself pushed to the wall. At every instance, we devised new ways to scale
seemingly insurmountable walls. However, today we acknowledge climate change as
a contemporary challenge and have agreed to pool wisdom, knowledge, information
available at our individual and collective disposal and strive to come out with
flying colours. A formal accord towards synchronized efforts to overcome the
challenge was agreed to at Paris in late 2016. It was hailed across the world
as, unprecedented.
The Paris accord was a timely collective step in the right
direction. Finer interpretation of supporting technical documents reveals that
we have understood the challenge to a reasonable depth. Climate change is
different from other challenges faced by humanity. Its dual form; of being both
creeping and abrupt, necessitates us to redraw new and dynamic strategies to
counter it. Prioritizing wealth (over money) was identified as the central, non-negotiable
principle of the Paris accord.
As for almost all global scale efforts, the United States of
America (USA) - militarily the most powerful nation on Earth – was looked upon
as the leader and POTUS; the captain to steer the accord to its logical
objectives. I do not view POTUS as an individual. It is one of the most
powerful offices’ on the planet. Common man in any nation on this planet holds
POTUS in high esteem. Hence the conventional ideal of chivalry viz. morality tied to honour, service,
and respect was expected from it.
As the captain of the ship (Earth), POTUS was expected to go
down with it. However, with the unilateral declaration to withdraw from the Paris
accord, POTUS has behaved as a captain who has abandoned his ship at time of emergency.
The only measurable consequence of this withdrawal is the steep plummet of the
image of POTUS. The 21st century world is different. It has many
nations with towering leaders, who are competent to steer the ship successfully
forward.
As said in the Gita; Whatever
Happens, Happen For Good.
Looking back, after a couple of years, we may claim that in mid-2017,
our ship crossed the Horse Latitudes!
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