On September 21, 2014, New York City (NYC) held the largest climate march in history. About 400,000 people came from all over the world to march in support of action against climate change; similar events were held in over 150 countries around the world. Nine months have passed since the climate march and the question now is, what’s next?

In the days following the march, a Climate Summit was held in NYC and was seen as a major success. All of the participating countries agreed that significant action is needed to be taken, they agreed on goals such as:

1) Limiting global temperature rise to no more than 2˚C from pre-industrial levels
2) Investing $10 billion into the Green Climate Fund

During this summit, the problem was addressed, goals were set, and funding was established, so why has there been no official action taken? It seems that so far this summit has been all talk.

In fact, this isn’t the first time world leaders have met to take action on climate change. This same agreement, to limit global temperatures to rise to 2˚C from pre-industrial levels, was first made in 1993 under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). So why haven’t we seen any results? Greenhouse gas emissions have risen at the fastest rates in the last 30 years in 2013 and 2014 was the hottest year recorded since 1891, when data was started to be collected!

It is true that often not all major countries are present at these talks, such as China and India, who are top contributors of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. But why should this stop other countries that have been participating in these talks for the last 20 years to achieve their own goals? Maybe if we stopped pointing fingers and blaming others, we could actually accomplish something before it is too late to turn back.

World leaders plan to meet once again in Paris in 2015 to make an official international agreement on combating climate change and, hopefully, India and China will be present. If significant change isn’t made, then the sense of urgency will be felt by all as we continue on the path towards 4˚C warming, which will result in an increase of natural disasters, famines, refugees, and widespread death and killing. In more recent talks, particularly in the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, the results we needed were not achieved and now we cannot allow the 2015 talks to fail! Our planet is at stake!

Sources:
Peoplesclimate.org
Washington Post “UN Climate Summit is high profile, but some of world’s most important leaders will skip it”
Un.org “UN Climate Summit 2014”