Senator Kerry: Climate change resolve requires political will
Political representatives from 30 small island nations, global leaders and more than 750 delegates gathered in Cork City Hall for ‘Our Ocean Wealth Summit 2019’ where climate change was the central focus.
The theme ‘shared voices from small island nations’ focused on the need to protect the world’s oceans from the impacts of climate change on island nations in particular, and to ensure a sustainable long-term future for marine economies generally.
In the keynote address, former US Secretary of State John Kerry called for immediate action to move to decarbonisation.
Accountability
He described the conference as “extraordinarily timely and important” but warned it will take “militancy to hold the liars, cheaters and the greedy accountable, who deny that climate change is happening.”
He said resolving climate change was not a matter of whether we can do it, “it’s a matter of whether we decide to do it:
“This is not a question of capacity; this is a question of political will. Hold the politicians accountable and make sure they’re delivering.”
Senator Kerry thanked Ireland for its leadership and effort to elevate ocean issues “with focus and the urgency they deserve”.
He said that while Ireland’s integrated plan for the marine sector, ‘Harnessing Our Ocean Wealth‘, was a road map to double its economic contribution to GDP by 2030, it also had its own set of challenges:
“But it is, most importantly, a path to protect the oceans for the next generation, and generations beyond.”
Climate activists
Senator Kerry singled out today’s young climate activists, Alicia O’Sullivan (see sidebar) and Sweden’s Greta Thunberg:
“They are telling the truth, they are the future, and we are not getting the job done for the future.
“I’m angry because I did not get into public life not to deliver; I didn’t get into public life in order to fail and I certainly didn’t get into public life to avoid the truth.
“Today we have public leaders who not only avoid the truth, they try to alter the truth; thousands of lies from the highest voices, mostly in our politics. This has to change,” he warned.
Managing the oceans is a stewardship of a $500bn business. $500bn of global economy and the livelihoods of 12% of the world’s population, he explained.
“But the truth is we’re far from doing what we know we should be doing, and what we can be doing.
“Ireland however, understands this. Ireland has always had to fight against disadvantage. There’s a nature in our politics in Boston where the Irish who have played such an extraordinary role of just being fighters, understanding just how to get the job done.”
He said Ireland knew “too well” the scale of the challenge with just 2% of our waters currently protected:
“But we are all deeply impressed [to learn] that half of Ireland’s seas and ocean are going to be set aside as marine protected areas.”
Policy issues
The Senator warned that time was not a friend, “not unless we change the decisions we’re making. And challenges, not just about the environment, it’s about fundamental policy choices in a world that is rapidly changing around us.”
He said events such as Our Ocean Wealth should not be simply an excuse to talk:
“They’ve got to become an exhortation to action; they’ve got to become the action itself that is going to pull us back from the brink.
“We can’t rest on our laurels ― not when on the high seas there is still too little enforcement.
“We can’t rest on our laurels when there are still more than 400 unresolved maritime boundary disputes in the world, leaving behind ungoverned ocean spaces which are rife today with illicit trans-shipment, with human trafficking, with drug smuggling, with arms trafficking and no enforcement – especially on the over-fishing.
“We can’t rest on our laurels when a garbage patch twice the size of Texas floats in the Pacific, and rising carbon dioxide from emissions still increases ocean acidity and devastates coral reefs and marine life – changing the ecosystem itself.
“We can’t rest on our laurels when nearly 60% of global fish stocks are fished at their maximum levels and 33% are over-fished and already in need of recovery.
“And we can’t rest on laurels when the World Bank tells us that poor fishery management costs countries $83bn a year in lost revenue.
Commit to the journey
Senator Kerry warned there would be no “blue economy, no fishing industry, if we don’t protect our oceans:
“But we can’t protect our oceans if we can’t show people they’ve done right. Protecting oceans doesn’t actually hurt jobs…it is jobs.
“We can’t protect the oceans without solving the problem of climate change. And you can’t solve the problem of climate change without protecting the oceans. They go hand-in-hand,” he argued.
Fifty-one per cent of the earth’s oxygen comes from the ocean but the supply is reducing due to loss of kelp beds and acidification which is changing the chemistry of the ocean:
“We’re changing the chemistry of the ocean faster than it has ever been changed in the last fifty million years. And we know that because there are certain people that most of us respect who can tell us those things – they’re called scientists,” he said.
“Damage has now reached such an extreme level that unless we change our practices by the middle of the century, there’s going to be more dead zones and more plastic in the oceans than fish.”
Describing “the enemy” as “man-made”, the Senator said the solution could be “man-solved”:
“We have the capacity to provide the solution, and that’s energy policy. This is the solution to climate change. We have to move as rapidly as possible to electrify the creation of power” and move away from fossil fuels to a net carbon economy by 2050.
“We need to change industry’s provision of power. We need to change the way we build buildings and we need to deal with big industry.
“We can’t afford to do just a little bit here and there anymore. We’re not going to make it if that’s what happens,” he warned.
But Senator Kerry believes it can be done:
“I have zero doubt whatsoever it can be done. And what we need to do now is to understand the power that we have… and hold people accountable.
“I believe we have to do this before the reefs are gone, before the species are wiped out, before the sixth extinction takes hold more than it’s already threatening life and species on this planet.”
