https://arab.news/cy7mc
Everywhere you look, Planet Earth seems to be changing: sea water getting warmer, glaciers melting, forests retreating, temperatures rising.
All that is leading to ecosystems, creatures, and seasons changing, with more intense flooding, more extreme storms, irregular weather systems, hard-hit agricultural cycles and poorer staples, impacting humanity with higher prices and shortages and even pushing communities into the misery of displacement as they try to find food security and places to subsist and provide for loved ones.
We should remember all this every time we mark Earth Hour, which has brought the world together once a year since 2007 to shine a spotlight on nature’s loss and the climate crisis, and inspire millions to act and campaign for urgent change. This year’s Earth Hour on Friday coincides with the UN revealing that in 2024 there were more than 150 unprecedented climate disasters ranging from floods, heatwaves and supercharged hurricanes, and scientists confirmed that it was the warmest year ever.
In 2024 there were more than 150 unprecedented climate disasters ranging from floods, heatwaves and supercharged hurricanes.
Mohamed Chebaro
It is not an exaggeration to propose that maybe the world needs an earth hour every day to focus minds and push us all into action to preserve our fragile planet: particularly since geostrategic, political and economic considerations are reducing multilateralism and support for multiparty efforts to protect the planet through international cooperation. Earth Hour should be used to remind doubters and waverers of the need to embrace climate plans, harness links between science and artificial intelligence, society, government and businesses to mediate damage to the environment, and capitalize more on cheap and renewable energy where possible to save the planet before it is too late.
In its annual State of the Climate report, the World Meteorological Organization laid bare all the signs of an increasingly warming world with oceans at record high temperatures, sea levels rising and glaciers retreating at record speed. The top 10 hottest years were all in the past decade, and planet-heating carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are also at an 800,000-year high.
Warnings from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that “our planet is issuing more distress signals” have become cliche in a world where such narratives have been drowned out, and not only by rollbacks on climate commitments by the US administration under Donald Trump. Skeptics cast doubt on all climate science, replacing it with a stance that surrenders us all to a sense of powerlessness, as if humanity were doomed and that the cost of protecting the environment as a priority impoverishes us all. The danger is that the US, the world’s second biggest current polluter and the largest emitter of greenhouse gases historically, was also until recently one of the biggest enablers of the global technological and financial climate transition efforts. A US retreat would certainly lead other countries to become less ambitious, cancellng many of their green targets as a result.
Many still believe that the international goal of limiting warming to 1.5C above the pre-industrial era is still possible if leaders step up and cooperate to make it happen through seizing the benefits of cheaper, cleaner renewable energy. The science is still clear despite all the distorting noises: the warming of the planet is man made, due to industry, lifestyle, and economic activity including the reliance on fossil fuel.
The planet is fragile and its damage affects us all, rich and poor, old and young, powerful or weak.
Mohamed Chebaro
To better celebrate Earth Hour we should all do so on a daily basis: each committing according to their capacity to do something to mitigate the negative impact on the planet or to aid the transition to a more sustainable existence for all. The planet is fragile and its damage affects us all, rich and poor, old and young, powerful or weak, from the global south or the global north, the old Western industrialized world or the global ascending majority.
In the uncertain world of today, with the increased geopolitical divide, the dangers of a weakened sense of a common world governance, and erosion of multilateral institutions, we should have an Earth Hour every hour every day, to remind us of the need not only to protect and preserve the planet, but also to celebrate its diversity and riches in the service and to the benefit of us all.
- Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist with more than 25 years’ experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.