We need an Earth Systems Treaty for our children

December 15, 2023

We Baby Boomers have lived in the belief that developing a richer standard of living, an ever-more-comfortable quality of life, is the greatest gift we will leave to our children and grandchildren. But in our desire for more, and richer, we have built this gift through using ever-more fossil fuels. Our politicians, with few exceptions, have found it easier to continue the easy, but finite, path of fossil fuel use than to confront the urgent challenge of major transition, which would come at some short-term economic cost to their electorates. Politicians who support transition too often succumb to the mantra that politics is the art of the possible to justify making only modest change. As Julian Cribb reports, it may already be too late to stop global warming. Tipping points are being crossed. Environmental deterioration will accelerate. Cribb puts his hope in an Earth Systems Treaty. A healthy environment on a sustainable planet is the greatest gift we can leave to future generations. We need governments around the world to join in common cause to deliver this treaty. Without this, our comfortable quality of life becomes a poisoned chalice.