World leaders ignoring climate change crisis: Activist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jody Grage, vice chair of the Green Party of Washington State from Seattle, on a recent warning made by the United Nations about the climate change.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: It seems just a few decades ago, we thought that global warming will be some other generation down the roads problem, but it seems that’s not exactly the case of what we’re seeing these days, your take please?

Grage: Yes, the climate crisis is not just coming, it is here and it is appalling how leaders around the world are still focusing on power and money. Power and money are going to be increasingly irrelevant as the climate change is, but it seems like the more power and money the leaders have, the more they are clinging to both of them and the 99 percent and the one percent divide is not just the economy, it’s also the effects of climate change.

So, what we need to think about and what the leaders on the world need to think about is not just their power and the money but what all the people in the world need. The Green Party firmly believes that we are all connected not just all people but the animals, the plants, the micro-organisms and the soil. It’s taking a long time for the world to get to where it is; so, that it can support us and yet we are in very quick time frame working to destabilize what has taken so long to develop. The world and the earth can adopt but not at the speed that it would have to without a tremendous change in our part.

Press TV: And there are yet a lot of people that are climate change deniers like the United States’ Donald Trump or Australia’s Tony Abbot and they’ve been blasted for trying to deny all the statistics that we’ve seen, brushed it off as a conspiracy by environment of fanatics. Now in the US nearly 90 percent of Democrats accept that climate change is occurring while only half of Republicans do that means half of Republicans are still climate change deniers, your thoughts and why this is so?

Grage: People tend to keep doing what they have been doing until they are really faced with what is actually going on. And I think at this point the Republicans are staying in denial a lot longer than the Democrats, who tried it for a while that are coming around. It may get to where people themselves have to do more like the Transition Town Movement and the Volunteer Simplicity Movement, because it seems like the leaders are not leading adequately enough. Anyone who farms, anyone who’s lived in a place for a long time has seen the disruption of what were previously norms for climate. I mean I’m 80 years old when I was at high-school the weather did the same thing at the same time every year and it certainly doesn’t now.

So, it’s like this is perhaps the biggest war and I don’t like use that word but the biggest war we’re going to fight is getting our leaders to actually do what needs to be done. And I really appalled that the leadership of the United States, which is supposed to be the leading country in the world is not taking more of stance. Why did COP 21 come up with recommendations not mandated changes? Why have we’ve been dragging our feet in doing something? It gets down to power and money and neither those things are going to get out through what needs to be done at this time. I encourage everyone to check out June 2016 and see what the Green Party would do, because we have some really good ideas that work and will actually help people and not help simply people cling on to their power and money.

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