14 days to seal history’s judgement

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

In an unprecedented move, 56 newspapers from around the world have today published a common editorial – “14 days to seal history’s judgement on this generation” – aiming to speak with one voice to the leaders negotiating a deal at Copenhagen this week.

The papers signing up to the editorial include The Guardian, El Pais, The Miami Herald, Le Monde, The Toronto Star, The Brunei Times and 50 others from countries including Rwanda, Tanzania and Bangladesh.

Ian Katz of the Guardian, who largely coordinated the editorial, says the purpose of the joint editorial is to show:

“if all of us who disagree about so much can agree on what must be done, then surely you can too…If the editorial lacks the detail that will have to be cracked over the next 14 days in Copenhagen, it should be a source of encouragement that such a diverse coalition was able to agree about so much – not least the precariousness of our situation, and the need for Copenhagen to deliver a full treaty by summer 2010 at the latest.”

The editorial says:

“Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C – the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction – would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.”

It continues:

“Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions…The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance – and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.”

Read the full editorial message to world leaders here.