HELD soon after the biggest ever global climate strike, some 60-odd (from just half of the 136 countries attending the UN General Assembly this year) world leaders came together at the day-long Climate Action Summit to discuss their countries’ plans to avert the crisis.

But before they got a chance, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, the best-known face of the movement, made them uncomfortable as she had promised. “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you,” she thundered.

Just a day ahead of the summit, the World Meteorological Organisation published new data showing 2014-19 as the warmest five-year period on record. It is enough to send a shudder down anyone’s spine. The report warned that “the level of ambition needs to be tripled” if temperatures are to remain in control.

Even the UN is getting impatient with the heads of states. For months, UN Secretary General António Guterres had been telling them to come prepared not with fancy speeches but plans that could be immediately implemented. Only countries with new concrete commitments were allocated speaking spots, and Pakistan’s prime minister was among those few who talked about his government’s commitment to plant 10 billion trees in the next four years.

New data shows 2014-19 as the warmest five-year period on record.

Standing on a makeshift stage outside Frere Hall in Karachi on Sept 20, 15-year-old student Rimsha Zulfiqar Ali demanded clean air to be able to play outdoors. Was she asking too much? Thunberg echoed Ali’s sentiment when she had told world leaders, “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words”.

Isn’t it shameful that things should come to such a point that seven-year-olds (like Rabab Ali in 2016) must sue their country (Pakistan) for not providing them a healthy environment to grow up in? Dar-e-Noor, 15, wished coal would remain buried in the ground, and asked that if they were all going to die even before reaching adulthood due to carbon emissions, what use would the energy produced by dirty fuel be? Sawera Karim, 15, just does not understand why adults cannot recognise the simple and cost-effective solutions in front of them: grow more trees! Trees can capture the carbon being emitted, lower temperatures and clean the air, she reminded us.

The world emits a whopping 42 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide annually. Scientists warn if the pledges made in Paris in 2015 to limit the global average temperature below two degrees Centigrade are not honoured, and if emissions are not slashed by 2030 and brought to net-zero by 2050, a bleak future awaits.

Imagine what it means for Pakistan, which is not even a big emitter? It remains among the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate-induced disasters. On top of that, it has a runaway population, of which nearly 64 per cent is under 30. No amount of food it grows and electricity it generates, and no number of schools and hospitals it builds or industries it sets up will ever be enough if the population continues to increase. The new generation will be resigned to a life of ill health, poverty and disease.

But while the climate march drew many Pakistanis across the country to the streets, many remain sceptical of the absent political will. It is bigger than just banishing plastic shopping bags from our lives, they say. It means asking for drastic reductions in emissions by transforming the energy sector. It also means a considerable commitment of technology and finances, both of which are in short supply.

It also means we could invest in renewable energy as we have these reso­urces aplenty, and stop making excuses: of not having the constant base load to run industries, of wind and solar being unreliable, of not having the capacity. It also means its leadership will have to double its effort to convince China to ‘green’ CPEC and lend its support towards renewables instead of coal.

It means seeing global warming not purely as an environmental issue but an ethical one too. There will need to be adjustments made in the way the country grows its crops and runs its industries in order to create clean jobs for millions to reduce economic inequality. Quick action is required to implement chan­ges and opportunities as time is running out.

This also requires politics to disentangle itself from the clutches of corporate power and think of the common man and protect him from exploitation, eviction and displacement. It also means that the conversation has to be inclusive; that the power holders listen to indigenous communities. They have been at the forefront of protecting the earth, and are the most affected and least heard.

Today with an increasing level of public engagement and concern, more so because the media has joined hands with the young activists who are losing patience with governments’ inability to act, there is hope.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Karachi.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2019