Back to: Kerala Board Class 9th English Guide and Notes
Table of Contents
Introduction
“Climate change is not hysteria-its a fact” is a speech delivered by Leonardo DiCaprio at the UN Climate Summit. He begins his speech by thanking to Mr. Secretary General, ladies, gentlemen and all the guests.
He informs that he is not standing there as an expert but as a concerned citizen,one of the 400,000 people who marched on the streets of New York on Sunday to express their concerns regarding the climate change and asking solutions for the crisis and the billions of others around the world who wants to solve the climate crisis.
He informs that as an actor he pretends for a living and play fictitious characters, often solving fictitious problems but he believe that mankind has looked at climate change in that same way as if it were a fiction, happening to someone else’s planet, as if pretending that climate change wasn’t real, would somehow make it go away.
The undeniable climate changes.
There are some undeniable climate events like extreme weather events, accelerated temperature and melting ice sheets from West Antarctic and Greenland. Droughts are intensifying, oceans are warming and acidifying, with methane plumes rising up from beneath the ocean floor.
Climate change is the only and single greatest security threat and if we do not act together, we will surely die. None of this is hysteria rather it’s a fact. The scientific community, industry and governments know it. This is now about industries, and governments around the world taking decisive, large scale action.
Precautions is better than the cure
He informs that there is a need to put a price tag on carbon emissions, eliminate government subsidies for coal, gas, oil companies, end the free ride that industrial polluters have been given in the name of a free-market economy as they don’t deserve our tax dollars, they deserve our inspection. For the economy itself will die if the ecosystems collapse.
He then points out the good news that renewable energy is not only achievable but good economic policy. Clean air and water, and a livable climate are inalienable human rights. And solving this crisis is not a question of politics. It is a question of our survival. We only get one planet.
Humankind must become accountable on a massive scale for the wanton destruction of our collective home. Protecting our future on this planet depends on the conscious evolution of our species.
