Towards the end of 2018 a special report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned humanity that it has only 12 years (up to 2030) to check climate change within limits necessary to protect life-sustaining conditions on earth. Hence the decade 2020–30 will be of critical importance for checking this most important environmental problem before it reaches a stage of tipping point. What is more, around the same time a number of other serious environmental problems are also reaching critical levels.
Apart from environmental problems, from the point of view of accumulation of highly destructive weapons, the world is reaching a most serious stage. The world has around 14,500 nuclear weapons at present. Three great military powers, the USA, Russia and China have all invested heavily in recent years in modernisation of nuclear weapons. Due to a complex of factors, the threats of accidental use of nuclear weapons and of terrorists gaining access to nuclear weapons have increased.
A relatively new threat is the fast emergence of robot weapons (AI or autonomous weapons).
Combining all these and some other factors, it is clear that there is a very real threat to the essential life-sustaining conditions of planet earth today of a kind that never existed before. The solutions to this crisis should be found within a framework of justice, peace and democracy. The existing efforts for justice, peace and democracy should be increased and adapted to include a focus on life-sustaining conditions of our planet.
To focus attention on this at all levels there is a clear need for worldwide declaration of decade 2020–30 as ‘Decade for Saving Earth’.
(Bharat Dogra is a freelance journalist, author, researcher, activist.)