South Africans joined millions of others last night in watching the live streaming of SA's representative speaking on climate change, as part of the global Climate Reality Project.
The Internet campaign was screened at the Food and Trees for Africa office, in Morningside, where a crowd gathered to view the local delivery of the presentation.
Called “24 Hours of Reality”, the show was broadcast in 24 time zones, in multiple languages, by 24 representatives worldwide. Initiated by former US vice-president and Nobel laureate Al Gore, the project is the first of this scale aimed at raising awareness about the realities of global climate change.
Each one-hour segment ran live at 7pm in the time zone of the host location, with the broadcast starting at 7pm central time on Wednesday, 14 September, in Mexico City, and ending at 8pm on Thursday, 15 September, in New York City. Aired in cities ranging from Beijing to London to Rio, the event had received over 8.6 million views by the time Gore finished in New York in the early hours of this morning.
The multimedia slideshow, which is available online, focuses on how extreme weather events like floods, fires and storms are linked to climate change and the dire consequences the planet faces.
Jeunesse Park, founder and CEO of local NGO Food and Trees for Africa, was chosen as one of the 24 presenters globally to deliver the presentation, and spoke from the Durban Botanical Gardens. The city will host the 17th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December.
The presentation explores the connection between climate change and the record number of extreme weather events in recent years, reiterates the scientific basis for global warming, and unpacks some of the denial campaigns backed by major polluters. It also covers new energy solutions and ways of addressing challenges. People can request the presentation to be given in their community by visiting the Climate Reality site.
Gore, whose documentary film An Inconvenient Truth spread the message of manmade climate change to the world in 2006, stressed the need to expose the vested interests of large carbon polluters, which are extensively funded.
"Around the world, we are still subjected to polluter-financed misinformation and propaganda designed to mislead people about the dangers we face from the unfolding climate crisis," Gore said in a statement.
New normal
The presentation documents a series of catastrophic and devastating events around the world: Floods in Pakistan last year affected 20 million people; in Australia flood waters covered an area the size of France and Germany combined; a mudslide in South Korea reached the fourth-storey level; Colombia experienced five times the normal average rainfall, displacing two million people; while footage from the Mississippi floods shows a school floating down an interstate highway.
In SA, flooding in Cato Manor last year saw 150 people lose their homes overnight. At a conference on disaster and risk management this week, the South African Weather Service warned that extreme weather, including flooding and gale force winds, will become more frequent in SA, and that climate change is largely to blame.
“Has this kind of weather become the new normal?” Park asked in her address. ”Have we no compassion for the millions, soon to be billions of climate change refugees?”
Implications of climate change include deeper and longer droughts, coupled with more severe floods, wild fires that are hotter and more intense, and more destructive winds and storms. The trend of rising temperatures has also been witnessed globally. In China, half the country was experiencing dry and extremely dry conditions earlier this year, and it recorded a record high temperature of 50.2^0C. Iran and Iraq also recorded their highest ever temperatures (53^0C), while Pakistan saw the highest temperature ever recorded in any Asian city last year, at a sweltering 53.5^0C.
“We need look only at the Horn of Africa, where 13 million people are suffering in Somalia and Kenya due to severe drought,” said Park. In the US, all of the 50 states broke their temperature highs.
“This not something that's going to happen in future,” noted Park. “This is not something that only comes out of computer models. This is something that's real and it's happening now.
“Scientists used to say that we're loading the dice - that we're changing the odds of extreme weather. Now what they're saying is that we're actually painting more dots on the dice, and we're throwing far more 13s and 14s as extreme weather events get out of control.”
With humans emitting 90 million tonnes of emissions every day, the project urged people to speak up and speak out, to put pressure on governments and to consider their consumer choices.
"The climate crisis knows no political boundaries. Ferocious storms and deadly heat waves are occurring with alarming frequency all over the world. We are living with the reality of the climate crisis every day. The only question is, how soon can we act?" said Gore.
Taking the message home
Joanne Rolt, programme manager at Food and Trees for Africa, said while there are many similar campaigns, this event brought a different kind of awareness on a different platform. “It's the same presentation with the same message going out to millions of people “
She also stressed the need to get the message out to local communities, where many don't have access to the Internet. The organisation planted 1 000 trees in Soweto on Tuesday, and shared some of the key points of the presentation with community members.
“It's really important to explain the impacts at a local level, particularly because we're going to be greatly affected in Africa,” said Rolt. “We already have so many challenges, such as food security, disease and poverty, and climate change will make it all so much worse.”
Rolt supported the campaign's message that small but widespread actions can drive massive change. “It's about what we as individuals can do in our day-to-day lives to lower our footprint. It may seem like a small choice, but if everyone does their bit it could make a huge difference.”
Climate data connects the dots
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