New Delhi, India (CU)_ On the eve of Earth Day 2021, the Dalai Lama and over 100 other Nobel Prize winners sent messages to the world leaders, urging them to immediately address the global warming crisis. Nobel laureates of poets, physicists, doctors, and economists called on world leaders to find ways to get rid of fossil fuels and to make more substantial investment in renewable energy instead. The letter noted, “Climate change is threatening hundreds of millions of lives, livelihoods across every continent and is putting thousands of species at risk. The burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, and gas – is by far the major contributor to climate change.”
The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader who predicts a climate crisis in the future urged world leaders to consider both the problems and opportunities ahead of us on this one blue earth where we live. The elderly spiritual leader said, “I often joke that the moon and stars look beautiful, but if any of us tried to live on them, we would be miserable. This planet of ours is a delightful habitat. Its life is our life, its future our future. Indeed, the earth acts like a mother to us all. Like children, we are dependent on her. In the face of such global problems as the effect of global heating and depletion of the ozone layer, individual organizations and single nations are helpless. Unless we all work together, no solution can be found. Our mother earth is teaching us a lesson in universal responsibility.”
The laureates proposed leaders to look for a transformational strategy to help dependent economies move away from fossil fuels. A global just transition will also encourage all countries to flourish with their own resources. This comes after the recent findings from the United Nations Environment Program stating that coal and gas production will reach more than 120% of current levels by the year 2030.
It also notes that the Paris Agreement makes no note of the coal, gas, and oil industries, which are rapidly developing, and has urged countries to continue to support the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Paris Agreement. It also acknowledges that fossil fuel companies have also maintained their commitment to the UN’s initiatives to combat climate crisis.
