Mikhail Gorbachev: More Walls Need to Fall (a call to tackle climate change)
[Mikhail Gorbachev, 1990 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is the founding president of Green Cross International, a Geneva-based nongovernmental organization devoted to protecting the environment. © Project Syndicate]
The German people, and the whole world alongside them, celebrated a landmark date in history, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, on Monday. Not many events remain in the collective memory as a watershed that divides two distinct periods. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall — that stark, concrete symbol of a world divided into hostile camps — is such a defining moment.
The fall of the Berlin Wall brought hope and opportunity to people everywhere and provided the 1980s with a truly jubilant finale. That is something to think about as this decade draws to a close and as the chance for humanity to take another momentous leap forward appears to be slipping away.
The road to the end of the Cold War was certainly not easy, or universally welcomed at the time, but it is for just this reason that its lessons remain relevant. In the 1980s, the world was at a historic crossroads. The East-West arms race had created an explosive situation. Nuclear deterrents could have failed at any moment. We were heading for disaster, while stifling creativity and development.
Today, another planetary threat has emerged. The climate crisis is the new wall that divides us from our future, and current leaders are vastly underestimating the urgency and potentially catastrophic scale of the emergency.
People used to joke that we will struggle for peace until there is nothing left on the planet. The threat of climate change makes this prophesy more literal than ever. Comparisons with the period immediately before the Berlin Wall came down are striking.
Like 20 years ago, we face a threat to global security and our very existence that no one nation can deal with alone. And, again, it is the people who are calling for change. Just as the German people declared their will for unity, the world’s citizens today are demanding that action be taken to tackle climate change and redress the deep injustices that surround it.
Twenty years ago, key world leaders demonstrated resolve, faced up to opposition and immense pressure, and the Wall came down. It remains to be seen whether today’s leaders will do the same...
Read entire article at The Moscow Times (via OpEdNews)
The German people, and the whole world alongside them, celebrated a landmark date in history, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, on Monday. Not many events remain in the collective memory as a watershed that divides two distinct periods. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall — that stark, concrete symbol of a world divided into hostile camps — is such a defining moment.
The fall of the Berlin Wall brought hope and opportunity to people everywhere and provided the 1980s with a truly jubilant finale. That is something to think about as this decade draws to a close and as the chance for humanity to take another momentous leap forward appears to be slipping away.
The road to the end of the Cold War was certainly not easy, or universally welcomed at the time, but it is for just this reason that its lessons remain relevant. In the 1980s, the world was at a historic crossroads. The East-West arms race had created an explosive situation. Nuclear deterrents could have failed at any moment. We were heading for disaster, while stifling creativity and development.
Today, another planetary threat has emerged. The climate crisis is the new wall that divides us from our future, and current leaders are vastly underestimating the urgency and potentially catastrophic scale of the emergency.
People used to joke that we will struggle for peace until there is nothing left on the planet. The threat of climate change makes this prophesy more literal than ever. Comparisons with the period immediately before the Berlin Wall came down are striking.
Like 20 years ago, we face a threat to global security and our very existence that no one nation can deal with alone. And, again, it is the people who are calling for change. Just as the German people declared their will for unity, the world’s citizens today are demanding that action be taken to tackle climate change and redress the deep injustices that surround it.
Twenty years ago, key world leaders demonstrated resolve, faced up to opposition and immense pressure, and the Wall came down. It remains to be seen whether today’s leaders will do the same...