French President Nails It On Climate Change Crisis

A Brief Comment from Doug Draper, Niagara At Large

November 2015 – If Niagara At Large was in the practice of featuring a ‘quote of the week’ on this site, then one by French President Francois Hollande – on the scale of the danger climate change poses to the planet – would most certainly top our list for the last full week of November 2015.

French President Francois Hollande

The quote is from a news conference in Malta this November 27^th and it goes as follows –

“Man is the worst enemy of man,” said the French president. “We can say it with terrorism but we can say the same when it comes to climate. Human beings are betraying nature, damaging the environment. It is therefore up to human beings to face up to their responsibilities.”

I have long felt this way from my years of covering environmental issues and, in my view, it means mega-tonnes more coming from the leader of a country that has just suffered one of the worst series of terrorist attacks in its post-Second World War history.

Now if this was Canada, a year or so ago when Stephen Harper was still prime minister, he would use a terrorist attack that killed even one or two people as a tool to distract us from paying attention to issues like climate change, and any one of number of other problems in our country, like the rate of unemployement and how badly the rest of us are being ripped off by the upper one per cent.

And in the United States where U.S. President Barrack Obama has delivered some stirring speeches on the need to address climate change, most of the rest of the country, through the major cable news channels, is more obsessed with Donald Trump and the latest gun shooting incidents.

While the rest of the world focuses most of its attention on what is being billed as the most important international summit on climate change yet, to begin in Paris this November 30^th, the U.S. media is almost fully consumed in another round of shootings – as if this is still “breaking news” in a country where another psycho opening fire on people as if it is part of their 2^nd amendment rights occurs more routinely than the next full moon.

For those reasons and more, the above statement by French President Francois Hollande – coming, as it does, from the head of a country that has suffered more than its share of domestic violence in recent days – does a heroic job of putting the challenges we humans face and share responsibility for into perspective, and is my pick for quote of this or any other week I can think of from a national leader of in these times.

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