Youth urged to lead fight vs climate disinformation

IMAGE: Jerome Cristobal

As world leaders gather next week to take action against climate crisis, the country’s former chief climate negotiator called on young people to take the lead in combating climate disinformation and correcting “decades of neglect” on critical issues affecting the planet.

Speaking in an online forum ahead of the 2022 UN Climate Change Conference, Naderev “Yeb” Saño, executive director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said the youth are a “driving force against disinformation and misinformation” fueled by persistent campaigns of climate polluters.

He cited the fossil fuel industry has been historically known to spread false information on the connection of fossil fuels and climate change.

‘Digital natives’ “Because young people are digital natives, it is easier for them to understand and engage with these issues. They are leading the action to tear down false myths and broken narratives surrounding fossil fuels and climate change,” Saño said during the sixth episode of the “Stories for a Better Reality” talks on Oct. 28 of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the Climate Change Commission and other groups.

He said the youth as the biggest segment of the population should be given the power to lead the calls for climate justice as “inheritors of both problems and solutions.”

Aware of the “problems and deceptions brought by corporations and governments who value money and profit over people and climate,” Saño urged young climate activists to “lead the calls for a return to valuing life and life-forms, human rights, the environment and justice.”

The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the world is set to reach the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit in just two decades.

‘Window is closing’

Saño said “only the most drastic cuts on carbon emissions could halt this.”

“Until now, more public and private funds go to fossil fuels instead of climate solutions. Abolishing fossil fuel subsidies alone would lead to emissions reductions of up to 10 percent by 2030,” he said.

The United Nations Environment Programme warned in its recent emissions gap report that the “window is closing” on climate mitigation efforts, unless emissions are cut by as much as 45 percent eight years from now “to avoid global catastrophe.”

Chuck Baclagon, campaigner for environmental group 350.org, said the latest emissions gap report was proof that “as far as climate science is concerned, it [should be] all hands on deck to organize society in such a way that it no longer relies heavily on fossil fuels to power its economy.

However, Baclagon stressed that for decarbonization to occur in societies, there has to be a “robust community ownership of climate action.”

“The imperative to act is not only about ensuring collective survival, but rather to stir the trajectory of development toward one that puts equity and ecology ahead of the financial interests of the wealthy. This must be at the center of economic development in the context of climate change,” he said. INQ