Crisis in Palestine a Wakeup Call for Climate Leadership: McMahon

This story includes details on the impacts of climate change that may be difficult for some readers. If you are feeling overwhelmed by this crisis situation here is a list of resources on how to cope with fears and feelings about the scope and pace of the climate crisis.

Beyond the immediate horrors unfolding in Gaza as the world watches, the mounting tragedy raises sobering questions for the global fight to protect our warming planet.

Many Canadians have wondered how our leaders will respond when rising temperatures, desertification, and rising sea levels will cause regional climate crises that match the scale of death, devastation, and displacement in Gaza. We question whether our leadership can address front-line impacts while leading a search for practical solutions—ones that leave no one behind.

But cracks have been revealed in the world’s moral compass, most recently by Canada’s reticence, and the mixed reactions of global leaders, to the International Court of Justice’s call to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza—without ordering a ceasefire. If Gaza is an example of what happens when moral leadership fails, when our leaders cannot stand up for the fundamental rights of all humans, it is a warning we cannot ignore.

It is a clarion call for climate and social justice advocates alike: our governments must do better.

An unexpected parallel between the climate emergency and the crisis in Gaza is that the solutions to both are known, practical, achievable—and capable of averting untold human suffering and environmental damage. But without effective, moral leadership, a grim future awaits on both fronts. Without that leadership, climate change will push us to the limits of humanity, with geopolitics, economics, misinformation, and denial preventing  meaningful, life-saving interventions. At this crucial juncture, morality must chart the course of human history, not financial and political alliances.

As a mother, I am ripped apart at the sight of so many young lives needlessly ended with such suffering. As a Canadian, I have watched the horrors in Gaza unfold, disappointed that my government does not consider these war crimes. And as a citizen of this world, I am crushed by the absence of humanity that so many of our leaders have shown, abandoning their responsibility to serve the vulnerable.

But as a climate activist who works with a national parent-led climate organization, I became confounded about where my priorities lie. How can one focus on achieving a strong emission cap and protecting the future for our children, when so many children are dying right now, without even a chance to see what that future holds? If our leaders are too timid to condemn disproportionate force and hold war crime perpetrators on both sides of the line accountable, how will we ever get them to intervene and condemn fossil fuel companies for knowingly poisoning the planet over decades, and hold them accountable?

These issues are really one and the same. Why are we fighting climate change? Why do we need to protect biodiversity, stop fossil fuel emissions from boiling our planet, and curb wasteful, exploitative consumer culture? It is because we want to protect humanity from the kind of suffering and damage we are seeing in Gaza.

The planet will survive with or without us, it is our existence we need to protect, and protecting biodiversity, clean air and equity is the way to do this. Without fast, bold climate action, humanity will suffer. Rising seas will engulf nations, political tensions will explode over access to scarce water and arable land, desertification and famine will cause mass migration, disease will spread. Climate chaos will push humanity to the brink, and if our global leaders do not learn from the mistakes made in Palestine, the world’s future is a moral and physical wasteland, bereft of the life-sustaining principles of equity, accountability, and social justice.

The fight to protect our climate is the fight to protect humans and our sense of humanity. When people’s homes are destroyed and they seek refuge in Canada, will we offer them a safe haven or will we build a wall? Will we protect those whose livelihoods have been destroyed by our fossil-fuelled lifestyles? Or will we turn our backs on them under the pretense of protecting our own interests? 

In the short term, Canada’s inaction on Gaza is jeopardizing support from a huge swath of progressive voters, just as a critical election approaches. It puts at risk the best climate progress our country has ever made. In the long term, it draws into sharp relief the dire need to tackle climate change now, to avert a scenario that our leaders seem morally incapable of handling.

Avoiding the worst effects of climate change on the world’s most vulnerable will require a level of principled leadership we have not yet seen on the crisis in Palestine. Gaza will forever be a tragic example of what happens when the cost of censure exceeds the value of human life.

And just like the devastation in Gaza, climate change will make the most disenfranchised communities suffer. As climate advocates, we need to enshrine global human rights at the core of all our environmental demands. We need to plan for a future where climate-induced humanitarian crises will call for Canada to reconcile its heart and its politics—and mend its moral compass.

Kate McMahon is a climate communicator and an organizer with a parent-led climate group.