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Our world faces many problems. Most scientists agree that the greatest threat is the combination of the warming climate, which is steadily affecting more and more of the life-support systems on which we depend - water, for example, food, clean air, other lifeforms, energy and health, for a start - and the destruction of the natural world. Despite increasingly urgent warnings from science about the risks to the planet - and increasingly frequent and severe damage to earth, land and sea - emissions of the greenhouse gases which cause the damage to the climate are continuing to rise. The planet is heating faster even than climate scientists had expected. So it’s no wonder that more and more of us fear for our descendants’ future. What we want is simple enough: urgency and courage from decision-makers to reduce gas emissions much faster, coupled with nature conservation on a heroic scale. In other words, applying the brakes to climate change and nature loss, and doing it now.
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
We concentrate on helping each other to recognise the reality of the emergency we face, to understand what we can do to tackle it, and to encourage action across the generations. We highlight the individual and collective choices we all need to make to cut greenhouse emissions and to conserve the natural world and lobby public and private bodies to bring about radical change. We work wherever possible with younger people and children, many of them already active in working for a more sustainable world.
​Image by Alfred Derks from Pixabay
Some of us are grandparents, others are concerned about the generation to which today’s grandchildren belong. We were initially prompted to act by the recent success of a group of elderly Swiss women at the European Court of Human Rights. They won their case that the Swiss Government was failing to protect their health from the effects of climate change, a victory which inspired us to abandon lethargy and despair and to use our age to add another dimension to the many groups already seeking to achieve radical change. We have set up a limited company and will be applying for charitable status.
But why should grandparents and senior citizens act? Haven’t we done enough? No. We belong to the generations that have failed to protect the planet. We are uniquely placed to tell today’s world what our action - and inaction - is doing to it now, and will do in a few short years, and then to work together to change this dire reality.
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Photo by Chris LeBoutillier on Unsplash
Most nations have signed up to reaching what science calls net zero emissions by 2050. At the same time, there’s increasing evidence that 2050 is in any case too late, and that the world needs to reach actual zero well before then if we’re to avoid the worst effects of climate change. And companies are still able to buy carbon credits provided by competitors which have ostensibly met their reduction commitments. This allows an unacceptable level of emissions to continue. At worst, the scheme has been shown to have been the subject of massive fraud.
We’re not just a British initiative. We’re also part of an international movement of senior citizens’ environment groups. We support peaceful protest; we lobby politicians and business leaders; we write to newspapers and broadcasters, we engage on social media, and we work with with like-minded groups.
We depend on passionate volunteers, and we’re funded by members’ contributions and donations. No-one who works for OGC earns anything from it. We have no ties to political groups or to industry.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Our starting point is the principle on which we work. Climate change is now incontrovertible.
We aim to disseminate information about climate change, especially amongst fellow-seniors. But we are not alone. Some of us are also members of The University of the Third Age (www.u3a.org.uk), which is one of the largest educational institutions in the UK. U3A has about 400 000 members, in 1 000 local groups. About 110 of these group focus on climate change/ the environment, and are spread across the Country, so there is probably a group near you. As a charity, U3A is non-political and non-campaigning. But knowledge is power!
Image by Antonio Cansino from Pixabay
We are a limited company (No 16106827) and will be later applying for charitable status