20131002_BG

Source: One Young World

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssLq5Wdc8Sk

Date: 02/10/2013

Event: Bob Geldof on climate change: "There will be a mass extinction event"

Attribution: One Young World

People:

• Sir Bob Geldof: Irish singer, songwriter, author, occasional actor and political activist

Bob Geldof: The worst of progress is not that it's an illusion, it's that it's endless. And, while you've heard two of the great old radicals of our world - I'm certainly old, I'm not sure if I'm a radical - talk about the possibility of progress, sometimes it just may not be possible. Sometimes, for whatever reason, the world decides, in a fit of madness, that it will create chaos and suicide, and begin to kill itself.

Personally, I believe we're in a very fraught time now. All generations fail but my generation disgracefully has failed more than others. You cannot afford to let your generation fail. There will not be another World War I or World War II. There will be a mass extinction event. And, contrary to the optimism of Muhammad and Kofi, this could well happen on your watch. And all the signs are there that it will happen, and it will happen soon.

And so coming together today gives a sense of urgency. Forget youth. Youth is no more radical than the radicalism of the men we've just heard. You have everything to gain by your radicalism. They have nothing to lose. But because you may not believe that progress is possible should not prevent you from trying for it. Because the alternative is finality.

Now, ladies and gentlemen - and we have to consider ourselves as ladies and gentlemen, not boys and girls - we meet in a new country, that is the proof - that Kofi and Muhammad have just said - of what positive action taken together can achieve. South Africa genuinely is a miracle and a model, not just to the rest of the continent but to the entire world.

But it is possible that you, with your flags and your separation of nations, can not achieve that, except somehow working in some transnational entity like One Young World. And every year I say the same thing: all the fun, all the singing, all the rackets, all the flags are as nothing - nothing! - if you do not leave this stadium with clear intent that you will be leaders of your nations, that you will understand that the problems we face are rarely national. They are global, from now on in! And in your pocket [?] is the means to discuss and have dialogue - not monologue, dialogue - transnationally.

Kofi made the United Nations, for the first time, relevant and important. Muhammad Yunus made it possible to ignite the electricity of the poor and drag them into the global commonweal of economic good. It is in our interest to have the poor with us, producing things because then they can have money to buy our stuff and we have the money to buy theirs - that is clear. Will it happen? It's possible. It's possible - you can set a date of 2030, that's possible.

But last week - last week, in a report that was vaguely noticed, the scientists of the world said we may not get to 2030. We need to address the problem of climate change, urgently - boring as it is, the rhetoric of climate change is boring - but urgently, today and now, because I tell you this. In the One Young World conference of 2030, some of the nations that arrived here so proudly at our feetstep [?] right now will not be there to meet us.

What will you do about it? You must get serious. No doubt it's part of your agenda. But the ordinary trouble of ordinary days don't [sic] seem to matter much. We are in an existential period of our short human history. And there is a great dissatisfaction in modern man. Bertrand Russell, the great English philosopher said there's a sense of dissatisfaction at the heart of modern man. It's why propaganda fills us with hatred, rather than friendly feelings. It's why propaganda has such a purchase on our emotions of hatred. And he said this, this grave existential dissatisfaction - because we somehow feel we've missed something, that there is something greater than ourselves and we don't know how to find or even where to look for it. And he calls it the "great heroic pain" of modern man's human existence.

We can obviate that pain. And Russell suggests it's the need to think of something greater than ourselves. In your own lives, you know that the ordinary pain of ordinary days passes because someone else's pain is greater. And you lend your efforts towards that, and you feel better, and you feel more human. We need to be a little more human. Less Irish, less British, less Cameroonian, less South African, less Russian, less Chinese, more human!

Poverty is at the core of this, as Muhammad said. And from it stems all the evils of fundamentalism, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, corruption, climate change. And those countries that now suffer from resource shortage will pass. I urge you, not with anger but with vehemence, to gather your constituency around you, to talk to each other during the next course of this year, and force upon your governments the agenda that when they go to the United Nations and throughout the diplomatic year, the sole subject of this year will be climate change, the need to mitigate it on behalf of the poor of this world, or otherwise they simply will not be with us.

Ladies and gentlemen, One Young World, it's great to see [you?] again - I'm sorry to be so bloody miserable, as usual - get on with it!