In 25th United Nations Summit on climate change organized in Madrid landed 196 delegations and fifty heads of state. The COP25, "the longest in history", according to its president, the Chilean Carolina Schmidt was born failed by the inability to achieve legally binding agreements that committed the attending countries. Despite finishing two days later than it should have, the objectives he had set for himself were not achieved.
These climate meetings deliver brilliant speeches talking about the climate emergency, but few concrete plans are put forward to further limit carbon dioxide emissions that alter the Earth's climate. Even though public awareness of the climate crisis has grown in 2019 thanks to mass protests by young people around the world, the political response is a long way from tackling the challenge at hand; a stunted commitment of minimums, precisely at a time when the effects of climate change (forest fires, melting of the poles, increased greenhouse gas emissions...) are intensifying in one of the warmest years on record.
We are all aware of what it means to face an emergency, but why is the climate emergency not associated with the implementation of rapid and forceful actions that stop the current trend? What climate mortgage are we willing to transfer to our children? Aren't we concerned about putting the health and future of our children and adolescents at even greater risk by degrading everyone's home without limits?
From the modest and humble influence that these words can exert we join the denunciation of this lack of commitment by those who have the capacity to reverse the situation, at the same time that we adopt the task of involving ourselves with honesty, courage and responsibility in small actions that are within our reach to care, as Pope Francis asks in the encyclical"Laudato Si'", the "common home" of all. As that same document states, a change in our lifestyles "could exert a healthy pressure on those who have political, economic and social power. This is what happens when consumer movements stop certain products from being purchased and thus become effective in modifying the behavior of companies."
As a grain of sand of the involvement that the Marist educational community is contributing in this very serious matter we wanted to bring to the central pages of this issue a brief sample of ecological projects who look towards that care of the common home. We want to give visibility to projects like these that demand a change of aptitude for the well-being of the planet.
In the midst of the Lenten season in which we are invited you to adhere to the "ecological conversion" so necessary to take everyone's home seriously, to reaffirm our conviction that we want to leave a habitable planet for those who will succeed us.
