Looking to Churchill for Lessons on How We Must Fight the Climate Emergency
We are in the midst of a global climate emergency. Now that our atmosphere has more carbon in it than at any time in the last 800,000 years, terrifying weather events are unfolding around the world every day.
Today in Guadalajara, over one meter of hail fell in a violent storm…in June.
The day before, France recorded its highest temperature in history, 113 degrees.
I recently gave a very personal speech at the Entrepreneurs Impact Summit calling on the three hundred corporate leaders in attendance to wake up to the climate emergency and describing some of what the process of waking up has looked like for me.
But since that speech, many people have asked me for more specifics, more examples of what should be done.
The reality is that thousands of things need to be done — the first being a personal recognition and government recognition that we are in an emergency and need to act like we are in one.
But once one declares and recognizes that emergency, what happens next?
Thinking about what an adequate response to this emergency led me to a speech Winston Churchill gave on June 4th, 1940, shortly after becoming Prime Minister of England at a truly terrifying time in its history.
We Shall Fight on the Beaches is the name commonly used for that speech which was delivered to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom as England prepared for the possibility of a German invasion.
Speaking of the Nazi’s, Churchill said:
“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
This is the way we must fight the climate emergency.
We must fight it “on the seas and oceans.”
We must fight it “with growing confidence and growing strength in the air.”
We must fight it “in the fields and the streets.”
We must fight it “until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all of its power and might steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the old.”
