Climate change should be coped with in most serious, realistic way -- expert
Villagers wade through a flooded area of Bakula Guri village in Nagaon district of India's northeastern state of Assam, May 15, 2022. (Str/Xinhua)
London, 27 May (2022) - Climate change, among those existential issues facing the planet, is perhaps the most urgent one and has to be "taken most realistically" and "in the most serious way," a leading Oxford academic has said.
During a recent interview with Xinhua, Rana Mitter, professor of the history and politics of modern China and director of the University of Oxford China Center, said that climate change is an issue with increasing urgency, and "is something that all leaders are beginning to really have to put at the front of their agenda."
"There is really no option other than serious engagement with climate change," he said.
In Mitter's opinion, one of the major changes that climate change is bringing to the world is "increasing inequality at its basic level," as many of the countries which have benefited greatly from industrialization and from the products of fossil fuels are not the countries that are actually suffering first and foremost.
"Let's think about the small Island States. Let's think about many parts of sub Saharan Africa and places where resources have often been exploited," the professor noted.
Villagers wade through a flooded area of Bakula Guri village in Nagaon district of India's northeastern state of Assam, May 15, 2022. (Str/Xinhua)
In order to deal with climate change, Mitter said the world needs to "start thinking about the way in which energy provision and energy usage can perhaps leapfrog some of those most polluting stages and instead really push hard on renewables and other areas."
"There is no other option. It's not a choice. It is a necessity," he stressed.
Climate change relates to everyone, he said, adding that is "a hard lesson for modern societies to learn" and people need to "get serious in the wider world."
He said China's ideas about the relationship between humans and ecological civilization really think about the way of rebalance.
Mitter pointed out China's significant role in solving global issues including climate change. "I mean, there's no sense in which any global policy can be undertaken in the present-day world without China being involved in that in some really quite central sort of a way," he added.
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