A political climate leadership coming?

On new years eve, seven months ago, I wrote a blog post about the lack of political leadership around climate change. There were no leaders in sight at that time that seemed to be willing to act on the global warming crisis in more than nice words. 

This weekend, president Obama choose to speak out, stating that "climate change is not a problem for another generation", it is a current problem. Finally, a politician says what the scientists have been clearly stating for more than a decade! Albeit a bit late, it very good that Obama is starting to act and hopefully it will influence the outcome of the COP21 climate conference in Paris this december. This is of course provided that the Republican controlled US congress can be stopped from blocking any action by continuing their head-in-the-sand policy on global warming.

But we can not wait for second-term presidents who can not be re-elected to speak clearly about climate change! We are still waiting for a real leader on global climate change, a politician, man or woman, who dare set his career at stake and take a political risk by proposing bold action to combat global warming. I am convinced that history will not be kind on the climate deniers, but I don’t think that the lukewarm followers will be spared criticism. So while we may applaud that president Obama is doing the right thing, let us save the standing ovations for the woman or man that steps forward with a vision for how we can ACT on climate to get to a sustainable and just future. It will likely cost us both sweat and tears, but without that kind of action there will be no [climate] peace in our time.