📢 Everyone is talking about… 1.5 and CSDDD.
For the first time, ever, global warming has exceeded 1.5C across an entire year. 🌡️ For the first time, ever, global warming has exceeded 1.5C across an entire year. 🌡️ This repetition is not an error, it’s simply to give us time for that to sink in. 2024 started with another record-breaking month. We just lived the warmest January on record, ever. And we have just clocked a 12-month period with a mean global average temperature over 1.5°C (as compared to the pre-industrial reference period). 🛑
I’ll never forget going to visit Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam as a law student, and at the end, all of us (with very watery eyes at that point) read a quote that went along the following lines: the human suffering that occurred during WW2 was so unimaginable, it is actually humanly impossible for us as human beings to feel the enormity of it. And this is why Anne Frank’s diary took off the way it did: it enabled us to feel - through one person - the tragic proportions of the suffering. We are people, and we feel suffering through other people.
The enormity of the climate crisis ahead of us is just that - enormous - and it’s a challenge to get our heads around how much this will change our lives, and our children’s lives. It is of course much more comfortable to live our lives in denial. It’s not that bad, surely? 🤔 Someone will fix it, surely? 🤔
This is what’s happening with the pushback against the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Although initiated by the German FDP party, they are not the only ones.
Many are in denial of the world we are now in. Many have not read the words of thousands of leading scientists and human rights experts worldwide. Many prefer to live in the past, in a bygone era. 🕰️
Denial feels comfortable. But we know better. We know the world we are in, and we know that rights-respecting and planet-protecting business is the only way forward. ⏩
When we work in human rights, we have to learn to grow accustomed to setbacks. A woman I trained on human rights in Libya got killed a few weeks later for her role as a human rights defender. The communities and workers I worked with in Myanmar are now under the thumb of a brutal military regime. And the list goes on.
We know fundamentally that change is not a linear process. We take two steps forward, and one step back. Sometimes, three steps back. But we still take steps forward. It’s fitting to come back here to Viktor Frankl who reminded us - after seeing the worst of human suffering in a concentration camp - that “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
We choose our way, and that is living in full awareness of the world that we are in, and choosing to push ahead. ⏩ It’s precisely when it’s hard that actions are needed. We stay strong, we stay grounded and we stay united. 💪🏻💪🏼💪🏽💪🏾💪🏿 Politics won’t break us. We are on the right side of history, and we continue together. ⭐️
Sending much warmth to all of you,
Anna
PS: On a lighter side, one of our values in Human Level, and one of my personal values, is joy. Everyone is talking about Jamie is back at the theatre in London. I love it. I’ve seen it twice, and I’ll be going a third time. 🎉 The musical is based on the true-life story of 16-year-old British schoolboy Jamie Campbell who fights against prejudice and bullying to become a drag queen. It is uplifting and beautiful, you’ll be crying and laughing and singing for a long time after - all in a good way.
