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Sunday, February 16, 2025

Carmona: Be advocates to save planet

by

Rishard Khan
2215 days ago
20190123
From left,  Victrina Cuffie, Dr Winsie-Ann Cuffie, Candel Cuffie, former president Anthony Carmona, Dr Winston Cuffie, CZITT founder Donald Baldeosingh, and CZITT Operations Director Dean Gouvia pose with students of the Miracle Ministries High School.

From left, Victrina Cuffie, Dr Winsie-Ann Cuffie, Candel Cuffie, former president Anthony Carmona, Dr Winston Cuffie, CZITT founder Donald Baldeosingh, and CZITT Operations Director Dean Gouvia pose with students of the Miracle Ministries High School.

Rishard Khan

For­mer pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona has apol­o­gised to the na­tion’s youth for his gen­er­a­tion’s and those be­fore for ne­glect­ing cli­mate change and fail­ing to put ad­e­quate mea­sures in place to mit­i­gate its ef­fects.

He was speak­ing to stu­dents of the Mir­a­cle Min­istries Pen­te­costal High School, McBean, Cou­va on Tues­day.

A group of stu­dents from this school is among the 16 qual­i­fiers for Na­tion­al Sec­ondary School’s Cli­mate Quiz.

“One thing I have to do to­day - I have to apol­o­gise, I have to apol­o­gise to every sin­gle one of you here sit­ting, you all re­ferred to as Gen­er­a­tion X - for the fail­ures of my gen­er­a­tion and pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions in re­la­tion to cli­mate change,” Car­mona said.

He said they were be­ing warned about it but no one cared to lis­ten, as they were all pre-oc­cu­pied with earn­ing mon­ey.

“No­body cared about moth­er earth and the en­vi­ron­ment,” he said.

De­spite these fail­ures, how­ev­er, he urged the stu­dents to keep look­ing for­ward and take up the bur­den of mak­ing that dif­fer­ence.

“What we are try­ing to do, ba­si­cal­ly, recog­nis­ing that fail­ure, not blam­ing but look­ing for­ward, what needs to be done, what has to be done and what must be done. In or­der to af­fect that, you must be agents of change. You all must be­come child ad­vo­cates to en­sure that we have a bet­ter plan­et, a safer plan­et, a more sus­tain­able plan­et.”

He warned that if noth­ing is done to mit­i­gate the ef­fects of cli­mate change, some 250 tourist des­ti­na­tions with­in the Caribbean would fall vic­tim to ris­ing sea lev­els with­in the next 50 years.

Car­mona said this was the pre­dic­tion of an An­tiguan sci­en­tist who rep­re­sent­ed her coun­try at the cli­mate change con­fer­ence in Paris, France. By the end of the cen­tu­ry, Car­mona said the na­tion’s cap­i­tal, Port-of-Spain, would be un­der wa­ter along with oth­er cities built on re­claimed lands such as New York City, in the Unit­ed States and Am­s­ter­dam, in the Nether­lands.

It is in the in­ter­est of this aware­ness that the Car­bon Ze­ro Ini­tia­tive of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CZITT) is host­ing their Na­tion­al Sec­ondary Schools Cli­mate Quiz.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, they are al­low­ing the com­pet­ing schools to de­vise a plan for the world to com­bat cli­mate change which would be broad­cast­ed with the help of their me­dia part­ner — Guardian Me­dia Ltd.


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