Along with the Moon landing, the sequencing of the human genome, and the discovery of planets beyond our Solar System, it’s likely one of the greatest scientific achievements of my lifetime.
After decades of efforts, researchers have finally run a nuclear fusion reaction that has released more energy than they put into it.
Put simply, what they’ve done at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is harness the reactions that drive the sun and other stars. It means an age of almost limitless, clean, carbon-free energy could be on the horizon for humanity here on Earth.
But – you just knew there was going to be a “but,” right? – that horizon is still likely many decades away. It will be a looooong time before you plug something into the wall and it’s powered by a fusion reactor somewhere.
In the meantime, the climate crisis continues all around us. The earth keeps getting warmer, and its deadly impacts are ever more evident. These include increased severe storms, burning forests, sweltering cities, parched farmlands, and coastal cities facing rising sea levels.
Claiming a mounting toll on lives and livelihoods around the globe, the climate crisis is a human rights crisis.
In fact, it’s the biggest global threat to human rights we’ve seen in our lifetime. And governments have a moral responsibility and a human rights obligation to act boldly and quickly to massively reduce greenhouse gas emissions – or the situation could become truly dystopian.
Rising sea levels and massive food shortages could drive hundreds of millions of people from their homes. Conflicts over increasingly scarce resources could multiply exponentially, fueling violence and authoritarian rule.
So, yes, let’s all celebrate this week’s news – the possibility of clean, near-limitless energy offers a bright future.
But if we don’t get serious about our current human-made climate crisis, how much of humanity will live long enough to see that future?