By Evaggelos Vallianatos
Human activities such as deforestation, forest fires, mining, industrialized agriculture, the burning of fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas, coal), and wars have been threatening nature, civilization, and humans. Those threats weaponize the planet’s temperature. Scientists describe that effect as climate change/climate chaos.
Climate change/chaos is global and anthropogenic/artificial. It has been affecting the lives of billions of people and the planet’s survival. Pope Francis was angry with the failing international political system, which is at the expense of humanity and Mother Earth. In his October 4, 2023, encyclical, Laudate Deum / Praise God, he said: “I have realized that our responses [to climate crisis] have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.”
This realization highlights the immense humanitarian dimensions of climate chaos. They are gigantic. All people in the world are potential victims and humanitarians, both separately and simultaneously. In both difficult times and times of peace, humans are humanitarians, that is, instinctively feel solidarity with suffering fellow humans. Sympathy, solidarity, cooperation, and mutual assistance increase in times of common and national threats and dangers.
The burning of fossil fuels in the US is responsible for about 74 percent of the country’s warming. The burning of petroleum, for instance, releases gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). These gases grab chunks of solar energy, which they eventually release. This additional energy/heat slowly increases global temperature. It becomes a warm coat around the planet.
Human intervention in the natural world has increased considerably since the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. The 20th century spread the industrialization model to most countries. WWI, 1914-1918, and WWII, 1939-1945, added vast amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Then, the Cold War/militarization of international relations, 1945-1989, increased global climate pollution. And since the 1970s, one of the largest and most populous countries in the world, China, has entered the age of industrialization, mechanizing its economy, industry, agriculture, and armed forces, considerably boosting the planet’s greenhouse burden. In the 21st century, China is “the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, produc[ing] 12.7 billion metric tons of emissions annually. That dwarfs U.S. emissions, currently [in 2024] about 5.9 billion tons annually.” In general, China is the largest climate polluter, and the US is the second-largest.
This means global temperatures keep increasing, with foreseeable and unforeseeable adverse effects: storms, forest fires, city fires, hurricanes, bomb rains, flooding, heatwaves on land and at sea, drought, the potential melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica, and the thawing of permafrost in Alaska and Siberia. These real and potential disasters significantly magnify the need for humanitarian assistance.
Climate chaos
Every human-caused natural phenomenon is a symptom of planetary warming. They have been causing upheavals in the natural world and human societies. Forest fires, for example, are catastrophic for countless animal and plant species living in the forest. Such ecosystem damage disrupts fresh drinking water supplies and affects the survival of endangered species, leading to their extinction. Burnt trees also release the carbon dioxide they had absorbed from the atmosphere, thereby increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and, in turn, the planet’s temperature.
Forest fires sometimes spill over into nearby cities, with dramatic and often catastrophic effects. In January 2025, fires burned towns in southern California, such as Altadena, and neighborhoods in the Los Angeles megalopolis. The temptation to rebuild is enormous. However, burnt towns become toxic, with heavy metal contamination threatening human health.
The melting of Arctic sea ice is threatening the survival of polar bears, for example. And the continued melting of ice in Antarctica and Greenland threatens islands like Tuvalu in the Pacific Ocean. This is a humanitarian and philosophical issue of the highest order. Do humans have the right to continue with activities (the burning of fossil fuels) that endanger the survival of other humans, in this case, the survival of nations and countries like Tuvalu? I don’t think so. Continuing with the fossil fuels becomes an undeclared war, in which case we need to ask, why kill the people of Tuvalu? Isn’t such killing genocidal? What did they do to become our enemies? And also, Tuvaluans have had a minor impact on the world’s temperature compared to people in industrialized countries like the US. As humans living in North America and Europe, China, Russia, and the Middle East, don’t we have the moral and political responsibility to protect them from our own actions? Humanitarianism becomes or should become the highest virtue.
Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
Wars over oil continue. Their effects are global and, in combination with climate change, which they fuel, are threatening to increase the screaming dead to billions.
Kausea Natano, the former Prime Minister of Tuvalu, a tiny Pacific island nation, is one of those screaming. He must have had similar thoughts about oil and wars. He proposed a treaty to stop the expansion of fossil fuels, which he treated like weapons of mass destruction:
“The longer we remain addicted to fossil fuels,” Natano said to world leaders at the Santa Marta, Colombia, Conference in April 2026, “the longer we commit ourselves to mutual decline…. A negotiated Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty would complement the Paris Agreement and ensure a global just transition. We’ve proven we can mobilize our collective ambition at the multilateral level. The scale of the challenge we face can now only be met with an even greater level of ambition and cooperation. I traveled thousands of miles over four days to be here today, because I believe in international cooperation and multilateralism. I have faith in our collective humanity and our ability to foster global solidarity to undertake what needs to be done.”
Kausea Natano’s treaty proposal began at the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, November 2022. He announced he had the support of “a hundred Nobel laureates and thousands of scientists worldwide to urge world leaders to join the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to manage a just transition away from fossil fuels. The time has come to make peace with the planet…. if we can save our islands, we can save the world.”
Four years later, at the Santa Marta, Colombia, conference in April 2026, the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, expressed similar views: they favored the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to phase out fossil fuels.
António Guterres said that “The scale of the challenge dwarfs climate action. The future is not fixed. It is for leaders like you to write it…. The move from fossil fuels to renewables is happening – but we are decades behind.” Then Gustavo Petro explained why we need to abandon fossil fuels. He said: “The real goal that all countries should have is aiming for zero production and supply of carbon gas and oil. If we don’t make that our overarching goal, lives will not be saved. If we keep on our current track, it will be suicide…. Fossil fuel subsidies need to be completely eliminated worldwide.”
Finally, Gavin Newsom spoke. He said: “This climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis. It’s not complicated. It’s the burning of oil. It’s the burning of gas. It’s the burning of coal. And we need to call that out. For decades and decades, the fossil fuel industry has been playing every one of us in this room for fools.”
Exactly. Natano, Guterres, Petro, and Newsom expressed the virtues of knowledge, wisdom, and humanitarianism at work. The Greeks would say Freedom or Death. The courage and vision of these world leaders are paradigmatic and necessary to stop the fossil fuel looters of the planet. And Prime Minister Natano’s proposal to stop the ceaseless rise in global temperature with a Fossil Fuels Non-Proliferation Treaty is original, timely and humanitarian. It also captured the imagination of a few important world leaders…