World Wildlife Fund WWF Climate Blog

The world is breathless about Brexit. I get it. If the United Kingdom leaves the European Union it will be very bad news for the British, European and world economies. It will also create big question marks for the environment because of the long-standing role of EU environmental laws in Britain. And, of course, the root causes of the shocking result are lessons we need to quickly learn in the United States and around the world about economic justice, xenophobia and demagoguery.

But let’s not forget about the other important events that also occurred this week which, unlike Brexit, sent strong signals to the rest of the world about the power and momentum of international cooperation. Yesterday, at the North American Leaders Summit, the United States, Mexico and Canada — a regional economy larger than Europe — doubled down on working together, setting joint goals and collaborating to achieve them. And, they did it on the mother-of-all global challenges: averting climate collapse. As President Obama said yesterday in addressing the Canadian parliament, “there is one threat that we cannot solve militarily and we cannot solve alone - climate change.”

Looking back twenty years from now at the climate debate, people will ask, “How could this go on for so long? Why did it take humanity so long to price greenhouse gases appropriately?”  The only answer is some sort of collective insanity.