So that's it. The world's worst polluters - the people who are drastically altering the climate - gathered here in Copenhagen to announce they were going to carry on cooking, in defiance of all the scientific warnings. They didn't seal the deal; they sealed the coffin for the world's low-lying islands, its glaciers, its North Pole, and millions of lives.
Those of us who watched this conference with open eyes aren't suprised. Every day, practical, intelligent solutions that would cut our emissions of warming gases have been offered by scientists, developing countries, and protesters - and they have been systematically vetoed by the governments of North America and Europe.
It's worth recounting a few of the ideas that were summarily dismissed - because when the world resolves to find a real solution, we will have to revive them.
Discarded Idea One: The International Environmental Court. Any cuts proposed at Copenhagen were purely voluntary. If a government decides not to follow them, nothing will happen, except a mild blush, and disastrous warming. After all, Canada signed up to cut its emissions at Kyoto, and then increased them by 26 percent - and there were no consequences. Copenhagen could unleash a hundred Canadas.
The brave, articulate Bolivian delegation - who have seen their glaciers melt at a terrifying pace - objected. They said if countries are serious about reducing emissions, their cuts need to be policed by an International Environmental Court that has the power to punish people who endanger our shared stable climate. This is hardly impractical. When our leaders and their corporate lobbies really care about an issue - say, on trade - they pool their sovereignty this way in a second. The World Trade Organization fines and sanctions nations severely if (say) they don't follow strict copyright laws. Is a safe climate less important than a trade-mark?
Discarded Idea Two: Leave the fossil fuels in the ground. At meetings here, an extraordinary piece of hypocrisy has been pointed out by the new international chair of Friends of the Earth, Nnimmo Bassey and the environmental writer George Monbiot. The governments of the world say they want to drastically cut their use of fossil fuels, yet at the same time they are enthusiastically digging up any fossil fuels they can find, and hunting for more. They are holding a fire extinguisher in one hand and a flame-thrower in the other.
Only one of these instincts can prevail. A study published earlier this year in the journal Nature showed that we can only use - at an absolute maximum - 60 percent of all the oil, coal and gas we have already discovered if we are going to stay the right side of catastrophic runaway warming. So the first step in any rational climate deal would be an immediate moratorium on searching for more fossil fuels, and fair plans for how to decide which of the existing stock we will leave unused. As Bassey put it: "Keep the coal in the hole. Keep the oil in the soil. Keep the tar sand in the land." This option wasn't even discussed by our leaders.
Discarded Idea Three: Climate debt. The rich world has been responsible for 70 percent of the warming gases pumped into the atmosphere - yet 70 percent of the effects are being felt in the developing world. Holland can build vast dykes to prevent its land flooding; Bangladesh can only drown. There is a cruel inverse relationship between cause and effect: the polluter doesn't pay.
So we have racked up a climate debt. We broke it, they paid. At this summit, for the first time, the poor countries rose in disgust. Their chief negotiator pointed out that the compensation offered "won't even pay for the coffins." The cliche that environmentalism is a rich person's ideology just gasped its final CO2-rich breath. As Naomi Klein put it: "At this summit, the pole of environmentalism has moved South."
When we are dividing up who has the right to emit the few remaining warming gases that the atmosphere can absorb, we need to realize that we are badly overdrawn. We have used up our share of warming gases, and then some. Yet the US and EU have dismissed the idea of climate debt out of hand. How can we get a lasting deal that every country agrees to if we ignore this basic principle of justice? Why should the poorest restrain themselves when the rich refuse to?
A deal based on these real ideas would actually cool the atmosphere. The alternatives championed at Copenhagen by the rich world - carbon offsetting, carbon trading, carbon capture - won't. They are a global placebo. The critics who say the real solutions are "unrealistic" don't seem to realize that their alternative is more implausible still: civilization continuing on a planet whose natural processes are rapidly breaking down.
Throughout the negotiations here, the world's low-lying island states have clung to the real ideas as a life-raft, because they are the only way to save their countries from a swelling sea. It has been extraordinary to watch their representatives - quiet, sombre people with sad eyes - as they were forced to plead for their own existence. They tried persuasion and hard science and lyrical hymns of love for their lands, and all were ignored.
Yet their discarded ideas - and dozens more like them - show once again that man-made global warming can be stopped. The intellectual blueprints exist just as surely as the technological blueprints. There would be sacrifices, yes - but they are considerably less than the sacrifices made by our grandparents in their greatest fight. We will have to pay higher taxes and fly less to make the leap to a renewably-powered world - but we will still be able to live an abundant life where we are warm and free and well-fed. The only real losers will be the fossil fuel corporations and the petro-dictatorships.
But our politicians have not chosen this sane path. No: they have chosen inertia and low taxes and oil money today over survival tomorrow. The true face of our current system - and of Copenhagen - can be seen in the life-saving ideas it has so casually tossed into the bin.
This summer, Johann travelled across the Arctic to report on the effects of global warming there. The article is here. He also travelled across Bangladesh to report on its effects there. The report is here.
Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here. For an archive of his writings on global warming, click here.
You can follow Johann on Twiter at www.twitter.com/johannhari101
Follow Johann Hari on Twitter: www.twitter.com/johannhari101
Ain't that the truth! A heck of a recap which I wish I could duplicate half as well. Johann lays out the crises as well as anyone writing today because he understands the whole kit and kaboodle better than most. What I miss are practical solutions that go beyond "be nice" arguments and take into account how to induce the necessary change in market economies with proper regulation to balance encouragement and coercion. Johann could take a page from Thomas Friedman for this.
The problem as I see it, is that in the face of crises, no human society has ever gotten "nicer," more socially responsible, if you will, of its own accord. Usually it is quite the opposite. So the question becomes, what economic mechanisms can we use within the contexts of our current societies that will encourage market based solutions with minimal coersion and greed sink holes? Markets can turn on a dime, while whole societal structures can't without violent revolutions, which won't solve this crises.
Attempting to punish countries would only encourage them NOT to sign on to international agreements, or even show up to farcical charades like Copenhagen. On second thought, I'm beginning to warm to the idea.
Oh really?
I'm all for conservation, and I believe governments have a role to play in making sure the true costs of human activity are identified and incorporated into the prices for those activities/products.
But I think it will never work unless these costs are acknowledged and imposed uniformly. If US companies pay these significant costs, but Chinese companies don't, then the US economy will totally collapse. This is unacceptable unless you live in some ivory tower somewhere.
And then there is always that issue, underscored by climategate, that AGW is all BS - or at a minimum hugely exaggerated.
We can't forget that little tid bit.
The pollution from US military activity has been excluded from consideration since Kyoto!
Why should the US allowed to continue to have such a military exemption?
The US military is the worst institutional polluter on the planet, and excluding it only
ignores the adverse environmental impact of wars and militarism,
and coincidentally, makes the US appear to be even less a polluter than it actually is.
Bryan Farrell in his new book, "The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism," says that "the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency ... the Armed Forces of the United States."
U.S. weapons made with depleted uranium have spread tens of thousands of pounds of microparticles of radioactive and highly toxic waste throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and the Balkans.
The U.S. sells land mines and cluster bombs that are a major cause of delayed explosives, maiming and disabling especially peasant farmers and rural peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America . …
… the Defense Department has routinely resisted orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up contaminated U.S. bases [despite the fact that] Pentagon military bases top the Superfund list of the most polluted places, as contaminants seep into drinking water aquifers and soil.( Washington Post, June 30, 2008)
…
Around the world, on past and still operating bases in Puerto Rico, the Philippines , South Korea , Vietnam , Laos , Cambodia , Japan , Nicaragua , Panama and the former Yugoslavia , rusting barrels of chemicals, poisons, and solvents and millions of rounds of ammunition [continue to be the environmental legacy of the Pentagon.
The fastest way to clean up the environment would be to shut down the Pentagon.
preceding was extracted from
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16609
The top 500 worldwide are creating economies bigger than many countries GDP and have spheres of influence that hold little representation to the employees and/or the communities they exist in. But you can vote for their success or renovation or demise by your wallet. Remember there's is over 6 billion of us and handful of them. Decentralize this logjam at federal and corporate levels.
"6 billion of us". What a joke.
There are/were bigger efforts to boycott walmart, and walmart still exists and makes pretty good profits.
And then the Environment Changes and Civilization dies while fighting over a few remaining resources.
The rejected alternative is to change to a sustainable future .. like people have been voting for ...