Climate Talks: No 2010 Deadline, Not Legally Binding - better than nothing?
EconomicDemocracy Coop
Antonio Hill of Oxfam was scornful. “It can’t even be called a deal.
It can be called a ‘copout’—It has no deadline for an agreement in
2010, no certainty that it will be legally binding,”..but Hill still
looked for a silver lining. “It may deliver a glimmer of hope that
countries can still come together, that the door is still open to
deliver a truly fair, ambitious and binding agreement,” he said.
The Sierra Club, a leading US environmental group, said that the blame
lay largely with the U.S. Senate which has yet to approve legislation
backed by Obama to curb carbon emissions in the world’s largest
economy. “President Obama and the rest of the world paid a steep price
here in Copenhagen because of obstructionism in the United States
Senate,” said Carl Pope, the Sierra Club’s executive director.
“That a deal was reached at all is testament to President Obama’s
leadership—all the more remarkable because of the very weak hand he
was dealt.”
The WWF environmental group voiced concern that the Copenhagen accord
does not bind nations to action. “A gap between the rhetoric and
reality could cost millions of lives..” said Kim Carstensen, the
leader of the WWF’s Global Climate Initiative.
= = = = FULL:
COPENHAGEN—Environmental campaigners branded the Copenhagen climate
summit an abject failure, saying it made progress on financing the
battle against climate change but little else.
President Barack Obama announced the deal at the end of the 12-day, UN-
led meeting in the Danish capital, calling an agreement among key
leaders “unprecedented” but conceding that it was not enough. His
announcement was made late on Friday Copenhagen time.
Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International, called
Copenhagen “an abject failure.”
“By delaying action, rich countries have condemned millions of the
world’s poorest people to hunger, suffering and loss of life as
climate change accelerates,” he said. “The blame for this disastrous
outcome is squarely on the developed nations.”
Kumi Naidoo, head of Greenpeace International, said the agreement
contained so many loopholes “you could fly an airplane through it—
Airforce One, for example.”
“The only thing we can agree on is the science. Everything else is a
fudge, everything else is a fraud, and it must be called as such,” he
said.
Naidoo added that the outcome of what was intended as a planet-saving
deal should be a “wake-up call” for civil society.
“We have to put our leaders under much more pressure than they have
been,” he said.
The Sierra Club, a leading US environmental group, said that the blame
lay largely with the U.S. Senate which has yet to approve legislation
backed by Obama to curb carbon emissions in the world’s largest
economy.
“President Obama and the rest of the world paid a steep price here in
Copenhagen because of obstructionism in the United States Senate,”
said Carl Pope, the Sierra Club’s executive director.
“That a deal was reached at all is testament to President Obama’s
leadership—all the more remarkable because of the very weak hand he
was dealt.”
Pierre Radanne, an adviser to African countries on climate change who
is a veteran observer of the negotiation process, told AFP: “It is a
breakdown of the United Nations.”
Antonio Hill of Oxfam was also scornful. “It can’t even be called a
deal. It can be called a ‘copout’—It has no deadline for an agreement
in 2010, no certainty that it will be legally binding,” he told
journalists.
“We know that this is going to deliver much anger, much
disappointment, much outrage that all these leaders of the world have
gathered to deliver just this.”
But Hill still looked for a silver lining. “It may deliver a glimmer
of hope that countries can still come together, that the door is still
open to deliver a truly fair, ambitious and binding agreement,” he
said.
The WWF environmental group voiced concern that the Copenhagen accord
does not bind nations to action.
“A gap between the rhetoric and reality could cost millions of lives,
hundreds of billions of dollars and a wealth of lost opportunities,”
said Kim Carstensen, the leader of the WWF’s Global Climate
Initiative.
But he said the pledges by individual countries could lead to more
action in the future.
“We are disappointed but remain hopeful,” he said.
When pushed to explain why NGOs were reluctant to call on delegates
from poor countries to reject the deal, Naidoo said it was a no-win
situation.
“A bad deal, and no deal are both disastrous and catastrophic
choices,” he said. “We are caught in the middle.”
Spread the news on what the føck is going on in Copenhagen [http://
www.grist.org/topic/copenhagen-climate-talks]with friends via email,
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SOURCE:
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-12-18-climate-activists-declare-copenhagen-agreement-a-disaster
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COMMENT: Yes, coal and other fossil fuel lobbyists and arm-twisting
our Senators (many of each party) to the right on this issue are a
problem. But there's a larger elephant in the room: "It's the Economic
System, Stupid"
"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite
world is either a madman or an economist-" -Kenneth Boulding (former
president of American Economic Association)
George Monbiot has pointed out, "if fossil fuels are extracted, they
will be used. Most of the governments of the rich world now exhort
their citizens to use less carbon..they have a demand-side policy for
tackling climate change. But as far as I can determine not one of them
has a supply-side policy. None seeks to reduce the supply of fossil
fuel. So the demand-side policy will fail. Every barrel of oil and
tonne of coal that comes to the surface will be burnt. Or perhaps I
should say that they do have a supply-side policy: to extract as much
as they can. Since 2000 the British government has given coal firms
£220m to help them open new mines or to keep existing mines working
(1). According to the energy white paper, the government intends to
“maximise economic recovery … from remaining coal reserves.”(2)"
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/12/11/rigged/
Monbiot is pointing out how the goal of reducing how much dirty fossil
fuels are burned, does not square with the government policy of
encouraging "maximised economic recovery" from coal reserves. You
can't have the former goal met, so long as you keep with the latter
policy. It's a contradiction.
But there's a deeper contradiction we are blind to while it 'hides in
plain view' in the bright daylight before our eyes: our modern
economic system, whether we call it "caplitaism" (pretending it has
much of a similarity to that capitalism Adam Smith imagined) or more
accurately call it a Corporatism, our modern economic system,
including not just those of the US but the quasi-communist one in
China, the one in Russia -- all major economies today, are build on
the basis of a principle that violates basic physics and even
mathematics: they are all have a built-in need to grow, exponentially,
forever. Exponential growth forever and ever, without end.
Part of the built-in nature is Wall Street's never-ending need for
higher profits -- no matter how high they were this year, no matter
how congratulatory of the CEO Wall Street was, the goal for next year
is: go higher. But part of the built-in nature of the need for never-
ending exponential growth is in our monetary system:
"..due to the way money is put into circulation, we have an economic
system that needs to grow or inflate constantly. This is a major cause
of our system's continuous and insatiable need for economic growth, a
need that must be satisfied regardless of whether the growth is
proving beneficial. If ever growth fails to materialise and inflation
does not occur, the money supply will contract and the economy will
move into recession. Politicians naturally do not want inflations and
recessions occurring during their periods in office so they work very
closely with the business community to ensure that growth takes place.
This is despite the damage that continual expansion is doing both to
human society and the natural world."
http://www.feasta.org/documents/moneyecology/chapterone.htm
This is a built in need -- built in not by the laws of physics, since
it does not have to be that way with an economy on a random planet you
visit in the universe. But the way economies have evolved on this
planet, we have a particular kind: the kind that knows only two
possibilities: continue growing exponentially, or collapse into
recession or depression. That's the lose-lose situation our current
economic model puts us in, not allowing for a third "steady state
economy" option.
Frederick Douglass reminds us that power concedes nothing without
popular demand, and that "Those who profess to favor freedom and yet
depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they
want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without
the awful roar of its many waters…"
Monbiot reminds us that expecting less coal to be burned without
reducing supplies is also like expecting crops without plowing.
But we won't get very far in the urgent goal of minimizing the damage
of our accelerating climate-destabilizing and life-destroying path,
until and unless we act to address the modern economic system (which
includes both the EU, US and China/India varieties) the "madman or an
economist" model of modern times which is build on the need for
perpetual, never-ending growth, indeed, exponential growth, forever
and ever. Monbiot is aware of this and has written about it - not
often enough in our view - but at the end of the day it's all of us
who have to get off our rear ends and open our eyes to the economic
elephant in the room, educate ourselves, and act. Start by reading
chapter 1 of
Radio Ecoshock
As British author and broadcaster Paul Kingsnorth explained, the
politicians represent a whole civilization based on cheap fossil
fuels. Millions of people are not yet ready to change - the way they
drive, shop, and consume the planet.
Listen to a 27 minute interview with Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock
here:
http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/ecoshock/ES_Paul_Kingsnorth_LoFi.mp3
Alex Smith
http://www.ecoshock.org