Published July 8, 2008
by iris_author
With the G8 hunkered down in the mountain resort of Toyako, discussing the food crisis over 18-course meals and putting on the usual parade of feighed concern for the world's problems, their inability to move forward on the great issues of the day has become more and more apparent.
While climate change activists again slammed leaders for their timid and dithering attitude to the crisis, it was a block of prominent emerging nations that provided the coup-de-grâce to the proceedings. Trumping the G8 declaration towards maybe possibly moving towards 50 per cent emission reductions by 2050, the gang of five (Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, India, and China) put forward tough conditions that tightly coupled reductions in developed countries with their historical legacy in creating the problem in the first place. The five also echoed the contract and converge strategy, calling for responsible consumption in the North, increase of foreign aid to 0.7 per cent of GNP (an old UN target that was never reached outside of Scandinavia), and financial and technical assistance for adapting to climate change.
Unfortunately, these have been deal breakers for the North in the past. Indeed, the US has used the excuse of non-inclusion of developing countries in the first round of Kyoto targets to renounce the treaty altogether. The impasse is further complicated by China and India's skyrocketing emission levels based as they are on increasing affluence on the Western pattern of consumption and motorization (an insane proposition as it intensifies their reliance on fossil fuels when both countries had perfectly good formal and informal transit systems based on trains and peddle power).
George Monbiot recently made note of this paralysis:
The stone drops into the pond and a second later it is smooth again. You will turn the page and carry on with your life. Last week we learnt that climate change could eliminate half the world’s species(9); that 25 primate species are already slipping into extinction(10); that biological repositories of carbon are beginning to release it, decades ahead of schedule(11). But everyone is watching and waiting for everyone else to move. The unspoken universal thought is this: “if it were really so serious, surely someone would do something?”
Monbiot also cites The Road by Cormac McCarthy as what could possibly happen if the biosphere collapses. The terrifying novel (how they intend to film it with its more harrowing passages is unimaginable) doesn't seem so farfetched when we realize that our impact on the atmosphere had already caused similar devastation.
Posted in: Blogs | Turning Up the Heat
