'El sentido del momento historico es cambiar todo lo que debe ser cambiado'.
Translation: 'The meaning of the historic moment is to change all that needs to be changed'.
The Copenhagen Climate Conference should have been cancelled. After all they have had 20 years to sort out the issues – the meeting should have been merely to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. This sloppy approach of not doing the preparation on so important an issue as the collective future of the human race makes us wonder just how thorough our leaders are in their approach to any other issue.
Copenhagen was not a complete loss. If you read between the lines it is possible to see that change is in the offing. The smaller nations have begun to find their feet; the African nations have at last found common ground and have spoken with one voice; the South American nations have discovered their strength and will not grind under the bidding of their northern continental counterparts. No longer will these groups tolerate the wilful injustice of unfair trade agreements and the absurdly patronising behaviour of the developed world – developed, of course by the sweat and blood of disempowered peoples who have only seen themselves get poorer on the back of aid, the World Bank, the IMF and the rest of the corporate scavengers.
Around the world people who once looked (misguidedly) to the US for inspiration or support are taking matters into their own hands. No one is waiting for the US to save or even support them anymore. The signs are everywhere, but particularly in Copenhagen, where smaller nations and a more organised global NGO community are standing up to the old powers with unprecedented force.
However, nobody in Copenhagen actually mentioned the cause of the problems humanity faces – poverty, or any real solutions such as interest-free loans for all forms of productive capacity.
It is lamentable to see that not one country is prepared to re-route their budget for war and armaments to sustainable energy development aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
There are also interesting signs surround the conflict in the Middle East. The European Union is suddenly asserting its diplomatic weight by demanding Israeli recognition of East Jerusalem as Palestinian, and refusing to support unilateral Israeli border-drawing in the West Bank. Palestinians are slowly taking responsibility for resistance back into their own hands, literally taking apart sections of the Separation Wall piece by piece rather than waiting for Hamas or the Palestinian Authority to make yet another ineffectual move.
Such a multi-layered, often disorganised collection of movements will remain too amorphous and hard to define ever to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. But if this new and subtle attack on the old and outdated systems finds the strength to continue, it just might usher in the paradigm shift that is necessary.
Today's climatologists are fighting major interests such as the oil, gas and beef industries in much the same way physicians were fighting the tobacco lobby in the 1960s. The evidence that nicotine caused lung diseases such as cancer was overwhelming, but the tobacco industry's strategy was to discredit scientists as "uncertain and greedy and full of junk science,"
Many of the most prominent climate sceptics are not climatologists themselves. Steve Milloy, who runs the popular website Junk Science, has ties with the oil, tobacco and pharmaceutical industries. Craig Idso, the founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, is a geographer partially funded by energy interests; and the glutinous and patronising Lord Monckton is a business consultant in the UK who studied classics and journalism at university.
Despite the worldwide media attention, however, many of us are still stuck on a very basic question: Is global warming real; and if it is, have humans caused it? Ideology and big industry money fuels much of the popular debate. We only know that humans are fouling the planet on a massive scale, and that this is wrong.
In the scientific community, the consensus is nearly unanimous. Nearly all of the world's scientists say decades of careful study show that climate change is, indeed, a fact, and that it has been driven by human activity.
Delegates may have ‘taken note’ on the Copenhagen Climate outcome, but many would be advised to take note of the change in attitude of the developing nations.
http://rosenoire.org/reviews/seven_steps.php
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/climatesos/2009/12/20091215132841134624.html
December 20, 2009
December 12, 2009
Herding Cats
Copenhagen is upon us, and it brings with it an even greater muddle of thoughts than Kyoto.
Our science in the matter of climate change is in its infancy. Yet we are dealing not with pure science, but with a type of scientific materialism enacted by means of a philosophically prejudiced control over the interpretations. *
What we can be sure of is that humankind’s ability to pollute its very foundation of existence – the planet Earth – has been a gathering trend since the advent of the industrial revolution.
Only humans, only humans have invested in the power to create such toxicity, such fearful and hideous by-products of selfishness that they are prepared to create poisons that will pollute the earth for hundreds of thousands of years to come. No-one knows the solution to nuclear waste, yet we are prepared to bury it in the ground, sink it in the sea, and absolve ourselves from any responsibility for it. Who knows whether future generations can discover the way to neutralise this radio-active waste? Who knows if they will even know where it languishes?
The rivers of China are devastated, running orange and filthy for hundreds of miles. The Niger Delta is steeped in chemical waste so foul that the water is undrinkable and the fish are dead. The tar sands of Canada are the world's biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions. The list is endless and the cause is always the same – consumerism. Profit before the planet every time; profit for the few –and we buy it.
The current pseudo-system is no longer tolerable – and it never was viable. Nevertheless those who are currently in power are not inclined to deal with, at root, the global systemic breakdown. Many continue to complain that while the waters, the air and the land are daily becoming more overwhelmingly polluted, that there is some necessary (and action-preventing) controversy to be engaged relative to whether global warming is a reality or not. But the evidence is irrefutable. The Earth is being polluted and the cause is human.*
Glaciers are retreating, seas are warming, ice caps are melting. Does it make sense to keep on polluting?
The solutions to real or perceived climate change are the same as the solutions to poverty and social justice. In a fairer world where individual human beings can share in the same economic advantages, where profiteering at the expense of the poor and the disenfranchised would be minimised, where locally based economies could prosper and retain their prosperity instead of filling the pockets of distant owners, people would be cushioned from the effects of global recession and be more mindful of the polluting side effects of their endeavours.
Vast amounts of untapped renewable energy like wind, tidal and solar power exist in every country, yet investment has been miniscule compared with the trillions put into propping up the antiquated and dirty fossil fuel industry.
The herding of cats to Copenhagen will at best decide a plan to curb carbon emissions and send a charitable financial leg-up to developing countries. But it will never in a month of Sundays solve the root problems of economic and social injustice.
*Taken from Not-Two Is Peace by Adi Da http://global.adidam.org/books/not-two-is-peace.html
For more details on the Canadian tar sands: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/30/canada-tar-sands-copenhagen-climate-deal
For more about Shell polluting the Niger Delta: http://www.protectthehuman.com/articles/shell
Out of sight and out of mind?
Military waste is generally toxic and costly to dispose of safely, so the solution has usually been to dump it in the sea where it can keep company with nuclear waste. At the end of the Second World War Britain had over 2 million tons of munitions - artillery shells, phosphorus flares, mortars, incendiaries and cluster bombs and so on, to get rid of.
It was dumped in Beaufort Dyke, and this 30-mile long trench between Scotland and Ireland became a major military dumping ground for 30 years thereafter. 14,000 tonnes of phosgene-filled rockets, 120,000 tonnes of UK-manufactured mustard gas and 17,000 tonnes of the German nerve gas Tabun were just a small part of the wide variety of munitions dumped.
Out of sight and out of mind? But not for long - in 1995, 4,000 phosphorus incendiary bombs from Beaufort Dyke were washed up on Mull, Oban, Arran and other parts of Scotland's west coast. That is just the beginning. Do you eat fish?
For the full story http://www.ppu.org.uk/war/environment/e-dumping.html
Our science in the matter of climate change is in its infancy. Yet we are dealing not with pure science, but with a type of scientific materialism enacted by means of a philosophically prejudiced control over the interpretations. *
What we can be sure of is that humankind’s ability to pollute its very foundation of existence – the planet Earth – has been a gathering trend since the advent of the industrial revolution.
Only humans, only humans have invested in the power to create such toxicity, such fearful and hideous by-products of selfishness that they are prepared to create poisons that will pollute the earth for hundreds of thousands of years to come. No-one knows the solution to nuclear waste, yet we are prepared to bury it in the ground, sink it in the sea, and absolve ourselves from any responsibility for it. Who knows whether future generations can discover the way to neutralise this radio-active waste? Who knows if they will even know where it languishes?
The rivers of China are devastated, running orange and filthy for hundreds of miles. The Niger Delta is steeped in chemical waste so foul that the water is undrinkable and the fish are dead. The tar sands of Canada are the world's biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions. The list is endless and the cause is always the same – consumerism. Profit before the planet every time; profit for the few –and we buy it.
The current pseudo-system is no longer tolerable – and it never was viable. Nevertheless those who are currently in power are not inclined to deal with, at root, the global systemic breakdown. Many continue to complain that while the waters, the air and the land are daily becoming more overwhelmingly polluted, that there is some necessary (and action-preventing) controversy to be engaged relative to whether global warming is a reality or not. But the evidence is irrefutable. The Earth is being polluted and the cause is human.*
Glaciers are retreating, seas are warming, ice caps are melting. Does it make sense to keep on polluting?
The solutions to real or perceived climate change are the same as the solutions to poverty and social justice. In a fairer world where individual human beings can share in the same economic advantages, where profiteering at the expense of the poor and the disenfranchised would be minimised, where locally based economies could prosper and retain their prosperity instead of filling the pockets of distant owners, people would be cushioned from the effects of global recession and be more mindful of the polluting side effects of their endeavours.
Vast amounts of untapped renewable energy like wind, tidal and solar power exist in every country, yet investment has been miniscule compared with the trillions put into propping up the antiquated and dirty fossil fuel industry.
The herding of cats to Copenhagen will at best decide a plan to curb carbon emissions and send a charitable financial leg-up to developing countries. But it will never in a month of Sundays solve the root problems of economic and social injustice.
*Taken from Not-Two Is Peace by Adi Da http://global.adidam.org/books/not-two-is-peace.html
For more details on the Canadian tar sands: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/30/canada-tar-sands-copenhagen-climate-deal
For more about Shell polluting the Niger Delta: http://www.protectthehuman.com/articles/shell
Out of sight and out of mind?
Military waste is generally toxic and costly to dispose of safely, so the solution has usually been to dump it in the sea where it can keep company with nuclear waste. At the end of the Second World War Britain had over 2 million tons of munitions - artillery shells, phosphorus flares, mortars, incendiaries and cluster bombs and so on, to get rid of.
It was dumped in Beaufort Dyke, and this 30-mile long trench between Scotland and Ireland became a major military dumping ground for 30 years thereafter. 14,000 tonnes of phosgene-filled rockets, 120,000 tonnes of UK-manufactured mustard gas and 17,000 tonnes of the German nerve gas Tabun were just a small part of the wide variety of munitions dumped.
Out of sight and out of mind? But not for long - in 1995, 4,000 phosphorus incendiary bombs from Beaufort Dyke were washed up on Mull, Oban, Arran and other parts of Scotland's west coast. That is just the beginning. Do you eat fish?
For the full story http://www.ppu.org.uk/war/environment/e-dumping.html
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