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Take Me to Your Climate Leader
COPENHAGEN—“Politicians talk, leaders act” read the sign outside the Bella Center in Copenhagen on the opening day of the United Nations climate summit. Inside the convention center, the official delegations from 192 countries, hundreds of NGOs (nongovernmental organizations)—an estimated 15,000 people in all—are engaging in two weeks of meetings aiming for a global agreement to stave off catastrophic global climate change. Five thousand journalists are covering the event.
Outside, Copenhagen has been transformed into a vibrant, global hub of climate-change activism, forums and protest planning. In one square, an ice sculpture of a polar bear melts day by day, and an open-air exhibit of towering photos displays “100 places to remember that will disappear.”
While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week designated carbon dioxide as a threat to health, President Barack Obama has said that there will not be a binding agreement from this summit. Many see the U.S. as a key obstacle to it and are seizing the opportunity to assert a leadership role in what environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben has described as “the most important diplomatic gathering in the world’s history.” At stake are not only the rules that will govern entire economies, driven for well more than a century by fossil fuels, but the very existence of some nations and cultures, from the tropics to the arctic.
The Republic of Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, sent 15-year-old Mohamed Axam Maumoon as a climate ambassador. After attending the Children’s Climate Forum, he told me, “We are living at the very edge ... because our country is so fragile, only protected by the natural barriers, such as the coral reefs and the white sandy beaches.”
Most of the 200 inhabited islands of the Maldives are at most 3 feet above sea level, and projected sea-level rises would inundate his country. Even at his age, Axam comprehends the enormousness of the threat he and his country face, and starkly frames the question he poses to people in the industrialized world: “Would you commit murder, even while we are begging for mercy and begging for you to stop what you’re doing, change your ways and let our children see the future that we want to build for them?”
Farther north, in Arctic Village, Alaska, indigenous people are fighting to survive. Sarah James is an elder and a chair member of the Gwich’in Steering Committee. I met her this week at Copenhagen’s Klimaforum09, dubbed “The People’s Summit,” where she told me: “Climate change, global warming is real in the Arctic. There’s a lot of erosion, because permafrost is melting. ... And last summer, there was a fire all summer long, no visibility. Last spring, 20 villages got flooded along the Yukon. Sixty villages within the Yukon area never got their fish.”
Emerging economies like China and India are growing rapidly and are becoming top-tier carbon emitters, yet none approaches the per capita emission levels of the United States. With just 4 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. produces about a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases. The model for the past century has been clear: If you want to escape poverty, grow your economy by industrializing with fossil fuels as your main source of energy. Yet the wealthy nations have not been willing to pay for the environmental damage they have caused, or significantly change the way they operate.
Author Ross Gelbspan says poverty is at the root of the problem: Take care of poverty, and humanity can solve the climate crisis. He says retooling the planet for a green economy can be the largest jobs program in history, can create more equality among nations, and is necessary, immediately, to avoid catastrophe.
Tuesday, between sessions at the Bella Center, in the cafe area packed with thousands, a group of activists dressed as space aliens, in white spacesuits and with green skin and goggles, walked in. “Take us to your climate leaders!” they demanded. “Show us your binding treaty!” In the rarified diplomatic atmosphere of the summit, such antics stand out. But the calls from the developing world, both inside and outside the summit, to cut emissions and to compensate countries, from Africa to Asia and Latin America, for the devastating effects of global warming they did not cause are no laughing matter.
Protesters are planning confrontations as more than 100 world leaders descend on Copenhagen next week. The battle cry at the Klimaforum09 is “Mobilize, Resist, Transform.” The people are leading, while the politicians talk.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
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89 Comments so far
Show Allwildcard
"Are you sure you are not projecting your unstated beliefs about the "staggering" cost onto the entire question of whether AGW is ocurring or not? I ask because that's how is sounds to me."
I don't believe so, money isn't particulary important to me, never has been, otherwise I'd have a lot more of it. I'm as sure as I can be the answer is no.
Everything you say about money is true. The other side of that truth is that no matter what you do in a society there is a cost someone must pay, beads, shells, gold, paper, its a means of trade. If you are entirely self sufficient, no problem.
But convincing others to follow along will require that it be addressed. What the cost is vs. the result. This is a fact of life and there is no way around it.
Consider, to do whats suggested will require staggering costs in money, in lowering of living standards, throwing many people into poverty without a social safety net,absolutely staggreg social costs, heck, you can extrapolate as well as I can, probably better.
Forget my private struggle to decide for a moment......
Lets say for a moment that I have joined up and want to implement these plans, I frankly don't see how to sell it to everyone. Americans are not going to go for it if the Chinese and Indians along with other countries will not do the same thing. I can't see that happening. The developing countries are going to swear its a plan by all of the industrial countries to keep them down.
"Are you seriously arguing that the economy should take precedence over the ecosystem?"
No I wouldn't, but I am arguing that the danger will have to be far more defined and AGW will have to be almost a sure thing and the results of actions will have to be clearly defined before anything happens. Without that you get results like European Cap and Trade, verry little effect at a huge cost.
"but you cannot see any obvious direct benefits from dramatically reducing our energy usage, and hence our ecological footprint?"
Of course, but the actions proposed are very drastic and are those benefits worth the cost...and I'm not speaking about just money here.
This would require the ceedeing of a great deal of freedom and power, economic and social costs. I think the social cost might far outweigh the monetary costs. Consider the great increase in poverty and the inability to address it. These are also things that I consider.
As I mentioned to wisecrone above....the old Ice Age thing really sticks in my mind too.
As to total certainty, you can only have that by experience, yours or others....and if the AGW folks are correct, we can't be certain that way! But its going to have to be more evident that I can see so far.
I'll just have to struggle along till I come to a decision I believe. And I will. Everyone is going to have to decide about this one way or the other and in the next few years or so I'd say.
Time to watch those videos and read the links......
My thanks!
Sioux Rose
WILDCARD: Excellent post and basis for analysis. Thank you for adding to the forum.
>>>Henry8 wrote: Calling people "deniers" and denigrating them because they don't buy the AGW mantra is less than helpful. I can't decide for myself because the science and the "consensus" is not convincing.
You seem to be making the same point over and over. It's not so difficult to decide what to do - which is to do whatever is safer, given the information and the knowledge, even when there's uncertainty. If you are genuinely trying to decide, it would mean that you are willing to invest a bit of time. So, how about you watch this YouTube video series put together by an Oregon science teacher? Each one is about 10 minutes long, and I suggest you start at the beginning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg
or
http://highintel.com/content/how-it-all-ends
The first video is called "In the Test Tube". Basically, we are conducting an experiment while sitting inside the test tube. So, what would you choose? Wait for a "conclusive" proof and a solid "consensus" - or choose a safer option, given what scientists say they know? (They don't claim they know EVERYTHING, either - which is what makes me trust the scientists more than the deniers - I'm sorry, this is not a subject for niceties - there's too much at stake here. You may be a skeptic and not a denier. That's ok - but please note - there are professional, paid "deniers", and calling them so is by no means an insult to anyone). In one of the videos, Greg Craven (I think that's the name of this teacher) shows a simple grid of two columns and two rows. The columns are AGW being "True" and "False", and the rows are "Take action" and "Take no action". Please watch it - personally I found this series way more useful than Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth", in spite of the extremely low budget production (basically he's either sitting at his desk or uses the white-board - that's it). And this focuses on decision-makng - not much about the science of climate change itself.
Alcyon
"You seem to be making the same point over and over."
That part is probably true simply because these articles keep making the samer point over and over.
"I'm sorry, this is not a subject for niceties - there's too much at stake here. You may be a skeptic and not a denier. That's ok - but please note - there are professional, paid "deniers", and calling them so is by no means an insult to anyone)."
I am a skeptic, but I don't hold opposite opinions against anyone. My point was actually that in trying to influence people calling them "Deniers" and all the other crass insults willy nilly is not helpful! ( and you have seen them on CD and elsewhere) Now a paid person taking either side is entirely different.
As to the videos....I'll watch them as soon as we getback or if its too late tomorrow without fail. Thanks for taking the time to post them.
Henry8, I have to admit I was getting a little ticked off at you, but I see that you have an open mind and that you are just trying to understand this most critical issue. So forgive me.
I personally compare the urgency to mitigate global climate change to the urgency of ending the thinking that we can use nuclear weapons to deal with our conflicts. Both can lead to circumstances where it truly does not matter what else we do because we simply will cease to exist and the world will go on without many species, including human beings.
I'm not playing Russian roulette with the planet that I love, and thank you Mairead for that cogent analogy.
There is never anything to forgive in a civil post, which your's surely is.
You must remember that I am old enough to remember the Ice Age mantra. A clone of the current argument but the other way in temperatures, so I don't readily accept any claims that don't make utter sense to me.
The fact that we have been cooling for a few years now lends credence to counter arguments. And by any measurement other that black is white, that is a fact.
Nuculear war or war is a lot closer than GW to ending the world in my estimation.
I'm trying to figure it out, but it is very, very hard. I listen to folks here like the Prof. and I feel one way, then I get folks like Carole Browner and am repulsed and feel the other way. It is CONFUSING.
As you can see from other posts, there are a lot of reasonable folks here that are always willing to help.
Henry, the "ice age mantra" was a falsely alarmist ...I don't know what to call it. Popularisation? Misunderstanding? Crass attempt to sell newspapers? Regardless, it did *not* reflect the science of the time except in the loosest and most misleading way. It was "National Inquirer science", if you take my meaning. The current alarms *do* reflect current mainstream science.
There's an economics prof named Yohe at Wesleyan who puts the whole issue this way: given the *HIGHLY UNEQUAL* stakes on each side of the question, for us to sit around waiting for more information, or for the politicians to take action, "is an experiment we really don't want to be trying with the only planet we have".
Alcyon, I just want to thank you for the very genuine and knowledgeable discourse you always add to our discussions here. I look forward to viewing your links.
WiseCrone, thanks for the kind words. Just as I learn from others all the time, it's nice to know some of the thoughts I throw around are shared by others as well. It's funny how I can actually feel hope on seeing the anger, sarcasm, and even cynicism around here - just goes to show that we are not alone. Thoughts won't go to waste...
BTW, the links are for the same video series - just different sites :)
Alcyon,
Your stuff is great. And so are all the other posts on this thread with rare exception.
Do you know what CD comments are?
They are a Progressive neural-net of very wise free thinkers. No one person has all the answers or has read all the relevant info on any one subject, but collectively we're pretty close to enlightenment.
It's been a pleasure to know all you fine ladies and gentlemen.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Let me add my compliments and express the same sentiments that WiseCrone and ThomasJefferson did.
There are some nuts on CD that enjoy just tring to stir the pot, others that enjoy insulting others and there are just some nuts....but you and the other 95% of CD posters make it obvious we have every chance to solve all our problems.
And your civil, informative and reasoned posts are among thev most enjoyable here.
Peace
I take it you don't play blackjack.
If A uses ten times what B uses, it seems fatuous to imagine that population is the main problem as opposed to a main problem.
Numbers by themselves do not prove anything uncertain either.
bardamu
I would say that if AGW is true, then population numbers become critical based on the present trends and economies.
Thoroughly agreed.
The difficulty I find on both sides about population is that many people seem to want to say population is THE problem or that per/capita use is THE problem. Since gross use has to resemble per capita use times population, both factors have to be similarly important.
I don't think asking for lifestyle changes is the same as asking people to depart the planet, and anything like a properly run economy (no, I don't know what universe that happens in) would provide for everyone, but at anything like current rates of population growth, that will not be true for long.
What I will say, though, is that I think more properly managed economies, even with considerable errors, would lead to reduced population growth. Reduced and even negative population growth regularly accompanies education for women and a relative escape from poverty.
If no social net exists, the kids and grandkids are the retirement plan, the health insurance and accident and indemnity plans. Where banks are unreliable (and oh, boy, this just bred some interesting thoughts!) families are the lenders of first and last resort for all but the most central layers of business.
A major part of resolving 3rd world overpopulation (though that's not the most environmentally damaging kind) is to target the Fed in the States, the IMF, the World Bank, corporations like Monsanto that hold farmers to mortgage for seeds, US bases in Colombia, occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and so forth.
Oh well ----- I have a feeling I'm going on about things readers here already know, but I can't think of when I see the full circle described in writing in a way to show how it comes home to American workers.
3rd world overpopulation (though that's not the most environmentally damaging kind
------------------------------------
I suspect non-humans would disagree with this assessment, B, if they had a voice. It's largely the people in the third world who are driving most non-humans to extinction. Sometimes to serve the rapacious goals of first-world elites, but more often just to serve dinner.
There is greater biodiversity - both in plants and animals - in the so-called third world. It's true, forests are disappearing due to human encroachment. But they don't have the option of shipping off their "excess" population to the New World - you know, sort of like what colonial Britain, Spain, Portugal, etc. did a few hundred years ago? This "excess" population, in turn, took over three full continents - North & South Americas, Australia and parts of Africa - they couldn't go back to Europe. So they killed or subjugated the natives in this New World, had (and continue to have) lots of land at their disposal. I wonder what Europe would look like if the native people in the Americas and Australia had somehow put in and enforced tough immigration policies back then. Or if the entire white population were to be put back into Europe. Just a thought exercise I like to do sometimes...
But they don't have the option of shipping off their "excess" population to the New World
----------------------------------------
Not so, if we accept that the "third world" exists even in nominally first-world countries. What defines "third world"? I'd say it's any culture that's non-industrial and whose population scratches no more than a meager existence, often because of first-world exploitation. How would you define it?
Voluntary family planning is beneficial on both a personal and global level. When women are empowered to make decisions about their reproductive agenda, when jobs, contraception and education are available to them, when conditions allow most children to survive, when there are social means to care for the elderly so they need not depend on their children, then birth rates go down.
Keep in mind that one American uses about the same resources as 14 people from India. So lets start at home, both with family planning and less piggishness. Some of the piggishness is personal and some is structural, such as the design of our environments which force people to rely excessively on automobiles rather than public transportaion, cycling or walking.
Joe
no it isn't. it's overconsumption by you know who, not babies in Africa. in any case it's stupid to even bring it up, because by the time you made any changes, the planet will be three feet deep in water, and that water will be too hot to swim in. fossil fuels must go.
population growth? forget it. we need big changes and we need them now. it's just stupid to star working on something that would take 3 generations to take effect.
we just really do need to stop our manic consumption.
But it's not either-or, where we should do this or that to solve the problem, it's all-or-nothing, where either we do it all --lifestyle changes AND population changes-- starting now and continuing permanently or we go down the drain.
Those who think third-world population control isn't important are forgetting that it's human population pressure that's driving non-human species to extinction.
Large parts of sub-Saharan Africa were already depopulated of smaller non-humans by the 1960s - they were killed and eaten by hungry humans.
The depopulation of Georges Bank -that gigantic North Atlantic reservoir of fish- was committed by humans looking for food.
The orang-utans are now facing extinction because of habitat lost to too many humans struggling to make a living on a planet that is grossly overpopulated by humans.
The list of non-humans under threat of extinction would have one basic cause in the 'why?' column: too many humans. Humans stealing their habitat, humans killing them for food, humans killing them as threats, humans killing them because of superstitions.
I also believe that most wars are attributed to population pressures, not what most people think.
You bring up other criteria......so many parts....Jeezzzzereeee! I feel better about being confused at least.
I quite agree with you about wars!
I'm minded of the ship from Britain that was wrecked in a storm while bringing new "colonists" to one of the corporate slave-labor camps. They constantly had to have fresh ones because they lasted hardly any time at all under the conditions imposed on them by the owners of the colony.
The survivors of the shipwreck ended in the Bahamas (or possibly Bermuda, I need to get my books in better order) and they recorded that they thought they'd died in the storm and were now in heaven because they could catch fish with their bare hands, pluck fruit from the trees, and sleep in comfort on the warm sand. A true Garden of Eden.
They had to be "rescued" by force. They had no motivation whatever to do more than simply live and enjoy themselves, just as was true of the poor bloody Polynesians before the Xian missionaries brutalised them.
Very, very few people are so effed up that they want to control everything and everyone.
Well my friend...it looks as if our country is having a run of them. Maybe some other country would be willing to take a few since we have such an excess?
Thanks for the shipwreck story. Bonded labor, right? Thats the way a few of my ancestors got over.
Jeevee
PERSEVERANCE IS THE ONLY HOPE FOR PLANETARY SURVIVAL.
Jeevee I totally agree. We have no choice but to perservere even when we are tired and discouraged. That's why it is called "struggle". We need a lot of people sticking to the topic, understanding the topic, talking about the topic, making personal changes and demanding social and technical change. We must reject schemes that make no sense such as cap and trade and demand just plain cap. We need conservation and development of clean energy. Of course we have to reject that multi-headed monster, the catastrophe called war which is all cost and no benefit in terms of life and the environment. We have to pay attention to the needs of the poor, for by ignoring their famines, floods and droughts, by allowing tyrants and corporations to exploit them and their resources, we are selfishly and foolishly lulled into delaying urgently needed action.
Perserverance provides no guarantee, but is the only hope for the survival of complex organisms on earth, including humans.
Joe
“Would you commit murder, even while we are begging for mercy and begging for you to stop what you’re doing, change your ways and let our children see the future that we want to build for them?”"
Hey, kid - ever hear of Iraq? Afghanistan? Wall Street? Or was that a trick question?
or native Americans, Torrijos(Panama), Roldos(Equador), Mossadegh(Iran), Allende(chile), Machel(mozambique)etc etc etc
www.starvation.net
What's the point of a lousy climate treaty when good technologies such as hemp and algae for the truly green replacements are outlawed or at best kept off the table? I have also come across interesting posts on climate change and people getting restricted from going green thanks to their HOAs. I'm glad I don't live in one of those houses but I feel sorry for those who live in houses that won't allow them to put solar panels on their windows even if it doesn't ruin "home value".
I don't see any success coming from "climate change talks" anymore. I used to believe them but I'm beginning to find myself disaffected on this issue although I won't share Henry8's denial of global warming.
We're talking about Man Made global warming (AGW) Max. Not golbal warming.
But I believe you are correct that nothing will come from the "climate change talks"
Good technologies is a no go in this country. Try to invent anything good and the corporate shenanigans will buy you out via patents. Good technologies from other countries started out on the local levels in their countries and eventually made it steady to tops. Is it any wonder that Japanese autos put the American ones to dust? You're correct on HOA as well but don't expect a miracle without a rough fight against the board of directors if you ever do live in such a home.
By Bill McKibben: The Physics of Copenhagen. http://bit.ly/65eN2T. This is a great article on why we really can't take our sweet arse time or "wait-and-see" regarding global climate change. As posted below, to shorten long links, go to bit.ly and paste any copied link in the "shorten" bar. Other little tricks there too. Very user friendly.
The Platinum Cow ePie December 10th, 2009
‘Holy Cow’; the ice is calving
A swish and a slice
burbles in the arctic night.
Monster bergs are on the rise.
Say why not throw the dice,
the science it ain’t nice.
The peaks have lost their caps
Mount Kilimanjaro cries fowl
as a surge of flow and melt
cascades in the veld.
Say why not throw the dice,
the science it ain’t nice.
The studies.. they get darker,
as the porkers line up with Harper,
glistening profits in tailing pond toxins
capping all but the bottom line,
a Brother’s Grim of INCy story time.
Say why not throw the dice,
the science it ain’t nice.
The faceless monster is on the rise
Inertia has got us in a vice
Enigma pays the heady price,
for dogma is just plain out of spice
Say why not throw the dice
the science it ain’t nice
Command the seas
with platinum pleas
Squeeze some nurture
from a nipple.....
to please...
It’s priceless.
Who the hell would have flagged this poem???
Reason please?
I don't know, but someone is running around just flagging things willy nilly. This is getting absurd.
It was posted three times in succession--that's the likely reason.
WISECRONE WINS HYPOCRITE OF THE YEAR AWARD!
WiseCrone December 9th, 2009 8:19 pm
"Do you enjoy calling people names? You know I've done a long stint as a social worker and long ago got my degree in psychology. Name calling is often a defense mechanism for those who have low self-esteem. Is that your problem? Enough is enough! Discuss the issues with us and lay off the name-calling."
WiseCrone, December 9th, 11:08 pm::
"You are utterly self-involved and ignorant. I don't say that as a means of name-calling, but to simply say that you truly are uneducated and unfeeling."
I know the year is not over yet, but the Committee on Rank Hypocrisy, after having perused all 894 outstanding contributions to these lists over the past year, awards WiseCrone the coveted Hypocrite of the Year trophy, for executing the rare and difficult hypocrite maneuver of the double somersault, and all within less than three-hours!
To wit: At 8:19 pm yesterday, he issues a starchy, priggish lecture to another poster on the evils of name-calling; less than three hours later, at 11:08 pm on the same day, he not only unfurls an abusive stream of name-calling at another poster, but denies he is doing it in the very sentence in which he is doing it ("truly uneducated," "unfeeling")! BRILLIANT! The consummate hypocrite's double somersault!
Congratulations, WiseCrone--Hypocrite of the Year, and well earned.
15-year old Mohamed, climate ambassador for Republic of Maldives asks:
“Would you commit murder, even while we are begging for mercy and begging for you to stop what you’re doing, change your ways and let our children see the future that we want to build for them?”
As so-called environmentalists, are we doing our part to reduce climate change by not eating meat?
We cannot deny the negative impact we cause on the environment by supporting factory farming.
Farmed animals contribute more to climate change than transport according to recent UN and Pew Commission studies.
Farmed livestock are responsible for 40% more climate change than entire transport combined: cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships.
Meat-eaters add 7 times more greenhouse gases to the environment than do vegans.
Are you doing your part or just complaining?
sue1403, this is the trickiest issue to bring up, in my experience, while talking to friends and relatives. They just refuse to see the implications of large-scale meat production (which is exactly what has made meat more affordable - relatively speaking). With the spread of multinational fast-food chains like McDonalds and Pizza Hut in countries like China and India, the implications are even more serious. Limited resources such as farmland and water are put to use for producing dairy and meat products. Food prices go up, affecting the poor disproportionately - this is already the case in India. And when these countries take out leases for farmland in other countries, the BBC is all worked up. (That's a separate issue - maybe worth doing an entire thesis - on how the BBC gets all worked up by what China does in Africa and South America). Whether it's driving cars or consuming more meat and dairy, the Chinese and Indians are choosing poor role models and that's the scary part - even though their per capita emissions at this stage is still way too below that of the rich countries.