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Copenhagen: The Beginning of the End, and, If So, Whose?
Welcome to Cop15, the UN Conference on Global Warming being held in Copenhagen. Denmark is not easy to forget. In the first place, every school child knows the tales of fearless, seafaring Danes. In the second place,every traveler remembers Copenhagen as the city of $20.00 hamburgers and $40.00 seven minute taxi cab fares. Copenhagen is, in fact, the second most expensive city in the world, just slightly less expensive to live in than Oslo. But that will be nothing compared to the price the world pays for this conference.
Without a doubt, the price for all of us will be high if some kind of agreement passes here that limits gas house emissions of fossils fuels in developed countries. The price will even be higher if it doesn't. Worse, the price may well be catastrophic if any kind of agreement passes that limits development for the poorest countries of the world but is simply designed to allow rich countries to get even richer.
The Conference on Climate Change isn't about climate change at all, you see. The overwhelming body of scientists and politicians know that global warming is real, that it threatens rich and poor countries alike, that it is inevitable unless something is done to reverse the process and soon. No, this UN conference on global warming is not about science. It's about money. So, on Friday, the demonstrations started.
The generation that knows that they will be the people left to pick up the bill for the decisions not made here are being carted away in police vans in order to lower the din of the world's cry for equity, for help. So, the generation of young that will not be allowed to make the decision whether to save the planet or reduce it to dust have come to Copenhagen from all over the world. Along with the voices of so many others.
People from island nations, for instance, facing immanent danger from rising water levels in the world will be the first to have to deal with the effects of dislocation. People in lands going to dust and stone from the dried up river beds around them, will soon be unable to eke out a living in those parts of the world. People sweltering from rising temperatures and shorter growing periods will watch as the Garden of Eden shrivels around them. But as the world fills with ecological refugees, the rest of us will bear the costs of what we do not spend now to avert it, as well.
So, there is a tone of quiet desperation in the city now. And an undercurrent of anger, as well, at the United States, in particular. A young woman addressed a hall full of NGO delegates as UN delegates canceled the second of Plenary sessions of the week in order to flee into private committee meetings together. The disappointment was palpable. "We are now at the point," she said, "where the United States is using multilateralism to get the rest of the world to agree to plans and programs that will simply justify what the United States has already decided to do. And these plans are being made despite their effect on other countries in the world--especially the poorest of the poor."
Instead of plenaries, UN committees worked feverishly to design a solution to the impasse over degrees of emission and amounts of economic support necessary to bring poorer nations the willingness to forego them. If as a human race we are to dissuade another whole body of presently underdeveloped nations from seeking their economic Eden in an economy based on fossil fuels-as we have-some plan for underwriting the energy engines of the economies of the poor while we control our own is imperative.
The young woman was not hopeful about the equity of it all. Nor were all those many in the hall who applauded her analysis.
From where I stand, several strains were clear: Whatever agreements come out of Cop15, enforceability is key. Classism-poor against rich-is a danger. Multilateralism that does not support those nations who stand to be as smothered by the effects of national agreements that deny them economic development as they are by the effects of achieving it through the energy sources of the past will become a major political problem in the future. And, finally, this is only the beginning of a real struggle to resolve it.
And, oh yes, there is one more thing we might want to be aware of as we use our water in unlimited quantities and fuel our over-fueled homes and that is the African voice that answered the young woman's analysis. "The only thing to do," he said, "is to work with a coalition of smaller governments and isolate the United States entirely. That is what we did to stop apartheid. Then, eventually, the United States will have to come along."
Time is running out, they tell us. Maybe we should, for our own sakes, if for nothing else, join the human race now-before it's too late.
23 Comments so far
Show AllCopenhagen, Denmark is a fitting place for a modern Beowulf to cross the seas and slay the monster Grendal.
Why did the "poor nations" walk out today? Because of the same monster that destroyed the World Trade Center. World Trade is heavily weighted in favor of the haves and the have-mores.
Why did they come back? Despair. Like the Danes fled and then returned to Heorot. The military-industrial complex exists to keep the rich man's foot on the poor man's neck. The monstrous words emanating from the mouth of Mr. Cheney yesterday are attacks on democracy.
The attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacks by the poor on the rich. No air force, no army, no navy--so they used box cutters. We stupidly missed the point.
We sorely need Mr. Obama (or somebody!) to grow a spine, to sail to Denmark and slay the corporations who have a strangle-hold on the throat of the earth.
Maybe Mr. Kucinich would save our kingdom if we'd just give him a horse. Like in the story _Beowulf_, swords won't work.
Our modern hero must use his bare hands and take down the mother, too. The mother of our unjust world trade system is giving heartless and conscienceless corporations "personhood," unlimited economic and political power, and "eternal" life. Our Beowulf will have to be the strongest man or woman alive.
Sister Joan, I think, is the strongest woman alive. She might be the one Hrothgar needs to dive into the boiling, bloody lake where Grendel's mother lives. I wish he knew her.
A delightful post.
Thank you for posting this excellent article. I posted on my blog.
I think your missing a big piece, the WHO and WHY of 911. If you don't understand 911 your arguments are flawed.
Sister, how do you reconcile the Bush position above and yours below, both based on vowing "abstinence"?
We have a Catholic here, lecturing us on morality -- and I ask: does the policy of your church on birth control have anything to do with the problem of global warming? Just a question -- but, alas, I don't expect an answer. -- And what is this business about "isolating the United States," as was supposedly done to end apartheid in South Africa? A novel reading of history! It was South Africa itself that was isolated -- and that ended apartheid. (But of course: what is a diatribe without an anti-American slant? It's a diatribe without an audience.)
Oh please. Slay the evil corporations. Bring down the United States.
How convenient.
How about stop the Pope from telling people to have more babies?
How about stopping this ridiculous fear of sexual education that leads to teen pregnancy?
How about supporting people who choose not to have kids and stop claiming that they are abominations?
Sister, go write a letter to your cult leader, and send copies to the other Abrahamic religions who continue to press for family values and more kids, while the planet dies.
The population of the planet increases at THREE additional people per second. Finite planet. Finite resources.
And your church wants more kids and less homosexuals.
Sister Joan,this is an example of "cultural hegemony"or reverse cultural hegemony from the capitalist perspective.Gramsci had a good take on this from the left but it is being used by "corporatists" now instead of Marxists. great post.Walk in peace with joy.
The Catholic Church isn't perfect, but the subject is America and the West. I'm sure there are other venues for 'venting' against the Church.
America throws away so much food, it could feed ANOTHER America just on the table scraps. Your typical American vents FIFTEEN TIMES as much CO2 as your typical Indian. America is a glutton and everybody knows it, and people from Bangladesh and Maldives are being asked to move just so Americans can KEEP being gluttons, and that is NOT going to end well, but in another 9-11.
So, there it is. Call out the Predators of Preemption, kill them from the sky before they kill us from the sky. We all knew that this is where we were heading. We were just waiting for the proper 'leader' (Beck? Palin? Dobbs?) to give us the 'plausible deniability'. Lets pull a 'tasmania' on their *ss and be done with it. Just supersize my popcorn shrimp and refill my stein.
Cuz, the real lesson of Tasmania is: the settlers REALLY DID get away with it. And the best part is: they still get to go to church every Sunday.
The author really states the sum of things very well. Now, if only most of the rest of those spewing crap into the air would get it. Yes, me too, I'm still spewing crap into the air. I still drive way to far to go to work. But I do work in New York and I am funded by state programs. Anyone up on New York politics lately? I might not have to make that drive if things keep going in the direction they are going now.
The change needed is so drastic it won't be done. There's a grove made in the ether and it's the only path that most know. Are we going to leave the oil in the soil and the coal in the hole? ( and the gas under the grass). NO. The oil barons are looking to dig up the dirtiest oil there is. They'll burn it too. There goes the neighborhood.
When historians look back on Copenhagen (and Kyoto, too), what they will see and describe are three scams:
One, the way the entire green or environmental movement either sold out or was scammed by the ruling elites of the rich countries into supporting a conference on climate change that was in reality a conference on finding the next big bubble for the Western bankers to make money on now that housing is dead;
two, the scam of an empire seeking a legal justification for genocide of the poor, a way to justify its taking the water, food, and other resources of the poorer and weaker nations to support its own way of life; and the scam of promising climate change action but giving only more of the same.
Environmentalism sold its soul to the devil; the poor face a future that is nasty, short, and brutish, for who can oppose the empire's war machine; and the rest of us in the West face yet another bubble for Wall Street to fleece us with. No a great legacy, if you ask me.
I don't think any environmental organization worth their credibility would support the resource theft currently on the table against the Third World. In fact, many have denounced it. There's nothing to say a greenwashed version of Doha II can't be hijacked into something else.
If we don't take climate change seriously now, there may be no history.
"...the generation of young that will not be allowed to make the decision whether to save the planet or reduce it to dust..."
Not be allowed to make the decision? Future tense? Sorry, kids, the decision was made before you were even born.
We are all going to die.
Care to be a bit more detailed on the specifics? Of course every person and every known species on this planet is mortal, but what end do you see in store for us?
IF things don't change, most of the life (plant/animal) that sustains us on the planet is going to die. Or the disapearance of drinkable water will do everyone in. Governments and power structures at these summits are not going to change. We are all going to die because of this.
The only people that might live are hunter/gatherer peoples that have not even been discovered yet.
Thomas Malthus notwithstanding, every human being now living "could" be situated in the current State of Texas, each allotted 1,500 square feet. We wouldn't even have to go to the second story.
Of course we'd displace all the cows and road runners, not to mention the sewage digesters it would be necessary to construct. But we could put a large plexiglas bubble over Texas and collect all the methane for cooking, refrigeration and heating. Where to bury all the dead? A high-rise mausoleum at the Crawford crossroads.
Neither the Pope nor the Catholic reproduction rules is the problem. Self-righteous greed among the haves and the have-mores is.
When thousands of pigs are crammed into the population densities you just named, pigs get sick and need antibiotics to prevent death. Similarly, you cannot stuff 6 billion people into land the size of Texas, because there's no way to supply clean water, food, and air.
You're right in saying reproduction isn't the main problem. Consumption, mostly in the First World, is. The Third World has at least a few billion people (or at least 10x the US population), but most are so poor they barely consume far less than 1/10th the energy used in the US per capita.
Pigs with 1,500 square feet of pasture? That's not dense population. It's so much space that each pig would smile all day. Watch _Food, Inc._
Water, food, and air are for the consumption end only. It's the other end that worries me a little.
George Monbiot wrote a great article on just this point on 10/5/09. It's on his Z-space page under "Strain on Resources". He documents (with a lot of humor too) just how much fossil fuel the rich can get through in a very short time.
..."The only thing to do," he said, "is to work with a coalition of smaller governments and isolate the United States entirely. That is what we did to stop apartheid. Then, eventually, the United States will have to come along."
This might work. But it happens every day right in front of each of us---that is the time to walk around the status quo---each time you reach for your wallet.
Well said. Hit the bastards in their wallets.
Poverty for Wall Street! Now that's change I could rejoice in.