The Center for Public Integrity reports on a world wide frenzy of lobbying activity aimed at watering down the Climate Treaty during the climate negotiations going on now. Prospects for an agreement are receding past the Copenhagen Summit into a vague future.
Toward a Stalemate in Copenhagen
How Industry Pressures and National Agendas Dim Prospects for a Climate Treaty
By Marianne Lavelle | November 04, 2009
Around the world the story is the much same. Wherever nations have taken the first modest steps to stave off a looming environmental calamity for future generations, they’ve triggered a backlash from powers rooted in the economy of the past. Opponents of climate action may have different methods as they pressure different capitals, but the message is consistent: Be afraid that a cherished way of life may be lost. Be afraid that a better standard of living will never be had.
That is the common refrain that the proponents of watering down the Climate Treaty are using to scare politicians and populations around the globe.
This in depth report looks in a number of countries, and how interests (vested in the carbon status quo) in those countries make their voices heard in nations rich and poor.
This climate deadlock is nearly always framed as the clash between the national interests of wealthy countries that want to maintain their standard of living and the national interests of developing countries that need to lift millions out of poverty. But the arguments of the rich and poor nations actually have the same underpinning — that cheap fossil-fueled energy and other carbon-intensive activities like deforestation are keys to economic success. And all of those governments — no matter how far north or south — are feeling the pressure of the interests that have mobilized to keep this conviction alive.
Don't get the idea that the Center for Public Integrity report is all doom and gloom there are some very good ideas being proposed to overcome the biggest obstacles to arriving at an agreement, like this one from Mexico to address the needs of developing countries:
Mexico has proposed a global Green Fund to which all nations would contribute based on a formula that takes into account all the factors that have divided rich and poor nations — both historical and current emissions, both gross domestic product and population.
Please, I urge you to read the whole Center for Public Integrity report.
View the Project's Key Findings
• As a result of the forces arrayed against stricter emissions limits, no developed nation has made a firm pledge for the kind of emissions cut scientists say will be needed within the next decade to stave off catastrophic climate change.
United States
A Case of Lowered Expectations
Australia
"Brown Down" in Australia
China
A Climate Dilemma for China
The Climate Treaty raises some profound questions about human nature. Are we truly the wise creatures we like to think of ourselves as being? Or did our industrial prowess leap ahead of our more slowly evolving social structures including our governmental structures.
Nothing requiring a response this complex, with an extraordinary level of global cooperation for an abstract goal has ever been attempted by our species. Our continuing survival at or above our current population levels depends on our cooperation extending across the globe. Are we ready for that, or will we change only when our present social structures collapse, and we rebuild them in a way that adapts to the new circumstances?