Back Issue - July 2001
AFTER THE ELECTION: BUSH
Here,
in the UK, our General Election was largely a non-event, even
for the media, since New Labour were returned with very little
change, and without even having to debate many of the most
crucial issues, particularly the environment - since their
main opponents did not want to do so either. Liberal Democrats
made the environment a background theme to many of their policies
but their aspiration to be taken seriously as the main party
of opposition has not caught on with anyone else and their
stand for the environment is largely forgotten.
The
main environmental interest appears still to be President
Bush's folly on climate change.
When he first pulled the USA out of the Kyoto Agreement, at
the end of March, he tried to cast doubt on Īthe causes of,
and solutions, to global climate changeā. Now that he has
had to accept that the scientific evidence is irrefutable,
the US and other similarly thinking countries have been caught
'with their pants down' - resisting the inevitable for so
long that they have to find a scapegoat in a Treaty that they
previously accepted.
We,
in SAVE OUR WORLD, appreciate the US current position in viewing
the level of reductions required of it under the Kyoto Agreement
a seemingly impossible task. Whether it is 'just and fair'
on the US specifically we do not know, but since the previous
Administration agreed them, we take it that they knew what
they were doing. Our main complaint, as expressed in the wording
of the Petition (on the USA Petition page), is that neither
the previous nor the present Administration have shown any
intention of attempting to make any reductions. On the contrary,
it is common knowledge that a $13 publicity campaign was mounted
by the fossil fuel and car manufacturing companies, with government
acquiescence, both to discredit the science behind global
warming/climate change and to scare workers into believing
that their livelihood was at risk.
The
tragedy is, of course, that had all countries heeded the warnings
that were given in the 1970's - the Limits to Growth and Club
of Rome Reports, and started to invest in renewables then,
reinforced by legislation which would have established a healthy
market in them, the present situation need never have happened.
Now it is, and countries like the USA are still trying to
avoid taking real action. I liken it to the biblical Plagues
of Egypt stories, with God now saying: 'Have the earthlings
got the message yet or are they going to have to suffer increasingly
greater catastrophes until they do?'. The reason for NGO's
like SAVE OUR WORLD doing what we are doing is to put out
the message that the worst of the effects of climate disruption
CAN still be averted, if countries like the US stop resisting
the inevitable and make real changes.
We do not underestimate the enormity of the changes in lifestyle
at every level that is required for countries whose economies
have unwisely been based on huge investments in fossil fuels
- to the extent of establishing settlements in places like
Arizona which would be uninhabitable without total dependence
on air-conditioning with minimal insulation standards in construction.
Well, the energy systems are already collapsing and any additional
development of fossil fuels, such as President Bush proposes,
will simply build up increasingly dramatic calamity when it
comes.
His,
and Clinton's, trying to suggest that the Kyoto Agreement
favours developing countries like India appears to be another
tactic to avoid making real CO2 reductions. If you look at
the present levels of emissions on a per capita basis it is
patently absurd. Not only absurd but dishonourable, considering
the extent that developing countries are already suffering
the effects of emissions from the developed world to a far
greater extent than the developed world itself, in Honduras,
Venezuela, Mozambique, Bangladesh and even China. There have
been very well prepared proposals put to the UN for the developed
countries to contract their own emissions ahead of the developing
ones so that all countries can then converge together towards
sustainable levels of emissions.
-----------------------------------
The above views were recently written back to someone who
sent in an e-mail to us, refusing to sign the Petition and
giving his reasons that ĪThe "Kyoto Agreement' is not a fair
and just pact. I do not support the 'Kyoto Agreement' and
I will not. When a policy is proposed, with no loopholes or
EXEMPTIONS, then I will seriously consider such a policy."
Since these reasons are very similar to those being currently
expressed by Mr Bush and his representative at a Climate Change
debate at the Oxford Union here in the UK on 13 June, I have
asked the writer of the e-mail for his permission to have
our correspondence published in The Ecologist magazine - which
regularly publishes debates of this kind. No reply yet, though
I have made enquiries in principle both of The Ecologist and
The Guardian UK newspaper.
Interestingly, an article in The Guardian on 19 June proposes
the same solution to global carbon reductions given in the
quoted reply above: Contraction and Convergence by countries
around the world, as a real alternative to the Kyoto Agreement
that Mr Bush could embrace. However, it requires radical contraction
of carbon emissions by the most developed nations first -
which Mr Bush will not like.
And
as to the reference to the biblical Plagues of Egypt, which
is the subject of our letter for publication posted to our
E/Yahoo Group (found via our Links page) on 15 June under
the title of ĪBush versus the climateā, one of those plagues
- locusts, are reported to be swarming dangerously now in
both Asia and the southern United States. Now, that is tempting
providence!
Jim Scott
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