Monday, December 28, 2009

The wonderful fiasco in Copenhagen

The fiasco in Copenhagen could not have been more wonderful! Now we citizens know that if there is a real serious environmental threat to our planet, be that global warming, global cooling or whatever, we cannot really trust our governments or our currently self appointed civil society representatives to take care of it. The governments because the politician’s primary wish is to be reelected and that is a short term goal that overrides any long term consideration, and the civil society organizations because it would seem that more often than not, they carry a different political agenda

And so what are we citizens to do. As I see we need first to treat the climate change threat as being a challenge to the whole human race and which means that all humans beings, all indigenous to this our planet, have the right and the obligation to share in its solution. In other words, climate change must become a global citizen’s issue.

That has implications, the first having to recognize that even though the average carbon emission varies dramatically between humans in rich and developed countries from those in poor and developing ones, the marginal damage per each new emission is the same whoever produces it.

One of the worst things we saw happening in Copenhagen was how the climate change threat was utilized to argue for global social justice, not that there is anything wrong with global social justice, but that certainly obscures the urgent objective at hand. Any transfer of climate change fighting resources from the rich to the poor, which of course must occur, should be strictly based on these resources have a greater green impact there. It is not a question of having the poor and developing countries to be able to consume their fair share of cars, but more that of creating alternatives to cars, like extensive railroad systems.

Red crushed green!