>X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Status: > >November 29, 2000 > >How the US Torpedoed the Global Climate Talks >Bill McKibben, Grist >November 28, 2000 > >Depending on how you spin it, the collapse of the climate negotiations >in The Hague, Netherlands, could leave you confident that much progress >has been made, despairing that a Bush presidency may doom the future of >new talks, or convinced that this is simply a problem too big for human >beings to get their heads around. > >I think, though, that it really leaves us in pretty much the same >position we were in two weeks ago, before the conference began: We're >waiting on the weather. > >Exhaustive and exhausting negotiations tend to leave all involved with a >severe case of tunnel vision. Inside the mammoth meeting hall, everyone >came to believe their own hype: that they were on the verge of an >agreement that would truly change the way people used energy, and hence >kick-start the process of reducing carbon dioxide emissions into the >atmosphere. > >Indeed, the Kyoto treaty did represent a kind of triumph of implacable >bureaucratic optimism. At each potential breakdown point, someone came >up with yet another fix. After six large-scale conferences, the document >resembled one of those late-Ptolemaic maps of the universe, with a >bewildering variety of epicycles and adjustments added to somehow make >the model comport with the real world. There were Clean Development >Mechanisms to allow the rich world to purchase easy credits and to buy >off the poor world; there were Hot Air provisions and complicated >Baskets of Gases; and there were the Carbon Sinks, also known as trees, >designed to make the whole package easy on Americans. > >That is, instead of a straightforward plan to wean the world from coal >and oil and gas, there was a Rube Goldberg machine that attempted to >meet every national interest. And it might, just possibly, have worked >-- that is, it might have provided enough incentives to get the energy >industry serious about researching and developing alternative >technologies, and those technologies might have taken off so >spectacularly that they would have provided us energy junkies with the >methadone we seem to require. > >But in the end -- in the waning hours of Saturday morning -- the >Europeans decided they couldn't sell this particular contraption at >home. It was simply too easy on the Americans, who, arrogantly, had >never really believed anyone would call their bluff. The French did, and >shortly thereafter the cleaning crew arrived to cart away the tons of >thin carbon sinks known as sheets of paper that rose daily like an >ever-higher tide. > >Even if the Europeans hadn't stood tough, though, the document wouldn't >have made it through the Senate. Not with George W. Bush as president, >and not with Al Gore as president. And the reason is simple: The >American public still does not believe with the necessary passion that >climate change represents a problem serious enough to require any >compromises in our way of life. > >One of the ironies of the entire global warming debate is that America >-- chief contributor to the problem -- is geographically situated in >such a way that it will be one of the last places to feel the pain. With >the exception of Florida (take that, Katherine Harris!) and a few other >parts of the Gulf Coast, our shorelines are not especially vulnerable, >nothing like Bangladesh or the small island states or the Nile Delta. >Sure, we've had some floods and hurricanes, but we're a vast and rich >land and we recover easily, at least for now. Drought over one set of >fields is usually offset somewhere else in the grain belt. That won't >help us much when the temperature really climbs, as every computer model >now predicts, but so far the public is not scared enough to make it an >issue, something that our politicians instinctively realize. > >Europeans care -- or at least enough of them care that in a >parliamentary system they can exert sufficient pressure to move their >governments. Americans don't, not yet. > >For those of us who have been working on this issue for a decade or >more, it's sometimes hard to imagine that there could be anyone anywhere >who does not realize that the freaking earth is coming to an end. But, >of course, the guy I sat next to on the airplane home -- a perfectly >decent engineer who had voted Democratic -- greeted the news of where >I'd been with only the most casual interest. "Oh yeah, I've heard about >that," he said when I mentioned global warming. "So tell me, is that >stuff for real or not?" It's a strong indictment of the insider, >deal-making, tech-talking American environmental community -- and of the >Clinton-Gore administration, which blew a decade it could have spent >educating the citizenry. > > >The day will come when Americans will be convinced of the reality of >climate change -- probably the day after a really big hurricane. When >that day comes, we will badly need all the ideas that have been >patiently hammered out in places like The Hague. But until that day >comes, events like the collapse of these talks may be (sadly) less >momentous than they seem. > > > >Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature and Maybe One, among >other books. > > >-------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~> >eLerts >It's Easy. It's Fun. Best of All, it's Free! >http://click.egroups.com/1/9699/0/_/22961/_/975524799/ >---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> > >Knowledge is Power! >Elimination of the exploitation of man by man >http://www.egroups.com/group/pttp/ >POWER TO THE PEOPLE! > >Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Change Delivery Options: >http://www.egroups.com/mygroups > > _______________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. 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