| Are world leaders really serious about climate change? (Part 2) | Send to a friend |
| Sunday, 02 January 2011 08:13 |
|
The Stockholm Earth Summit, which was held in 1972, was followed, 20 years later, by the landmark UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which remains the largest world meeting ever held. It was a huge get-together of more than 100 Heads of State (including then Tanzanian President Ali Hassan Mwinyi) and tens of thousands of other participants. The focus in Rio was on how to confront the planet’s most pressing and threatening ills: global warming, poverty and underdevelopment – the three critical issues that differentiated, in a remarkable way, the Stockholm conference from the Rio summit. It is instructive to note that the latter was held against the background of the end of the Cold War, the thawing of relations between East and West, and the increased awareness of the worsening global ecological situation. The new global arrangement of power, as a result of the disappearance of one of the rival superpowers, meant two important things. One was that the world would no longer be preoccupied with the dangers of the nuclear arms race, but with the perils of atmospheric changes like the build up of greenhouse gases. And the other was that, with the easing of Cold War tensions, nations would think beyond their borders and come to a consensus on how to combat the growing environmental crises. The Rio summit was essentially founded on the logic of these two assumptions. However, if coming together seemed the easy thing for the nations to do, reaching a consensus was not. And the main reason was that the world’s major emitters of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the West were not ready to own up and bear the responsibility to prevent climate change. Instead, accusing fingers continued to be pointed at the emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of tropical forests in the developing countries, the argument being that this was the “major cause” of global warming! This is in spite of the scientific evidence, which showed that the bigger threats were the greenhouse gases emitted in the industrial countries by the burning of fossil fuels. Based on that evidence, developing countries wanted the rich countries, which emitted the bulk of the greenhouse gases and consumed a disproportionate share of the world’s natural resources, to “right the wrongs” in the climate system; bear the costs of mitigating the impact of global warming in the developing countries; and enable these poor countries to achieve sustainable development. These countries were not prepared to sacrifice their development plans to fix a problem they never created in the first place. On the other side of the equation, the rich countries were not ready to abandon their high life-styles in order to address the serious repercussions of climate change; they argued that their profligate patterns of consumption were aimed at giving their citizens a higher standard of living! It was these fundamental differences, which turned the Rio conference into a North-South wrangle, and a disastrous failure. A binding treaty to prevent climate change, which was to be the logical conclusion of the summit, did not materialize - and this for two reasons: On the one hand, the developing countries put up a united resistance against what they suspected was a conspiracy to make them pay for the rich countries’ environmental sins; they wanted a fair deal. On the other hand, the industrial countries refused to sign on to a treaty that they considered inimical to their interests. In a desperate effort to salvage the situation, the then European Community (now European Union) made a compromise proposal to cut carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. But the US, the biggest greenhouse gases emitter, adamantly refused to accede to such limits. The then Bush (senior) administration argued that such reduction in the generation of carbon dioxide would inhibit economic growth and stifle savings and investments, since it had the propensity to cause a slump in production and loss of jobs. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
Latest News
Most Read
Gallery
Comments
NEWS EDITORS are to journalism what nasty priests are to religion. Meanwhile, the UN had allowed carbon trading to trump 3rd world fresh water relief, starvation rescue and 3rd world education for just over 24 years of climate control instead of needed population control.
All of those in media should have at least tried to stop this CO2 insanity somewhere over the last 25 years of fear mongering.
RSS feed for comments to this post