Month 11, Day 30: Hope Is A Dodo.

The New York Times reminds us not to ask for more than we’re likely to get. A man’s retch should not exceed his gasp, or something.

As the Cancun conference gets underway, we are reminded by our country’s representatives not to get our hopes up, not to set the bar too high, not to ask for more than modest increments of improvement. Since multi-party negotiations have never yielded results that exceeded expectations, it is entirely sensible for us not to anticipate much. The problem we are facing, however, is not a sensible one. It seems inherently unjust, unreasonable, and unbelievable that all of us who have benefited from the complex consumer culture of the West should suddenly find ourselves complicit in the existential threat posed by global climate change. We don’t want to melt the icecaps; we just want to keep living the way we’ve been living. Alas, the greenhouse effect is unaffected by our desire for continued convenience; what the world needs from Cancun is not a sensible treaty but an unreasonable one.

Warren Senders