Year 3, Month 5, Day 28: We Don’t Deserve The White Hats

As usual, we’re the bad guys in this picture.

NEW DELHI: On the second day of the Bonn climate change negotiations, the US, the EU and other developed countries tried to stall discussions on whether the rich countries had met their obligations on reducing emissions and financing the poor countries. Many developed countries pushed for talks to take place only on a new single legal treaty that would wipe out all past and existing obligations.

The talks got stalled with developed countries opposing adoption of the agenda, which requires pending issues from the Bali Action Plan of 2009 to be addressed before negotiations on this parallel channel come to end this year. Under the Bali Action Plan, the developed countries, including the US, are required to increase their ambition levels to cut emissions.

It took me forever to find an article that catalyzed a letter today. Sent May 18:

There seems to be no impulse more powerful than the profit motive. Why else should the world’s richest nations continually hinder any move toward a sane international policy on global climate change? As multinational corporations take advantage of legal loopholes to exert ever more control over the political systems of the industrialized West, the notion that governments exist for the benefit of the governed seems increasingly naive.

As the climate crisis unfolds, we see a grotesque irony. Whether it’s actual obliteration in the form of rising ocean levels or the decimation of population from extreme weather disasters, there is no denying that the countries contributing the least to the rapidly accelerating greenhouse effect are the ones sacrificing the most. Meanwhile, the world’s biggest polluters continue blocking progress toward a robust international policy on climate change. Apparently “sustainability” is apparently only desirable when it applies to their astronomical profit margins.

Warren Senders