Year 2, Month 4, Day 19: Endarkened Self-Interest…?

The Daily Nation (Kenya) runs an editorial calling on the developed world to actually do something about climate change, rather than continually playing political and rhetorical games without following through on anything.

Poor nations are demanding that developed countries agree to a legally binding greenhouse gas reduction commitment under an updated protocol.

They want the speeding up of an earlier deal reached in December, which included a Green Climate Fund to aid poor nations and to limit a rise in average world temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius.

Now some rich nations seem to have turned against such an agreement because China and the US are not part of it.

The US, the world’s biggest polluter, has never signed the Kyoto Protocol.

This standoff is most likely to continue during the climate conference in Durban, South Africa, at the end of the year, with little hope that a binding agreement will be signed.

The frequency and magnitude of climate driven disasters will intensify and can hit any part of the world.

It is time leading economies took decisive action for the long-term interest of the world.

Good luck, guys. You’ll need it. Sent April 10:

The economic and sociopolitical consequences of climate change over the next few decades are going to be severe, no matter what agreements are reached in the upcoming Durban conference. But it is emphatically the case not only that the world’s wealthiest nations are also its greatest contributors to the greenhouse effect — but that they’ve shown a grotesque unwillingness to consider any actions that might actually have a measurable impact on the planet’s future. In the United States, political progress on climate change has been effectively stalled by a group of anti-science, anti-reality demagogues whose electoral success is due to the deep pockets of their Big Oil puppetmasters. Fixated on short-term profit margins, fossil fuel industries don’t care about the future of humanity as long as they can continue to sell their products. This is, of course, the exact opposite of “enlightened self-interest.” It’s unfortunate that we can’t burn irony.

Warren Senders