Year 2, Month 12, Day 7: Poopy-Heads

The Chandigarh Tribune (India) highlights the petulant attitude of the big playas:

December 2: Talks at the climate change conference have predictably bogged down over funding and over the insistence of the first world countries that emerging economies like India and China also commit to legally binding and higher reduction of carbon emission.

Countries like Japan, Canada, Russia and New Zealand have decided to back out of the Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding treaty that requires 37 developed countries to reduce amount of CO2 they released. The European Union has made it clear that it would agree to more carbon reduction only if emerging economies like China and India also undertake some form of binding cuts to bring down their gases that trap heat and make the climate warm.

Government delegates from 194 countries have gathered in Durban to agree to the next steps to combat climate change. The talks have been bogged down by disagreements on the kind of actions that need to be taken by developed and developing nations.

The big guys are all hypocritical bullies. No doubt about it. Sent December 2:

So the United States and its allies demand that developing nations agree to extensive carbon reduction protocols before they’ll start reducing their own? It is amusing to speculate as to what would happen if India or China called their bluff and pre-emptively proposed drastic cuts in greenhouse emissions.

Is anyone gullible enough to believe that the powers pulling America’s political strings would actually agree to anything that might have the slightest negative impact on their quarterly profit margins? Were India to announce its own stringent emissions regime, there can be no doubt that the developed world’s diplomats would (after a few hasty telephone calls) discover that hitherto unrevealed criteria needed to be met before the planet’s biggest polluters would sign even the most toothless and ineffectual carbon treaty.

As the temperatures rise, it is indisputable: multinational corporations are blocking the environmental initiatives upon which our collective survival may well depend.

Warren Senders