Kenya: more studies, more talk, way too little action
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Posted on November 20, 2006
Filed Under Justice, Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological hope, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
[NOTE: I am traveling and not at my usual desk. I may not be able to post daily while on the road, but will do the best I can until next week. Thanks for stopping by.]
Well, we have been following the international talks on global warming and climate change involving 189 countries meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. The talk ended over the weekend with an atrociously small amount of progress. You can read about that in this Reuters article and also here, an article from Interpress Service.
The reality is that rich countries do not want to provide adequate financial support to poor countries in general, and African countries in particular, to deal with the global warming challenge — to adapt to the changes already occurring and to provide the alternative energy technologies and measures to protect forests, etc., that would help reduce carbon emissions while still allowing appropriate development to reduce poverty levels. This can all be done with a relatively small investment.
What is the moral challenge here to rich countries, already developed, already enriched by their stranglehold on the benefits of the industrial revolution, who have produced the lion’s share of the climate altering carbon emissions, but now resist paying for the damage they have caused to poor nations throughout the world who did not create the situation from which they are now suffering?
What is required of us? What do we feel deep inside our spirits about this? And how to we get our governance bodies to do the right thing?
Frankly, I have a very hard time dealing with the fact of living in the country that is doing the most to undermine an international regimen to deal with our planetary crisis. I don’t appreciate seeing ‘my’ government doing more than any other to consign humanity to a grim and terrible future — within the generation of the young adults and children of our world.
Once again, the Bush administration refuses to take strong measures to cut emissions. Once again, as the meeting ended, world leaders were forced to say that no meaningful international action on a post-Kyoto agreement will take place until after Bush mercifully finally leaves office — meaning another 2-3 years pretty much wasted.
Meanwhile, in our domestic political scene, a new Congress will likely meet the same White House stone wall. In the Senate, the new Democratic leadership has said that they will push for carbon caps when they take control in January. Sen. Babara Boxer, a strong environmentalist, will chair the Senate’s environment committee. And already the Bush White House has said it will oppose caps.
The biggest climate change we need in this country right now is a change in the political climate around the threats posed by global warming — along with the many other severe ecological challenges we face in this generation. It will be good to have a Congress to work with in these next couple of years. What will be really difficult is cracking the stone wall in the White House. But at the very least, we should aim for this work to create the conditions for global warming, climate change, the poisoning of our atmosphere, to be front and center as we move into the next presidential election cycle.
Make your voices heard — loud, strong, and persistent!
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