MetaMorph
Mr Todd Stern, the US special envoy on Climate Change, decided to make public certain things he just
. He announced within an hour of reaching Copenhagen, “If you care about the science -- and we do -- there's no way to solve this problem by giving the major developing countries a pass.” Is this statement fossilworthy? Should there be any debate on this?
Some newcomers [party as well as NGO] may not be aware of history. Deniers born out of ignorance should be denied celebrity status. There is a long history to the discussion we are having at Copenhagen. It is the fifteenth conference of parties, to refresh our memory. Microphones are coated with gallons of sputum. And the history of climate change is even older, more than hundred years. Remember James Watt?
Even my eleven years old son knows well that every human being in the world needs to behave properly to combat climate change. That is tautology. But negotiation is about principles and details. No one in the developing countries has ever refused to take action against climate change. But every demand for rich nations, with larger share of the blame, to take larger action has deviously turned developing countries as naysayers.
Mr Stern’s science education, late in his life, will definitely help US climate policy. We would really urge him to take a crash course in history. Or, is it too much to expect from an official working overtime to re-establish US supremacy over the atmosphere? Mr Stern, like a belligerent child, demanded that historical responsibility be abandoned. Apparently, the great emitters did not know about climate change. And hence should be let off the hook. But, what about the last 12 years? Maybe, Mr Stern along with his colleagues were busy reading news about Islamic Jehad, and Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran and more oil. Maybe, there was no time to read news about climate change or science book.
Annex 1 countries should be clear about one thing. If historical emission is out of the negotiation, there should be no talk about future emitters either. For a simple reason. The past is known, and the future is absolutely unknown.
And social organisations marketing climate solution should also go through a crash course on political history of civilisation. Money was made by colonising and undervaluing southern natural resources. That is exactly the reason for present ecological crisis. And we see the same process coming up again.
It is no wonder that all models by consultants, including revered economist Stern to mitigate the crisis, assumes no change in lifestyle and lowest cost of mitigation. By doing so, they always arrive at a solution that calls for maximum amount of action in the South. No wonder, Sterns of a feather flock together.
Also, any civil society organisation trying to erase the historical responsibility from the climate book, will be known as public enemy in the future.