Day 3: Too smart to fix the problem?
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 | uncategorized
9 Dec 2009
Leonie Joubert is a science writer, reporting for Independent Newspapers from the United Nations climate negotiations taking place in Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December. This is her blog-on-the-side.
Blink… blink… blink…
There’s nothing more judgemental than the winking curser on a blank computer screen when you need to put some profound scribbles down on that page. It’s not writer’s block that’s stopping the flow. Nope, it’s something a more paralysing.
It’s a profound sense of impotence in the face of a global crisis as massive as climate change. This week the climate conference heard that observed environmental change as a result of rising temperatures is happening much faster than was expected. And yet, in spite of this, and in spite of the fact that we have most of the solutions we need to begin fixing things, we can’t seem to resolve the matter… and the main reason is greed and insecurity.
Wealthy countries (mostly the US) are resisting the need to made deep emissions cuts, because they’re worried their economies will crash – but in the mean time they’re putting 80 percent of the rest of the world’s population at risk. I know, it’s not only the US, and I know that China and India are the next big emitters…. but that’s a debate for another time.
But it was pretty galling to hear a US spokesperson say, during a press conference today, that he “completely rejected the notion” that the countries that have been polluting for 250 years should carry a burden of guilt, debt or need for reparation.
“I recognise the historic role (the US) has played in putting emissions up into the atmosphere,” Todd Stern, US chief negotiator, said, “but the sense that we should bear guilt or reparation for that? We categorically reject that.”
Honestly? It’s been a long 48 hours – ridiculously demanding work hours and irregular sleep. So I’m not sure I have the emotional resilience to listen to someone say that, when, only an hour earlier, Sudanese ambassador Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, chair of the G77, pointed out that a 2°C rise in global temperatures means “certain death” for Africa.
How can such an intelligent animal, this Homo sapiens, be so stupid?
Pages
Archives
Categories
- brain (1)
- climate change (4)
- cosmology (2)
- creation (2)
- energy (1)
- evolution (2)
- for Stephen Fry (1)
- history (2)
- invasive species (1)
- Mail & Guardian column (10)
- memory (1)
- narrative journalism (1)
- politics (1)
- rational thought (7)
- science (1)
- theism (1)
- uncategorized (41)