The Earth Cannot Be Saved by Hope and Billionaires

[MindMover]

Worn down by hope. That's the predicament of those who have sought to defend the earth's living systems. Every time governments meet to discuss the environmental crisis, we are told that this is the "make or break summit", on which the future of the world depends. The talks might have failed before, but this time the light of reason will descend upon the world.

'To see Obama backtracking on the commitments made by Bush the elder 20 years ago is to see the extent to which a tiny group of plutocrats has asserted its grip on policy.' Illustration by Daniel Pudles

We know it's rubbish, but we allow our hopes to be raised, only to witness 190 nations arguing through the night over the use of the subjunctive in paragraph 286. We know that at the end of this process the UN secretary general, whose job obliges him to talk nonsense in an impressive number of languages, will explain that the unresolved issues (namely all of them) will be settled at next year's summit. Yet still we hope for something better.

This week's earth summit in Rio de Janeiro is a ghost of the glad, confident meeting 20 years ago. By now, the leaders who gathered in the same city in 1992 told us, the world's environmental problems were to have been solved. But all they have generated is more meetings, which will continue until the delegates, surrounded by rising waters, have eaten the last rare dove, exquisitely presented with an olive leaf roulade. The biosphere that world leaders promised to protect is in a far worse state than it was 20 years ago. Is it not time to recognize that they have failed?

These summits have failed for the same reason that the banks have failed. Political systems that were supposed to represent everyone now return governments of millionaires, financed by and acting on behalf of billionaires. The past 20 years have been a billionaires' banquet. At the behest of corporations and the ultra-rich, governments have removed the constraining decencies – the laws and regulations – which prevent one person from destroying another. To expect governments funded and appointed by this class to protect the biosphere and defend the poor is like expecting a lion to live on gazpacho.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/19

[Speck Tater]

1. Too many words. "The World Cannot Be Saved." Period. nt

[limpyhobbler]

2. Good read.

I like that "Hope is the rope..." bit at the end.

Seriously well worth the two minutes to read it.

[Nay]

3. Several biologists I am acquainted with privately acknowledge that "it's over." There's no way,

short of some miracle device that sequesters CO2 in huge amounts, for the main CO2 problem to even begin to be addressed. And this doesn't even consider the other problems like overpopulation, destruction of water quality, destruction of fertile farmland, etc., etc.

We should have listened to the environmentalists back in the 70's, but only a few of us did; most people, in order to just have a life, had to go along with the program that was laid out for them. Now we will suffer the consequences. Or, more correctly, our children and grandchildren will.

[GliderGuider]

4. Climate scientists are saying the same thing in private.

More and more people are saying it in public as well.

When I talk about surrendering to the inevitable I often get asked, "So what's to prevent people from just giving up and partying like there's no tomorrow?"

To which my answer is, "How would that be any different from what people are already doing?"
Or if I'm feeling grumpy, "Why shouldn't they? There IS no tomorrow!"

[Nay]

6. "How would that be any different from what people are already doing?" Indeed, it would be the

exact same thing. The exact thing that we have not been successful in stopping, mainly due to the way the human mind/emotional system works.

I get grumpy, too, and say 'there is no tomorrow' as well. But not to my kid or grandkid. I feel for them, but I have long known that I was never anything but a (very) small voice in the wilderness; I am also one of those hated pessimists, so my voice was always drowned in the various tidal waves of religious/positive-thinking bullshit.

[GliderGuider]

5. "This is the government, remember, not of George W Bush but of Barack Obama."

The paranoid, petty, unilateralist sabotage of international agreements continues uninterrupted. To see Obama backtracking on the commitments made by Bush the elder 20 years ago is to see the extent to which a tiny group of plutocrats has asserted its grip on policy.

Obama has been an antelope in the lions' jaws.

[XemaSab]

7. Depressing but true

K&R

[Nihil]

8. "The emissaries of billionaires"

> You have only to see the way the United States has savaged the Earth summit's
> draft declaration to grasp the scale of this problem. The word "equitable", the
> US insists, must be cleansed from the text. So must any mention of the right
> to food, water, health, the rule of law, gender equality and women's empowerment.
> So must a clear target of preventing two degrees of global warming.
> So must a commitment to change "unsustainable consumption and production
> patterns", and to decouple economic growth from the use of natural resources.


> This is the government, remember, not of George W Bush but of Barack Obama.
> The paranoid, petty, unilateralist sabotage of international agreements continues
> uninterrupted. To see Obama backtracking on the commitments made by Bush
> the elder 20 years ago is to see the extent to which a tiny group of plutocrats
> has asserted its grip on policy.


Are we allowed to mention "not a dime's worth of difference" yet?