[pf] Fw: ZNet Commentary / David Cromwell / Climate Talk Fallout / Dec 8

by Jill Taylor Bussiere

08 December 2000 17:17 UTC

Apparently the Greens are responsible for the failing of the talks at The
Hague as well as the difficulties of Al Gore.  Such a powerful group, the
Greens.

> FALLOUT FROM THE CLIMATE TALKS
> By David Cromwell
>
> The planet is burning, while politicians fiddle the books. If yet more
proof
> was needed that capitalist society is rotten to the core, then just look
to
> the recently collapsed climate talks in The Hague. No agreements, paltry
or
> otherwise. Just bitter recriminations between John Prescott, Britainís
> 'macho' environment minister, and Dominique Voynet, his 'tired' French
> counterpart. Meanwhile, the US delegation managed to slouch off back home
> feeling self-righteous about making 'enormous concessions' after its
initial
> behind-the-trenches negotiating stance. The ball is now well and truly in
> the European Unionís court, so we are confidently told.
>
> Now that the smoke has cleared a little - how much is fact and how much is
> fiction? Is it really true, as Geoffrey Lean wrote in the Independent on
> Sunday, that 'business largely supports the Kyoto protocol'? Certainly not
> in the US, where the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of
> Manufacturers, representing corporate America virtually in its entirety,
> adamantly opposes any cuts at all. As David Edwards said recently, 'what
> corporate America wants, the world usually gets'.
>
> And yet, during the Hague talks, the New York Times was gamely
> (mis)informing its readers that the US team was there to save the planet.
Oh
> really? The US has 5 per cent of the world's population, but is
responsible
> for around 25 per cent of emissions of global-warming gases. Peter
Preston,
> a Guardian columnist, told his readers smugly: 'Guardian readers know this
> because the Guardian reports it'. For good measure, he then took aim at
the
> Greens and put the boot in: 'There is no pattern to the way they bring
their
> urgent message, the most urgent message of all.'
>
> But there are plenty of things even the liberal Guardian doesn't report
for
> its readers. Such as how the dice are loaded against the Greens getting
> their message across in the mass media: an industry whose systemic
corporate
> bias continues to block public understanding of the plunder of the planet
> and ways to combat it.
>
> In The Independent - like The Guardian, ostensibly a hard-hitting, probing
> left-of-centre newspaper - columnist Hamish McRae also took time out to
> attack the Greens. In a piece titled, 'You don't have to be a humourless
> eco-freak to help save the planet', he opined: 'environmental correctness
> has been pushed by a fringe group of dedicated but not necessarily very
> attractive people.' Try replacing 'economic globalisation' for
> 'environmental correctness' and see how more relevant his remark becomes.
>
> At the end of the climate talks, the tabloid Mirror led with the spat
> between Prescott and Voynet, as did most of the British papers. When
> challenged to explain why they did this, rather than focus attention on,
> say, US obstructionism at the talks, the Mirror retorted that they were
just
> 'reporting the news of the day'. In other words, the paper was acquiescing
> in government spin. This approach may allow them continued privileged
access
> to ministers and fresh 'news' leads, but it does little to serve the
public
> appetite for the truth. Shouldn't the Mirror - and the other sectors of
the
> press and broadcasting - be doing what a healthy democracy demands of its
> fourth estate: namely, bringing to account those in power? Instead, the
> usual commercial constraints, market forces and obeisance to power hold
> sway.
>
> In short, there was precious little substance to media coverage of the
> climate talks. Tony Blair's statement that Mr Prescott did an
'extraordinary
> job getting so close to an agreement' in The Hague was dutifully reported
> and amplified approvingly in comment pieces in the mainstream. But Blair's
> statement was clearly part of a damage-limitation exercise for Prescott's
> failed strategy.
>
> There was also - as ever - much media crime by omission. There was
virtually
> nothing, for example, about the corporate interests that oppose the Kyoto
> Protocol. Place this media silence against the warnings of scientists that
> the climate is already 'tainted' by industrial society and that the Kyoto
> cuts are 'meagre' in terms of stabilising climate change. Instead, the
media
> has managed to shift the emphasis in the climate debate from the deep cuts
> in emissions (60-80 per cent) that scientists have urged, to the need to
> adapt to climate change (which is, of course, also going to be necessary).
>
> While the media focused on the battle between the US and the EU over the
use
> or abuse of carbon 'sinks' such as forests, the underlying issues of
> political and corporate influence in shaping society remained unaddressed.
> In any case, why should the US have special dispensation to use forests,
> including great monocultural swathes of fast-growing trees that would
> devastate biodiversity, as carbon sinks to offset substantial cuts in
> emissions? How reliable is the science of carbon sinks, anyway? What
happens
> if forests later release their stock of carbon, if and when they burn, as
> they are more likely to do in a warming world? And how equitable is it for
a
> country with a twentieth of the world's population to usurp a quarter of
the
> global atmosphere to dump its pollution?
>
> Not at all, according to environmentalists such as Aubrey Meyer, who
> believes that the concept of equity is crucial. Under the auspices of the
> Global Commons Institute, the London-based lobbying group he helped to set
> up with friends from the Green Party, Meyer has been promoting a simple
and
> powerful concept that may yet break the deadlock of climate negotiations.
>
> What it boils down to is that everyone in the world has an equal right to
a
> share of greenhouse gas emissions. Taking as their starting point the
figure
> of 60 per cent cuts to stabilise atmospheric CO2 levels, Meyer and
> mathematician friend Tony Cooper have calculated what level of greenhouse
> gas pollution each nation should be allowed. Their eye-catching computer
> graphics illustrate past emissions and future allocation of emissions by
> country, achieving per capita equality by 2030, for example. After this
> date, emissions drop off to reach safe levels by 2100.
>
> This so-called 'contraction and convergence' in emissions has already
become
> the climate policy of China, India and the whole of Africa. It may be the
> only approach that developing countries are willing to accept. That, in
> turn, may well interest even the US, given that Congress appears unlikely
to
> ratify the Kyoto Protocol without some commitment from developing nations.
> [Whether Bush or Gore is in power will make less difference than the mass
> media would have us believe on the climate treaty, and dozens of other
> policy issues.]
>
> Meanwhile, for the British government to blame EU Green politicians for
the
> collapse of the climate talks in The Hague, while the US maintains its
> god-given right to dirty economic growth, is to be complicit in climate
> crime. Come general election time - probably next May - it will not be
> forgotten.
> David Cromwell is a climate scientist and author of the forthcoming book
> "Private Planet", to be published in 2001.