Caribbean Net News
By Luis Carpio
We risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance. Ruben Blades
You
will all recall how the international wholesale news outlets covered
the UN Climate Change Conference held at Bali last December. You will
also recall how many of our own talking heads, whether through inertia
or lack of information, by and large followed the script sent down by
CNN et al. And unless one digs deep into dorky “green” or
“pro-third-world” web pages, one would be reasonably forgiven for
believing that there is still serious doubt regarding climate change
and that Eastasia, Eurasia, and Oceania spent two weeks at Bali
discussing whether to aim for a X% to Y% emissions cut by whenever.
What we are not hearing is that, apart from the Fourth Assessment
Report (2007) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which
itself makes an unambiguous case for the reality of climate change,
countries have reams of other information on the effects of climate
change on development, such as the UN’s Human Development Report
(Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a divided world) or the
Global Review 2007 of the UN International Strategy for Disaster
Reduction.
Climate change is the “defining human development
issue of our generation” as it “threatens to erode human freedoms and
limit choice” and could be “the onset of major human development
reversal in our lifetime”. Increased exposure to climate-change-related
disasters, these experts insist, is holding back the efforts by the
World’s poor to improve their lot. The rural and urban poor “are on the
front line”, where even small changes can have devastating
consequences. Failure to deal with climate change today, they tell us,
will consign the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population—some 2.6
billion people—to a future of diminished opportunity.
In the
face of this and in terms of the direct interests of the developing
world, the emissions-obsessed focus by the media has divorced this
major issue from our everyday realities on the ground, blinding us to
the elements of climate change that we can and must address and robbing
us of any sense of empowerment. After all, if the people of the Wider
Caribbean were to abandon our cars and air conditioners and move into
grass huts, reducing our carbon footprint to 0, the effect on global
climate change would be at best negligible. Conversely, carbon dioxide
remains in the atmosphere for decades and oceans store heat for
centuries, so even if emissions by the usual (and some new) suspects
were to stop next year, the mercury will keep rising as the heat
trapping gases sent into the atmosphere in 2008 stay there beyond 2108.
It was thus a shame that other crucial elements of the Bali
debate were so under-reported (when at all), as some of the outcomes
are true victories for the developing world even if it may seem too
little too late. The recognition by the international community that
supporting climate change adaptation by developing countries is
necessary is a major achievement, as is the establishment of an
Adaptation Fund, whereby developing countries are eligible for funding
to assist them in meeting the costs of adaptation.
Seen
through the lens of survival, the debate on climate change ceases to be
an argument between some cartoonish robber barons with belching
smokestacks in the background and becomes a crucial, urgent,
life-affirming dialogue for the developing world.
Unfortunately,
no matter what one reads regarding Bali, we’ll never know whether the
traditional naysayers finally caved in the face of scientific data or
under political pressure. But even that is immaterial. They have their
agenda and have a good batting average defending it. What we need to do
is keep our eyes on our ball.
The views expressed are not necessarily the official views of the ACS.
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