Science experts on the environment came to Copenhagen last month, to update the projections which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published as recently as 2007. From average temperatures to deforestation, their forecasts show that the news is turning from bad to worse. The only good news, was the suggestion that the total destruction of the Greenland ice cap might be slightly more remote than we suspected. And this was disproved last Friday at the Indigenous peoples meeting on climate change in Alaska. The indigenous and First peoples of the Earth came together at the invitation of the Inuit to underline that the dire overall picture was not the product of apocalyptic occultism, but of hard research conducted with open minds and in support of the Copenhagen climate scientists research. Acid oceans, rising seas and a planet so parched that half of it ends up being uninhabitable is something deeply ingrained in the memories of the Hopi and all other First peoples and the memory of the floods and Noe’s ARK is also part of all culture’s historical and religious memory. Much like the 2500 Copenhagen scientists, the native peoples of the globe spoke vociferously about the tiping point of climate change having been surpassed. They passed their meeting declaration to the UN president of the general Assembly who attended the meetings.
Same like the Copenhagen scientific meeting, where, at the meeting’s close, its conclusions were passed to the Danish prime minister. A neat way for the scientists to signify that they have done their bit, and it now falls to the politicians to pick up the agenda. The boffins were sufficiently scared by their findings to breach the usual self-denying ordinance against discussing policy. They insisted that something big must be done urgently; even if that is accepted, though, there is still lots for statesmen and women to talk about at their own Copenhagen summit in December. Their job is to devise a replacement for the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. The task will be shaped by shifts in politics and trade as much as by changes in forecasts about the climate. Since the haggling over Kyoto, politics has evolved in ways which should expand what is possible. As Beijing starts to grapple with the damage the planet’s slow roasting will inflict, it is becoming possible at least to imagine a carbon compact that could meaningfully tie in the developing world, something off-limits at Kyoto. Equally significant is political change in America. The point here is not merely the departure from the Oval Office of a man whose instinctive sympathies were with the deniers. Important though that is, it is as well to recall that even before George Bush’s day the Clinton administration proved unable to secure the ratification of Kyoto. No, the real point is the wider collapse of the Bush brand of ultra-conservatism. There are still deniers and isolationists on Capitol Hill but, intellectually beaten and diminished in number, they may no longer be the obstacle to progress they once were. While the politics are more propitious than last time the world got round the table to discuss climate, the globalisation of economic life ensures that there is now an awful lot more to thrash out. Kyoto held countries responsible for the carbon pumped out within their own borders. That principle had the great merits of simplicity and transparency, but now that so much pollution is being churned out in the poor world to service the needs of the rich it is an approach that will no longer do. Only last year China officially knocked the US off the top spot in the CO2 league table, and yet a new study this month has established that half of the rise in its emissions are down to its manufacturing of goods for export. Morally, there can be no doubt that where the west is consuming the polluting products, the west must face the consequences. A consumption-based system would, however, be too complex for the weak global institutions that currently exist to monitor and enforce. The mismatch between economic globalisation and a political world still fragmented on national lines has just been exposed by the banking crisis. When the risk is physical as rather than financial meltdown, the stakes are higher still. Either economic integration must be complemented by stronger global governance or else the only way to save the planet will be to put globalisation into reverse. The former is the better option, but it will take leadership. If that emerges in Copenhagen, the city will go down in the history books as wonderful indeed.
The first environmental refugees started moving this moth froim their island home in the Pacific and from the Andean dry plateau to the cities of Bolivia and Chile. They are the ravens of Noe who were first released to find dry land…
Who will heed their call?
