The Good and Bad Guys in Climate Change

08-Dec-2003: By planets-voice.org correspondent Singy Hanyona in Milan, Italy --- There are good and bad guys in the politics of climate change; the good guys being those who do what governments don’t. The bad guys are the guys who denied the climate was changing, or said that the changes weren't anything humans could or should do anything about.
They claimed things should go on pretty much as before. You tried to convince them and others that they were wrong, and fought their efforts to block international negotiations. The Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is being held in Milan, Italy, from 1-12 December, 2003.

But some analysts say that expectations from the meeting are extremely low, given that the whole process has shifted from addressing climate change to marketing carbon emissions. “Money-making is what the meeting is mostly about, unless public pressure forces government delegates to change course”, said Teresa Perez, of the World Rainforest Movement (WRM). For instance, leading experts from industries around the world are collaborating on a telling document, describing the current Green House Gas Market, and setting some footprints to the future.
Bob Page, Chairman of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) said : “We must ensure that the individual national regimes have common building blocks and compatibility for the development of regional and later global markets”.
And David Hone, Group Climate Change Adviser for Shell International, is worried about the fragmented and complex greenhouse gas Market.
The WRM argues that many so-called experts should try to learn from the struggles being carried out by forest peoples against oil extraction and from local communities fighting against urban pollution, instead of putting forward “useless” and complicated market-oriented solutions.
“The issue itself is quite simple and so are the solutions: avoid extracting more fossil fuels from below-ground – which implies finding alternative energy sources - and stop deforestation”, said Perez of the WRM. Public pressure is however still insufficient. One reason is that climate change is presented as an extremely complicated issue belonging to experts.
Those who are and will be most affected by climate change are left entirely out of the process. To make matters worse, many NGOs participating at international climate meetings have adopted the official jargon and seem either unable or unwilling to share their knowledge with the public at large. They tell people about UNFCCC, COP, CDM, "sinks", "sources", "hot air", and few can understand a word of what they are talking about.
“If the aim is to disempower people, they are doing an excellent job”, says Perez. Perez says there is need to provide people with relevant information and analysis as a means of empowerment to counter the false solutions being promoted by governments to suit the interest of corporations. “Climate change is affecting us all and will affect future generations even more. “Life on Earth is at stake and civil society must intervene to force governments to change course”, says Perez. Climatic models predict that if the present trends of releases continue unchanged, in the year 2100 the temperature will have increased by between 1.4șC and 5.8șC. These are changes unprecedented in recorded history. The industrialized countries have been accused of having exploited and consumed more fossil fuels, forests and other resources than the South, enabling them to reach their present degree of wealth and power.
Along the way, they have placed humanity at such risk that it is in danger of succumbing. “It is only right that the major responsibility for avoiding the social, environmental and planetary crisis should fall on them”, said one UNFCC delegate, adding : “When the future catches up with us, very few people seriously doubt that the Earth's climate is changing and, that if measures are not adopted the whole of humanity will enter a period of intensified climatic imbalance”. The WRM is encouraging people to include climate change in their social and environmental agendas in order to increase pressure for making true solutions possible.
According to some analysts, what is however necessary, is that the climate issue is incorporated into the agendas of all types of organizations working on almost every imaginable issue, from human rights to biodiversity conservation, from agriculture to industrial pollution, from indigenous peoples' rights to poor urban communities.
Only when this begins to happen will the Earth and its human and non human inhabitants stand a chance of survival.