Wysham concluded, "So what we're saying is these are not meaningful emissions reductions. We need to have strong rule of law, whether it's in Nigeria or in the United States. And we need to make emissions reductions at home and make the transition to a clean, green economy."
Even, Thomas Friedman, who has called for this Big Race to fix our climate, has admitted that problems in many fronts exist, "The Earth Day strategy said that the biggest threat to mankind is climate change, and we as a global community have to hold hands and attack this problem with a collective global mechanism for codifying and verifying everyone's carbon-dioxide emissions and reductions and to transfer billions of dollars in clean technologies to developing countries to help them take part. " Friedman explained, "But as President Luiz Inà ¡cio Lula da Silva of Brazil told this conference, this Earth Day framework only works "if countries take responsibility to meet their targets' and if the rich nations really help the poor ones buy clean power sources."
RICH NATIONS ARE JUST NOT RACING
This failure of rich nations truly helping the poorer to obtain and develop more advanced technologies became pathetically clear in the Obama administration's recent decision this to cut environmental- and climate change aid to those nations, like Bolivia, who have not ratified the accord from Copenhagen.
However, it looks like few races are going on.
Germany, for example, in 2010-2011 has significantly cut back on its investment in alternative technologies (and environment)--and is even trying to force a malfunctioning nuclear reactor in Hessen back on line.
The unexpected cutbacks in government aid have shaken the whole German energy industry. Sure, the USA has made a great about-face under Obama, i.e. no longer denying the fact that climate change is real and no longer denying the fact that companies and Americans are concerned and have been responsible. However, this focus on bad incentives and on creating a race to the top in technology--that the U.S. might be and should be leading soon is just not clearly evolving--as of yet.
Meanwhile, back in South America, "organizers of the peoples' summit (on climate change) released an Agreement of the Peoples based on working group meetings. Key proposals include the establishment of an international tribunal to prosecute polluters, passage of a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, protection for climate migrants, and the full recognition of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples."
In late 2009, Friedman pessimistically looked at the future and the possibility of peoples of the world "ever getting riled up" enough about climate change to force their governments to do something. He wrote, "That was never going to happen at scale in the present global economic climate. The only way it might happen is if we had "a perfect storm' -- a storm big enough to finally end the global warming debate but not so big that it ended the world."
Friedman claimed, "Absent such a storm that literally parts the Red Sea again and drives home to all the doubters that catastrophic climate change is a clear and present danger, the domestic pressures in every country to avoid legally binding and verifiable carbon reductions will remain very powerful."
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, who helped organize the conference in Cochabamba this week, explains how the people of the world are tired of the Kyoto System being allowed to collapse (with no real alternative offered), "Well, this [Conference in Bolivia] is really a kind of an alternative to what happened in the plan--the failure of Copenhagen. It was the most undignifying thing that happened in Copenhagen. And it was thanks to the intuition of President Evo that something should be done, because the world was really getting sick and tired of this system, Kyoto system, getting worse and worse. And in fact, it collapsed completely in Copenhagen. So the idea is to have a summit organized basically by the people and not by the states, even though the states have been very active, some states in this case, the states from the ALBA region here. That is to say, from the states that are trying to develop an alternative here in South America--Bolivia, Ecuador, and also Venezuela and other countries that trying to get together to develop an alternative."
Most importantly, Santos pointed out, "[T]he alternative is emerging here, with some novelties, which I think the North, the Global North, is going to ignore them for a while. But just for a while, because some novelties are coming up."
These novelties include [o]ne "of the key initiatives of the climate conference in Bolivia is to come out with a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth."
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/22/bolivia_climate_conference_moves_to_establish
Santos noted how this initiative is related to other initiatives. "[O]ne of--probably the most striking one, in my view, is the Yasuni-ITT [Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini], is this project by Ecuador, according to which Ecuador is ready to leave in the ground most of the crude oil that they have in this huge national park, Yasuni-ITT, where the most--probably the most important site of biodiversity in the world at this point. They are ready to leave it in the ground, provided that the developed countries will compensate Ecuador for the half of they are going to lose for not exploring and exploiting the oil there. And Germany has already agreed to pay 50 million euros per year during thirteen years, which is the period for the exploitation of this project. So this is new. It's a non-Kyoto, a post-Kyoto type of agreement."
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