Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Nature Is Now On Her Own. World Governments Throw In the Towel On Climate Change.

 

Rio + 20 was, according to U.N. Gen-Sec Ban Moon, too important to fail yet that's exactly what it did and that's all it did - fail.

Guardian enviro-scribe, George Monbiot, calls it, "the greatest failure of collective leadership since the first world war."

"The Earth's living systems are collapsing, and the leaders of some of the most powerful nations – the United States, the UK, Germany, Russia – could not even be bothered to turn up and discuss it. Those who did attend the Earth summit in Rio last week solemnly agreed to keep stoking the destructive fires: sixteen times in their text they pledged to pursue "sustained growth" the primary cause of the biosphere's losses.

"The efforts of governments are concentrated not on defending the living Earth from destruction, but on defending the machine that is destroying it. Whenever consumer capitalism becomes snarled up by its own contradictions, governments scramble to mend the machine, to ensure – though it consumes the conditions that sustain our lives – that it runs faster than ever before."

"...The governments which allowed the Earth Summit and all such meetings to fail evince no sense of responsibility for this outcome, and appear untroubled by the thought that if a system hasn't worked for 20 years, there's something wrong with the system. They walk away, aware that there are no political penalties; that the media is as absorbed with consumerist trivia as the rest of us; that, when future generations have to struggle with the mess they have left behind, their contribution will have been forgotten."

Monbiot then gives three reasons why, absent meaningful governmental action, individuals and non-state agencies should keep up the fight.   One is to "draw out the losses over as long a period as possible" to keep as much intact as we can for our children and grandchildren.  The second is to preserve as much as we can in hope that conditions, attitudes may change.   The last is that, while we may not be able to influence global action, there remains much we can do in our own homelands - restoration, adaptation.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Much as I have tried to find some good in Rio20+, I have to agree. Most sobering was that I get Nature about 2 weeks after publication, so I was reading this past week a reasonably expert consensus on what needed to happen at the same time as the news was breaking about what did happen. The contrast pretty much agrees that the summit was an abject failure.

Particularly telling is Kent's comments about what was important was what didn't get decided (in his words bad targets and limits), which is exactly what was needed. It would be far far better to have to alter some targets and rules than to have none at all.

Deno said...

Nature Is Now On Her Own. World Governments Throw In the Towel On Climate Change.

Thank goodness this climate fraud is finaly over!

Nature will do just fine without carbon taxes and cap and trade.

Deno

The Mound of Sound said...

You see, Deno, there's the problem. When the "all clear" is being sounded, but only by the marginally literate, it's not particularly assuring. But we agree on one point, nature will indeed do just fine without carbon taxes and cap and trade. It's not nature we're talking about. Sadly, even at this point, you don't grasp that.

opit said...

Human nature, then. Meanwhile deforestation, desertification, mountaintop strip mining and on and on polluting water, destroying public water infrastructure, proliferation of pesticides and patenting of agriculture continue.
GMOs, a 12 year olds urgent warning to other kids
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0POjyTPw3c
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/07/corporate-farming.html
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/07/water-wealth-power.html
But no, the circus that has never produced results is lamented for lack of people taking it seriously.
You really have no idea.
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.ca/2012/06/27-june-ice-age-now_27.html

kootcoot said...

You got it Mound, Deno is correct, nature will be just fine. Actually nature will actually be better off once we assholes called humans finish extintifying (I maintain the right to invent words) ourselves and less greedy and stupid species can reign supreme!

Anonymous said...

Why would these people ever put out for Mother Earth. They will after all go down in history as the best that were ever born....like the very, very wonderful Bill Gates and the wonderful Koch Brothers and their ilk....oh and Mr. Harper.

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