Washington's Climate Change Wrecking Ball

To the Third World, the United States stands out as the nation resolutely blocking "any hope of stopping run away climate catastrophe.”

“By the end of the most recent round of climate talks in Bangkok (August 30 to September 5), there was no movement from developed countries to increase the level of their ambition with regard to emissions reductions – the low pledges, subject to many conditions, made in Durban, South Africa, last December remain unchanged,” wrote Chee Yoke Ling and Hilary Chiew of the Third World Network (TWN) in an article for the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) web site.

“Even as scientific evidence mounts on worsening climate change, developed countries are not willing to meet their legal obligations to make deep greenhouse gases cuts under the Kyoto Protocol,” they concluded.

Representatives of civil society organizations reacted angrily at the end of the UN climate talks in Bangkok, and said it is apparent that the 8th annual session of the Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol to be held in the Qatari capital Doha will not approve further action on climate change this decade.

“The United States government is opposed to a top-down structure under the Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment period,” said Meena Raman, legal advisor to the TWN. “The United States wants a voluntary pledging system to cut emissions that is not based on science nor based on equity.”

She added: “The United States and its allies want the UN to ‘be silent’ on issues where they haven’t yet reached agreement. To be clear that means they want the UN to be silent on solving climate change. The US is taking a wrecking ball to the climate convention and any hope of stopping run away climate catastrophe.”

The Third World is fingering the U.S. and its allies (that'd be us) with responsibility for the climate change impacts that have already begun to arrive and will ramp up substantially over the next few decades.   By tagging us with responsibility for their misfortune they're setting up at the very least a moral claim for redress, compensation.

It is at least possible, perhaps even inevitable, that the climate change grievance will become a major source of tension and conflict between the developed world (us) and the Third World.  This grievance will not only destabilize countries, perhaps entire regions, but will fuel 'poor man's warfare', that is to say terrorism, the scale of which could be considerable.

The Face of The World Environment

Rainforest Clearing - Brazil

Kite Flying in Beijing

Coal Fueled Generator in Yorkshire


River Pollution in China

Drought in Australia

These pictures, reprinted from The Guardian, tell just part of the story of what's happening to our world. Floods, droughts, crop failures, desertification, resource depletion, freshwater exhaustion, species extinction not to mention widescale pollution of the air, land and water.

Living in Canada we experience these global realities mainly through the occasional disturbing photograph. For most people in the world this is the reality of their own back yards, of their streets and cities and rivers.

Today's Globe & Mail has a moving story on the effects on the world's poor people of the doubling of grain prices over this past year. The "humanitarian" news services are running these stories every day, without exception. Around the world, more and more people can no longer afford the basic staples they see on their store shelves. That number is growing rapidly. Out of sight, out of mind? Maybe for now but not for long.

Desperate people are often angry people, especially if they can see the cause of their misery and suffering as someone else. Maybe they see you running around in your SUV as responsible for their children's hunger. A lot of these people do have some access to television even if they never could dream of having one themselves. At some point they're bound to catch a look at Western programming showing how we lead our lives, our seemingly inexhaustible abundance.

These folks already know that we rich Westerners are responsible for their climate change problems, the full effects of which they're experiencing already. Do you really think this isn't going to create a lot of hotheads seeking to avenge their people's suffering? If you don't believe that the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defence who've studied this growing problem certainly do.

Forget Islamist terrorism, that's for kids.