My favourite media moment at the Copenhagen climate conference came last Thursday when Evo Morales declared: “Capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity.” Bolivia’s president was being interviewed by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, heard at noon weekdays on CKDU.
Morales, speaking through a translator, described the irrational and unlimited industrialization that destroys the environment. He added that capitalism could only be overcome by ending luxury and consumerism. “So that’s why we’re trying to think about other ways of living [our] lives and living well, not living better,” he said. “Living better is always at someone else’s expense.”
I chuckled knowing that capitalism’s main defenders, Barack Obama and his little pal Harper, couldn’t do a goddamn thing to squelch Morales or the leaders of other poor nations who questioned a rampaging economic system based on fraud, ignorance and greed. All Obama and Harper could do—and they did it—was to do nothing about climate change. Both have earned the undying curses of future generations. The US Environmental Protection Agency warns, for example, of far-reaching climate change effects—everything from coastal erosion and flooding, to drought and wild fires. The Natural Resources Canada website carries similar warnings including an ominous one about the threat of serious flooding in downtown Halifax. A recent provincial report on the state of Nova Scotia’s coasts predicts an accelerating rise in sea levels over the next century of between 70 and 140 centimetres. Yes, we’ll all feel the impact of climate change. No wonder there’s such strong public support in both Canada and the US for serious climate change measures, yet Obama and Harper diddle while the world burns.
My second-favourite media moment came last Wednesday as a United Nations security guard escorted the chair of Friends of the Earth International out of the climate change conference centre. Nnimmo Bassey, sporting a well-tailored suit jacket and burgundy scarf, calmly told Amy Goodman that the UN had suddenly revoked all of his organization’s security passes. Bassey, a prominent Nigerian environmental activist, said Friends of the Earth had representatives accredited from all over the world. “And today we expected to have about 90 delegates in here, but not one has been allowed in,” he said as the security guard kept urging him to leave. “And we are here as ordinary people, grassroots mobilizers, just to speak the mind of the people that want a real climate deal in Copenhagen. But apparently our leaders want to be cocooned away, to listen only to themselves.”
As Bassey was led away, he barely had time to describe the “horrendous” effects of climate change in Nigeria. “We have ocean surges. We have desertification for the north, drought, all the evils—the oil corporations burning gas relentlessly.” The next day, Canadian journalist Naomi Klein commented that Bassey has been imprisoned because of his activism in fighting the oil companies devastating the Niger Delta. “And he has physically been kept out of this centre, even though he’s accredited,” Klein added. “And meanwhile, the oil executives are walking free in the hallways. It’s the world upside down.”
Or, maybe, it’s just the upside-down world of capitalism. Leaders of the rich, capitalist countries may wish to cocoon themselves away to discuss climate change. But that’s becoming increasingly impossible in our wired global village where most of the villagers have figured out that climate change is about a lot more than rising temperatures. It’s also about the stark divisions between rich and poor, haves and have-nots, the 1.1 billion who live on less than a dollar a day. It’s also about trade, aid and Third World debt; famine, hunger and untreated disease. It’s about violence, prisons, occupation and war; economic exploitation and profits; the heedless destruction of wildlife and forests; the loss of indigenous cultures. But most of all, climate change is about the struggle for justice.
Related Stories
This Changes Everything says change or be changed
This article appears in Dec 24-30, 2009.
Silly me, I thought this climate change issue was about cutting GHG.
Now I learn it is about all those old hobby horses dragged out by the left side of the political spectrum.
Evo Morales, pumping oil like mad and putting all the money to good use – unless he is going to shut in the Bolivian oil fields for the good of future generations of Bolivians.
Now that Shell is selling $3 billion of its Nigerian assets we can all look forward to the people of Nigeria gaining some measure of control over its oil and gas resources and using the nreveues for the good of all Nigerians.
And China was blameless?
Bruce, you are confused.
To say that “My favourite media moment at the Copenhagen climate conference came last Thursday when Evo Morales declared: “Capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity.”” and then to follow with “I chuckled knowing that capitalism’s main defenders, Barack Obama …” just shows how disconnected your are with reality.
Capitalism has been the driving force behind quality of life improvements for all people the world over for the past 250 years. It has provided real people with the framework to raise investment funds to start companies and employ others, trading productive effort for wage and driving innovation in the name of profit (monetary, social and personal)
As for Obama being capitalism’s main defender… was that when he was instituting a government takeover of the heathcare industry, the auto industry or the banking industry? Any of these show his true colours as an unashamed socialist, paying the thinist lipservice to free markets and capitalism as possible.
Do you really want to save the world? Get the government out of the economy and pushing people to consume. It is big government intervention, subsidisation and regulation that distorts Laisser Faire Capitalism into the monster that the world market has become.
BTW, how exactly does The Coast finance it’s weekly publication? Throught the use of Capitalistic methods (trading advertising space for money between willing paries for mutual advantage) or soley on donations from like minded Marxists?
The Climate Change Blame Game is getting so tired and it serves no useful purpose. We all share in the responsibility for the environmental problems our lifestyles are creating. How can I sit here and blame Obama, or blame China, when I look around my house at the countless items I have that were manufactured in China? I think that we in North America share some of the blame for China’s growing GHG emissions due to our consumption of goods produced in China. I would be interested to see what share of China’s GHG emissions come from manufacturing export products for Canadians and Americans…I am sure that it is a significant amount. Bruce, you should do some digging around for this number for your next article on climate change.
The point is, we all share in the blame, and if we are going to rely on our politicians to drive the change required to get results, we might as well just pack it in now, because no politician is going to take any steps that will curb economic growth. We saw what happened to Stephane Dion when he proposed a carbon tax during his run at Prime Minister…it’s fucking political suicide, because at the end of the day, most of us are still more concerned about our own comfort and well being than we are about the health of the global ecosystem. Stephen Harper knows this as well as anyone, and he knows that despite the backlash he may get from devoted environmentalists, they did not vote for him anyway, and his conservative base will ultimately support him if he favours economic growth.
I think that for most humans, they will only take steps to combat climate change when they are somehow directly affected by it. That is generally our human nature. We can say all the right things, but we spend more time coming up with ways to have our cake and eat it too than we do being real about things and taking action that matters. I’m not saying this to discourage people from attacking this problem, but I’m just going by what I have observed in the average person over the years. The only time in recent memory when people started driving less, taking transit more often, and investing in renewable energy, was when oil was at $140/barrel and people were being directly affected by higher energy prices. Until that happens again, we can expect continuing complacency from most citizens, corporations, and government officials.
When the whole “climate change” canard falls like a house of cards, what will these “activists” say?
Just stopping carbon from going into the atmosphere, isn’t all that needs to be done. We really need a world wide revamping of how we harvest our forests throughout the world. The loss of thousands of acres of forests a week & the carbon these plants take out of the equation isn’t helping anything. Now in Nova Scotia they’re talking about cutting all the trees, & taking the branches , the roots evreything & ‘burning them…its bloody crazyness. All the carbon tied up in branches & roots gets into the ground & stored there, now we’re goin gto burn that & put it into the atmosphere as well ! ! !
What are these Bozo’s thinking ?
THe Province is being run by bobo the chimpanzie…& I believe a real chimpanzie could do a better job !
I think Nayer has really hit the most important point here. As easy it is to blame the failure of Copenhagen on various factors, in these sorts of meetings politics and economic interests are always going to play a role.
I think it’s great to have ideological discussions, but at the same time, how much blame can we put on capitalism or Obama or China when we Nova Scotians aren’t putting enough pressure on our own provincial government to adopt the necessary mechanisms to reduce emissions by a substantial amount.
Of course Copenhagen was disappointing, and we do need protocals, agreements and commitments on a global level to keep government’s in check.
But in reality it is us who can effectively lobby our own governments and put pressure on them to make a difference, just as it is us that need to make the changes in our own behavior so that we are acting in a way that reflects how we want to be viewed by the international community, despite Stephen Harper’s inability to commit to effective emissions cuts.
I find it frustrating that this author seems like he’s using climate change, an extremely relevant and important issue, as a platform for his own ideological opinions.
I think there are a lot of great articles out there that provide good analyses on how and why Copenhagen failed, but unfortunately for The Coast, this wasn’t one of them.
Bruce just because you are in Climate Gate denial as with most people in the left are it does not explain why scientist falsify data on Global Warming and claim it to be true or was that because of Capitalism or Conservatives or the United States? I also hope you do know that Nova Scotia does get it’s oil from Venezuela and Hugo just loves when we used capitalism so he can get his petrol $$$$$ every time everyone in Nova Scotia gets their car full up.
Few of the comments so far actually address what is in the editorial. It’s clear for example, that by “capitalism” Evo Morales means large-scale, corporate capitalism. That’s why he refers to industrialization that destroys the environment.
Agribusiness is just one example of corporate capitalism. It is also a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions as well as other pollutants. An American piece, published today, discusses the implications of corporate control over food: http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/21159
Evo Morales’s references to luxury and consumerism take in both our entire economic system and individual actions within it. Overall, for example, household spending accounts for 55 percent of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product. In the U.S., it has reached a record 70 percent. These figures are contained in a recent speech by the Governor of the Bank of Canada: http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/speeches/200…
Rich countries whose economies are driven by household consumption and corporate capitalism are huge per capita users of fossil fuels. (That’s why we’re pressing ahead with the exceptionally dirty Alberta Tar Sands project.)
Finally, the issue of justice. While the rich disproportionately hog global resources, the poorest suffer. There’s simply less to go around. And thanks to decades of greenhouse gas emissions from rich, fossil-fuel burning countries, the poorest nations are already suffering from the disastrous effects of climate change. See, for example, George Monbiot’s comments during the recent Munk debates based on his personal experiences in Kenya: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/f…
Corporate capitalism, industrialization, luxury and consumption are major drivers of climate change. That is not an ideological point, it’s a factual one.
Brenda K and a few other deniers should open their ears and listen to Dr. Barber from Manitoba recently interviewed on both The National and Quirks and Quarks–link here about Arctic Slush
http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/09-10/qq…
CCGS Amundsen
This fall, Dr. David Barber and his colleagues were cruising the western Arctic Ocean in the icebreaker/research ship CCGS Amundsen to study multi-year sea ice, the kind that has formed the permanent ice cap in the Arctic for hundreds of thousands of years. They were guided by satellite observations that suggested that solid ice was present throughout this part of the Arctic. What they saw instead was something Dr. Barber says he’s never observed before – broken, slushy, decayed ice with a thin veneer of harder ice over it, which their ship pushed through as if it wasn’t there. This new kind of ice had fooled the satellites, and suggests that the permanent Arctic ice cover is in even more trouble than had been previously thought.”
You know what else is ‘factual’ about your African example being used as a ‘poor’ country suffering. IF you take the time to look most African Countries that are suffering, & that’s most of them now or in the recent past. It is because of GREED. Greed of the people who are running these countries, they rape & take as much for themselves & their immediate family/cronies as they can. With never a concern for infastructure or anything like schooling/education proper healthcare etc. for the population. One need to go no futher than to look at the Poster Child of Africa , Rhodesia in 1982…the bread basket of Africa & see what it has become at the hands of Mugabe in 20 years !
None of that has been caused by the Alberta Tar Sands ! Our greenhouse gas output has IMO nothing to do with what is going on in Somalia, Ethiopia, the Ivory Coast, Look at recent history in Rwanda, Chad, Kenya , The Democratic Republic of Congo & the list reads off almost every nation in Africa .
You sir, oversimplify the situation by trying to somehow tie the tribal troubles, the rebel armies, drug dealers, dictators & the overall greed of the so called leaders in these areas, to all this somehow being an effect of ‘global warming’, is laughable.
@Bruce Wark
“Corporate capitalism, industrialization, luxury and consumption are major drivers of climate change. That is not an ideological point, it’s a factual one.”
No! it was the lying scientists who falsity climate data that were the people behind the so called climate change to front their political agenda and here’s their emails if you want more proof
sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environme…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environme…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/envi…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/…
as I said earlier Bruce your just in Climate Gate denial since this is considered the left Watergate
I would totally love to go to a global conference where capitalism and climate change are discussed side by side! The link between the two has been the elephant in the room for way too long, and I don’t think we can solve the latter without re-thinking the former. Regardless of how much we agree or disagree with Evo Morales I think he deserves three big cheers for bringing up this issue. I have a feeling that all countries – including the oil-exporting Venezuela – would have to face their own hypocrisies if forced to have this conversation in the open. And I think we’re desperately in need of facing our own.
I’d like to comment not on the article, but on the cartoon: Whoever is paid to draw these pictures should really stop comparing Stephen Harper to Hitler. Tasteless, yes, unoriginal and tired, even more so. Try to come up with something else, will you?
According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/art…
Fimbul Expedition proves Antarctic Ice shelf not melting, water not warming. Global Warming models “wrong” again.
“We observed a roughly 50 meter deep layer of water with temperatures very close to the freezing point, about -2.05 degrees, just beneath the ice shelf. The highest observed temperature was about -1.83 degrees close to the bottom. The temperatures are very similar to temperature data collected by elephant seals in 2008 and by British Antarctic Survey using an autosub below the ice shelf in 2005.”
“Models of the ocean circulation in the area show warm deep water flowing in under the ice shelves. As this is not observed, the models are most likely wrong and should be improved.”
http://fimbul.npolar.no/en/news/current/Ny…
The Fimbul Expedition has changed file locations on thier web site.
The results from the expedition prove that Antarctic Ice Shelf is not melting. The UN IPCC recently had to admit to that it’s “finding” about Himalayan Glaciers disappearing was not a “finding” at all. They apparently used hearsay from a WWF article and never bothered to confirm anything. I assume that was because it fit so well with their fear mongering Global Warming agenda. Thanks to “deniers”, the IPCC has had to publicly confirm their Himalayan “finding” was what they now call an “error”. At about the same time we have seen new fear mongering about climate models supposedly showing that Antarctic Ice Shelves are melting due to the warming of the water underneath them.
Well the Fimbul Expedition drilled holes down to the water and took actual temperature measurements. They found that there has been “NO” increase in water temperature since at least 2005. Their finding show the climate models are wrong – no surprise there.
http://fimbul.npolar.no/en/news/archive/20…
Incase they change things again, you can use:
http://fimbul.npolar.no
A news artcle about the Fimbul Expedition can be found here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/…
World may not be warming, say scientists
In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.
It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.
“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.
The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years. …
The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.
The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.
“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.
Such warnings are supported by a study of US weather stations co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate change sceptic.
His study, which has not been peer reviewed, is illustrated with photographs of weather stations in locations where their readings are distorted by heat-generating equipment.
Some are next to air- conditioning units or are on waste treatment plants. One of the most infamous shows a weather station next to a waste incinerator.
Watts has also found examples overseas, such as the weather station at Rome airport, which catches the hot exhaust fumes emitted by taxiing jets.
In Britain, a weather station at Manchester airport was built when the surrounding land was mainly fields but is now surrounded by heat-generating buildings.
Terry Mills, professor of applied statistics and econometrics at Loughborough University, looked at the same data as the IPCC. He found that the warming trend it reported over the past 30 years or so was just as likely to be due to random fluctuations as to the impacts of greenhouse gases. Mills’s findings are to be published in Climatic Change, an environmental journal.
“The earth has gone through warming spells like these at least twice before in the last 1,000 years,” he said.
Feb 14 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/envi…
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
* Data for vital ‘hockey stick graph’ has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before – but NOT due to man-made changes
By Jonathan Petre
Last updated at 5:12 PM on 14th February 2010
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12…
Professor Phil Jones, who is at the centre of the “Climategate” affair, conceded that there has been no “statistically significant” rise in temperatures since 1995.
The admission comes as new research casts serious doubt on temperature records collected around the world and used to support the global warming theory.
Researchers said yesterday that warming recorded by weather stations was often caused by local factors rather than global change.
Feb 15 2010
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/1…