Environment

Leaders of the rich world are enacting a giant fraud

by Maireid Sullivan | December 10, 2009 at 05:33 pm

175 views | 24 Recommendations | 9 comments

"The last generation of humans went to the moon. This generation of humans needs to decide if it wants to stay alive on planet Earth." Mohamed Nasheed, President of the drowning Maldives
NOTE: I've tried several Google searches to find a photo of the sculpture referred to below, to no avail. BUT, I did find this terrific little video showing the summit from the "inside", showing glimpses of the sculpture, on GetUp.org– I didn't see any corporate logos over Australia - is that a good sign? :)

Johann Hari: Leaders of the rich world are enacting a giant fraud

Corporate lobbyists can pressure or bribe governments to rig the system in their favour

Friday, 11 December 2009

Every delegate to the Copenhagen summit is being greeted by the sight of a vast fake planet dominating the city's central square. This swirling globe is covered with corporate logos – the Coke brand is stamped over Africa, while Carlsberg appears to own Asia, and McDonald's announces "I'm loving it!" in great red letters above. "Welcome to Hopenhagen!" it cries. It is kept in the sky by endless blasts of hot air.

This plastic planet is the perfect symbol for this summit. The world is being told that this is an emergency meeting to solve the climate crisis – but here inside the Bela Centre where our leaders are gathering, you can find only a corrupt shuffling of words, designed to allow countries to wriggle out of the bare minimum necessary to prevent the unravelling of the biosphere.

Staggering across the fringes of the summit are the people who will see their countries live or die on the basis of its deliberations. Leah Wickham, a young woman from Fiji, broke down as she told the conference she will see her homeland disappear beneath the waves if we do not act now. "All the hopes of my generation rest on Copenhagen," she pleaded. Dazed Chinese and Indian NGOs explain how the Himalayan ice is rapidly vanishing and will be gone by 2035 – so the great rivers of Asia that are born there will shrivel and cease. They provide water for a quarter of humanity.

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Mohamed Nasheed, the President of the drowning Maldives, said simply: "The last generation of humans went to the moon. This generation of humans needs to decide if it wants to stay alive on planet Earth."

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Uwe Paschen

at 17:45 on December 10th, 2009

Mohamed Nasheed expresses and reflects my sentiments.Here in Japan, We have more and more bio-dynamic farmers and followers, however, by far not enough yet, to even be able to slow down the men made destruction even less to stop it and reverse it. Much more needs to be done and much faster!

Maireid Sullivan

at 18:02 on December 10th, 2009

Absolutely! agreed!

We need to prepare with the same concentration that governments show when they prepare for war!

Uwe Paschen

at 18:11 on December 10th, 2009

Now that would really make a difference. The trouble is that conducting wars is a lot easier and more entertaining then fixing the environment and clean in g up our accumulated pollution.

May sound harsh but the masses go for the games in the colosseum not for the community building work that needs to be done.

The Lions are more entertaining then the ants. Wish does not speak in our favour, we are a rather pathetic specie.

Sputnic

at 14:45 on December 11th, 2009

No, not really. The masses want peace and a decent world for their children, the rich benefit from the chaos

bettermaker (not verified)

at 20:48 on December 10th, 2009

yup, more signs of a drying earth due to global cooling. will someone go to a library and study climate change before publicly claiming to be an expert? (by the way, pollution is bad, but it doesn't cause climate change, it causes pollution)

Babel-Fish

at 02:01 on December 11th, 2009

How can learning about climate change help, there are two schools of thought by differing scientists. Seemingly you are following one of them, I tend to agree and I have studied climate change but both views.

In the tropics we are having more rain and floods where there are not normally floods the weather has become a bit different. I really believe in hedging bets and I really do not want to see pollution. What is not been mentioned here is many countries in the developing world have already started to think clean and green some for nearly a decade whilst USA has sat on its hands. Many western countries have been trying to stop pollution for more than a decade whilst USA has sat on its hands. China, India and USA are the biggest polluters there actions are more important than every body else when it comes to controlling their Greenhouse gas emissions. Well if the rest of the world join them and also applied population control 17% - 20% could get the CO2 gasses down below 350 ppb within 6 years or so.

On this argument I am someone that would like to see an hedged bet. Your argument to me how ever learned you may be is not seen as being a logic one.

Sputnic

at 14:51 on December 11th, 2009

Just as the world economy needs a boost global warming becomes not real anymore ! If, as some claim, reduced Sunspot activity causes warming, why have we had major heatwaves in years of low Sunspots ? It doesnt add up !

Rhonda J Mangus

at 01:37 on December 11th, 2009

"Corporate lobbyists can pressure or bribe governments to rig the system in their favour"

Yes they can. Thanks for this, Maireid.

Babel-Fish

at 02:08 on December 11th, 2009

The elitist George Soros that pulls democratic strings and strings in most nations of this world found that Obama would not budge, he flew to Copenhagen to try to put pressure there however that's not working. The corporates involved have had a problem since USA stated greenhouse gases are bad for citizens health instead of for the planets climate. The release of the scientist emails change a lot of plans.