Disintegration

by Tan Copsey

Its 22 degrees Celsius in New York in January.  The considered wisdom of the openDemocracy crowd that there is a 60% chance that this will be the hottest year on record.  Even The Simpsons know what’s going on.  The world is warming and the climate is changing.  The humanitarian, political, economic, and environmental consequences we face are both daunting and deeply disturbing.  In the face of this the only major international agreement that will go anyway to limiting climate change is itself slowly disintegrating - crippled by a combination of its own institutional inadequacies and the very real failures of individual nations to reverse the growth in emissions.  Meanwhile the man who had once preposterously styled himself a leader unthinkingly undermines the best efforts of his own government to tackle the ill effects of the aviation boom.  In the face of yet more fiddling as we face the burn, I can’t help re-raising the question – is this generation of politicians actually capable of responding to climate change?

This miserably familiar parade of failure starts in Canada where Prime Minister Stephen Harper this week conceded that Canada would not meet its Kyoto target.  Instead, he noted, it was likely Green-House-Gas emissions would grow by up to 50%.  This will leave Canada an international pariah, as its growth in emissions exceeds even those of the US.  But it’s far from alone, many other states are delaying the submission of there own official tallies of disappointment.

Striking in its absence from public discussion is what Harper’s admission means for the Kyoto Protocol.  If Canada abides by its Kyoto obligations then it will need to spend a large amount of money on hot air, buying credits from those countries that have succeeded in reducing emissions – if there are any.  Demand for carbon credits will surely only increase driving the price up even further, decreasing the likelihood that Canada, or anyone else, will actually buy them.  The flaws in the Kyoto system are again exposed for all to see.  

Despite their growth aviation emissions are not as yet incorporated within Kyoto (another flaw far from being ironed out).  Rather than chastise the industry for its failures in the fashion of some of his more junior colleagues - the solution according to Tony Blair is in fact to hope for technological quick fixes.   After all it would be ‘a bit impractical actually’ to expect people to reduce their own air travel.  Responding Blair’s insurmountably stupid comments, Greenpeace’s Emily Armistead suggested that Blair might as well be ‘holding out for cigarettes that don't cause cancer’.  She also quite accurately noted that ‘hoping for the best isn't a policy, it's a delusion."

The disconnect between the actions taken by governments and those necessary has never been more apparent.  The politics involved here are changing almost as fast as the climate itself.  Individual politicians, like Stephen Harper and Tony Blair, have shown themselves to be completely out of touch and out of place in this altered era.  The only positive to take from this situation is that with marked shifts in public opinion, politicians of this ilk are increasingly an endangered species.  As noted on Canada.com, Harper’s botched response could in fact sink his fragile government.  Whilst Blair is now completely out of touch with his own party, who are moving on, eagerly anticipating life without him.  Still it is not yet clear that those who will eventually succeed them will do any better, and unless they do it is not just this generation of politicians that will die out, but a vast swathe of humanity.