The Bulgarian police has investigated whether arson was behind last summer's fires on Vitosha Mountain, and found no one guilty, SEGA [Spasi Vitosha] reports.
Suspicion about arson have circulated since days after the fires. The fires erupted in an area seldom visited by tourists, so it was unlikely that a visitor would have lit it by mistake. But the police have now gone through material filmed from helicopters, seeing no signs of anyone at all, even though an arsonist would need quite some time to get from the spot.
This is hardly compelling evidence, but it is still worrying. Bulgaria, as the rest of the Balkans did endure an extremely hot summer due to climate change, and if this fire erupted without human interference, more fires is a likely scenario to play out in the years ahead.
Also in Sweden the last summer has been discussed this week in the public radio. It was extremely wet, which made some farmers suffer, while others saw record harvests. Again - it is not proven that climate change leads to more hurricanes, but certain that it will change rain patterns.
I think this illustrate how climate change will be a very different experience in different places. To some Europeans it will mean dangerous events like wildfires and floods, to some it will mean that some places for growing potatoes will have to be abandoned for others.
The second scenario, which is more likely for Sweden is probably a whole lot easier to live with, and would so be if we ate only potatoes. But the true impact on Sweden will come not from extreme events, but from disruptions of global supply chains in other countries.
To round off, I couldn't help but laughing at this commercial, visible next to the article in SEGA.
Santa Claus in a sun chair... the airplane exhausts say "nothing's wrong". Quite a telling picture of what climate change will look like. The irony is not lessened from the fact that the ad is for an oil company - Overgas
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
When I am writing this I am aware of three areas struck with wild fires - in the US, in Spain, and in Bulgaria. I suspect there are many more that I do not know about. And for sure, there are many more to come.
Climate change has been hotly debated for several years, and anyone who has read an article about it will know that more, and more intense, wildfires is one out of many predictable effects of a warmer atmosphere. Other predictable effects are fiercer storms, droughts and floods.
The key fact is that warm air holds more vapour than cold air. That means it will rain more seldom, but more intense when the rain falls. Some places are flooded, while others remain dry.
The key insight is that weather has always been potentially extreme. On a certain location at a certain time, there is always a potential for extreme weather. A warmer climate does no bring any new events - it simply changes the likelihood of them to occur.
But given that the world is now somewhere around 0.6 degrees warmer than it was 30 years ago, and given the immense damage caused by events like the wildfires in Colorado, it is very relevant to ask to what extent these events are due to warmer weather.
Scientists and activists who have been saying this for years of course make this connection. And you can find journalists in regional newspapers. But you will search in vain for a discussion of climate change in connection with real world events in major news outlets like CNN or NY Times.
This would make sense if CNN and NY Times rejected the idea that warmer temperatures affect the weather, but, alas, you can find several articles describing the effects of climate change on these sites.
How can an article that predicts that climate change will give more wildfires, not be referred to when wildfires do appear?
It's the politics, stupid. One could easily imagine the loathsome comments to a NY Times article about wildfires that even hinted at climate change. It would be highly controversial.
But if we let such bigotry stand in the way of discussing climate change when it happens, how could we ever manage to deal with it? Well... it is like that. We can't.
Humanity has become its own greatest enemy. We have made progress, and improved the lives of millions, but at a high price. Our progress has been economical, not spiritual. We have chosen to exploit the earth, rather than to learn to live with it. We have pursued profit up to a point where we are depleted of resources, and not only those profits but our very survival is threatened.
These words are my own, and they all ring true to me. It is not a controversial statement - it is a more or less well formulated sum up of what ecologism stand for in today's debate.
Empirical data seems to support such a vision - no other animal has ever treathened Homo Sapiens. In the first quarter of 2010, 314,7 mn mobile phones were sold, which indicates the enormous scope of economic development. In spite of this, no one would argue that art or litterature has reached a higher level of development. As for how we treat the earth, think about the river Titas in Bangladesh or deforestation in the Amazon (or are we bettering?). Where there ain't much rubber left, anymore. In stead we have to make rubber from petroleum products. I guess you haven't missed we are running out of oil? It is hard to see how we will live in a world without oil, even harder in one more than two degrees warmer, the scenario that we should get used to.
The odd thing is that writing this feels relevant. A few years ago, when I was competition-blogging about climate change, I could easily have written something like this and being praised for it. But it is an old story, and should be so even to my grandmother. Earlier today I finished a neat litte book by the Swedish writer Elin Wägner - Fred med Jorden. Where she writes exactly the same thing. The book as written during the second world war. But the same idea, clad in better words, is easy to locate also in Gandhi's or Tolstoj's writings from the late 19th century.
Isn't is strange, how we can live a hundred year under an immidate threat to our existence? It is easy to think that the ecological question is maybe not so urgent after all, if we have managed so well until now. On the other hand a friend just yesterday told me how fast he had seen the glaciers in the Alps dissapearing, and there is a lot of hands-on information about the loss of ice in the arctic and antarctic regions as well. To presume that a world without ice will be a similar word seems to contradict physics.
Well, maybe there will come out something from the Large Hadron Collider that changes all we know about physics, and explains why ecological crises do not really affect us.
Or maybe this is a political question, as much as one about science. Maybe it is about the clash of two ideologies - one seeing man as master of the universe, and the other one seeing man as a species among others. A clash that has been raging since the beginnings of industrial society.
That is almost certainly a valid description of reality. Somewhere out there there is a reality - less ice and less life, but it is interpretated through our pre-determined minds. I guess that is why we can not really discuss climate change, or environment politics - such topics are most often perceived either as political correctness or as ill-guided radicalism.
The climate in 2012
I am traveling to Bulgaria to celebrate New Year Eve and since I calculated to spend six hours traveling I got myself a copy of The Economist's The World in 2012. 24 hours later I am still traveling and so i could read it twice if I wanted.
Which I might. The Economist is one of my favorite English language publications, and I am a big fan of the way the combine insight with a great prose. This time I feel a little let down.
The 2011 I lived through was a year not so much of politics as of deep transformations. It was climate change, peak oil and #occupywallstreet. We have yet to see what comes out of that movement, and I did not expect the Economist to sympathize with a movement saying that the interest of 1% is contrary to that of 99%. But I was eager to read some analysis of the return of street politics in the western world. There was none, just a one sentence speculation that US Left wing populism might gt violent in 2012. Did they use a NYPD white shirt officer to edit the paper, or what?
Peak Oil is discussed in one article, that actually hopes that OPEC will use its influence to lower oil prices and boost global growth. Are there people at the Economist who actually believe that the current oil prices are inflated by greedy sheiks? During my 2011 countries like Saudi Arabia struggled to meet demand, and will continue to do so in 2012.
As for climate change, the treatment of the issue was disheartening. The buzz phrase was sprinkled over the text were appropriate, but in every occasion described as a political choice, e.g. what will it mean for UK politics when the government tries to curb co2 emissions?
That is a valid question, of course, but not at all what I expected from the Economist. If someone accepts climate change as a reality, it is also clear that it will have tremendous effect on all kinds of social and economical life. Floods might disrupt industries, or new crops can become profitable. An initiated analysis of how climate change will affect the global economy would be among the most relevant reading right now. How sad that the Economist fails to deliver that.
The writers seem to presume that business and politics can exist somehow independently of the physical world they exist in, something that they know very well is not true. But I guess some graphs predictions about how severe weather will affect the US economy would cause furore, and anger the papers' readership. In publishing, you give the people what the people wants.
2011 is likely to go to history as the year that the New Climate started affecting Sweden. Not only has this Christmas been one of the warmest ever - insurance costs caused by extreme weather was up 18% since last year according to the local insurance industry. A spokesman for the insurers explains that climate change will mean more extreme weather, with increased prices for insurances as a result.
The insurance industry has for a long time been the great hope of many industrialists, including me. Not because an inherent goodness - this industry is probably as controlled by greed as any other. Which is what makes insurance companies interesting - they are set to lose a lot of money from more volatile weather, and have a strict vested interest in combating climate change.
It is nice to see the Swedish insurers out of the closet - hopefully they can lend some weight to environmentalists demands for more robust climate politics. I have a secret dream that they would actually use their power and refuse to insure companies that work against them - like oil drilling companies. BP would not exist today if Deepwater Horizon had not been insured. On the other hand it is probably a very bad idea to let private companies use political power.
Nonetheless, climate change is now not only a question for environmentalists. It is a new business reality that has officially arrived in Sweden.
This year has been ripe with climate-related news. Tornadoes, torrential rains and heat waves. Today the BBC reports that the deadly heatwave that has been lingering in the US midwest is moving east, and affecting approximately 50% of the nations inhabitants. As always, some are more affected than other's.
The inhabitants of the Danish capital Copenhagen are shocked. Flash floods in the weekend unearthed the invisible urban dwellers, roads were closed, and insurance claims are the highest ever. One wish only that such extreme weather had occurred at another time.
Peak Oil has been discussed on-line for quite some time, but while you are reading this, the thing is actually happening. A number of countries dependent on oil-imports headed by the US were so worried about the effect of high pill prices on the economy that they have decided to tap their emergency oil reserve to the market in order to lower prices by political intervention. Prices have, of course, fell, and as could be predicted, another group of countries dependent on oil-exports, OPEC - Saudi Arabia are obviously infuriated. Such a development is almost sure to have geopolitical consequences, but I predict that it will not be the winner of this battle, but the country that first breaks it dependence on oil that will be the next world leader.
It is horrifying to read about the natural disasters that torment country after country. But maybe disasters like these is the only thing that can make our politicians wake up?
The arab spring and the greek crisis has brought street protest back to the TV screens. But if we don't realize the threat of climate change, democracy won't do us much good.
As it happens in democracies, events in the real world affects German politics. After being severly punished in the state elections, Merkel's liberal right governement changed its mind on nuclear power, and decided to honour the previous government's promise to close all German reactors by 2022.
It is easy to hold strong opinions about nuclear power. In spite of the fact that influential green thinkers such as James Hansen and James Lovelock both advocate nuclear power as the best/only way to maintain civilisation without fossil fuels. True as they might be, what Lovelock and Hansen are talking about is the so called fourth generation of nuclear power. These plants theoretically solve a host of the problems today's plants create. Like the waste issue - in stead of building an enrourmous pile of potentially lethal waste, these plants promise to reuse the waste as fuel, until it is not dangerous any more. Which sounds great if it works. We might have no choice but to try.
The facilities that are to be closed down in Germany are nothing like this though. They are old and problem torn. Any one who believes in nucelar power should be glad to see them closed. The industry, however seems more eager to run them as long as they are profitable before building next generation plants, which is the core of the nuclear problem. Nuclear power could maybe be safe in the hands of scientists like Lovelock and Hansen, but any CEO will treat it as just another souce of large and safe income which makes him relunctant to renew it.
The reactions in Sweden, and elsewhere in Europe, to the German U-turn is shock and fear. The major newssource Dagens Nyheter claims that the price of electricity will double if the decision is carried through. Interstingly, most people interviewed in the article does not think so, but DN chose that headline. For some reason, that is what they want readers to believe.
Let us for a moment presume that it is true. Prices on electricity will double. Everyone agrees that we need to save energy - wouldn't a drastic price hike be the best way to create energy prudence? Wouldn't it drastically increase the profitability of renewable energy?
For sure it would, and the way things look right now it would be a blessing. The Swedish energy authority forecast Sweden's energy useage to keep growing until 2030. If that happens, what chances do we have to lower co2 emissions? None. Any positive development would require a shock therapy. If the decision in Germany doubles prices in Sweden - we ought to thank he Germans for saving our future. Unfortunately, it is so much easier to whine about higher prices, than to realize what problems low prices create.
IN the real world it is unlikely that the German decision will have so drastic consequenses, and it is still far from fait accompli . Merkel's decision must first be approved in the parliament, where it will come under fierce critizism from the industry and politicians. It will be intersting to see who comes out as the winner in the end - Europe's strongest civil society or an infamous industry.
In a recent dot Earth postAndrew C Revkin discusses what is most relevant when discussing the US' most lethal tornadoes since 1932 - climate change or resilient housing? The disaster is terrifying. So far 291 people are confirmed dead.
Revkin's bottom line is this: Limiting emissions of greenhouse gases is a long-term challenge that needs to be addressed in ways that achieve results; building and living resiliently in tornado zones is a real-time imperative, with or without a push from climate change.
A telling point is that Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi were much worse hit than S:t Louis. That would suggest that it is not the tornadoes themselves that kill people, but the lack of preparation. Revkin quotes the meteorologist Mike Smith, suggesting a number of different reasons - St Louis has warning system independent of the power grid and far better shelters in form of basements.
Of course, quoting this Mike Smith is not the best idea in an article that relates to climate change. Smith does not believe in IPCC climatic projections - you can watch him make a fool of himself in this video on YouTube. Isn't it embarrassing with a meteorologist who can't tell the difference between a weather forecast and a climate projection?
But you can not accuse the man of being inconsistent. Just as he doesn't think that the 2011 tornadoes are related to climate change, he didn't think that the 2008 floods were.
It will probably take more than a couple of deaths to convince a man like Mike Smith. My post, however is about Revkin, an influential writer I have a certain amount of respect for. It is sad to see him fall in the age-old mistake of putting the question as a choice between people and planet. This particular disaster shows maybe more than any other that it is instead a choice between profit/power or planet/people.
Let's begin with the tricky question that Smith doesn't understand - the difference between climate and weather. Weather is what creates specific storms. Climate is what causes the likeliness for all kinds of weathers. In a world with 349 ppm co2 in the atmosphere storms like those ravaging Alabama are rare phenomena. In a world with 500 ppm co2 in the atmosphere they are commonplace. but there will be windy days and sunny days in both worlds.
Climate change is the obvious culprit if we see a trend of more frequent and more devastating storms (as we do), but it can not cause any specific storm. An analogy is that no one has died from an unhealthy diet. If you in spite of that think that a healthy diet can make you live longer and healthier, you have every reason to believe that climate change will lead to more storms like these, and that extreme weather events are more common now than in our grandparent's times because of their actions.
What Revkin, and Smith as well, does grasp is that the outcome of these extreme weather events does not depend on the levels of co2 in the atmosphere, but on how well prepared we are for the kind of eather these levels produce. It is ironic that a less developed economy would be better equipped than ours to withstand climate change - our global supply chains and coastal metropoles are anything but resilient. Waters are rising, and if trucks can not travel 24/7 through Europe the risk of foot shortages in a country like Sweden would be real.
Too many of those killed in these storms lived in mobile homes, or in homes not fitting to withstand a tornado. Many of them were poor. If we allow poverty to exist we expose thousand of citizens to dangerous weather. How can we make sure that that is not the case next time a twister strikes? Revkin lists a number of improvements but forgets to mention that it would take regulations and surveillance to make sure they are followed. Which might not be such an easy thing to achieve in today's political climate.
Which brings us to the heart of the matter - the real problem is not our lifestyle - it changes faster than we can think, but a corrupted political system ruled by private interests. James Hansen's book Storms of my grandchildrena> makes it very clear. A working democracy would not let oil companies hunt for oil in Canadian tar sands, neither on off shore drilling sites. In a working democracy scientists would be unhindered to communicate with politicians and public. If the facts that everybody knows were presented with the urgency of economic news, it would not be difficult to muster political support for battling climate change. After all, it is the voters' basements who will be flooded.
So how come politicians find time to hunt terrorists but not to protect its citizens? Unless we presume a conspiracy, or shameless stupidity among voters and politicians alike, the simple answer is that the political system is controlled by interests that make profits in the world as it is, and therefore have a strong incentive not tchange it. They are the one's who are presented with the true choice - either to give up their profits and their power to give the planet and people a chance to survive. Or to use their power to make as big profits as possible until the bubble bursts.
It is likely that the very same people who would oppose to any stricter regulations of co2 emissions would also be the ones to protest against stricter housing norms. Thus, creating sustainable societies in tornado-struck areas, and addressing co2 emissions demands the same thing. That some kind of democratic movement curbs the power of capital owners and dares to ignore how their bottom line is affected. I don't expect to read that on Dot Earth, though...
Finally, lets look at the question Revkin began with - is it irresponsible to write about lethal storms without mentioning climate change? My response would be that it is irresponsible not to mention the need to reduce inherent and avoidable human vulnerability to tornadoes in the crowding South, particularly in low-income regions with flimsy housing.
Why not mention both? Is it so hard to think that tornadoes are bad and they will get worse, so we must make sure that people have decent housing? Maybe because accepting the notion that has grown stronger among environmentalists - that climate change is happening now, would require for Revkin to leave his conviction that limiting emissions of greenhouse gases is a long-term challenge. Unfortunately it might already be too late, and if it is not, it is a more pressing issue than rebuilding Alabama. As if that wasn't pressing enough.
A life is a prolonged period of time spent longing for memories or fantasies. Eternity is those short interruptions when desire is directed towards the moment.
At the moment I spend most of this life longing either for Bulgaria, that I left a little more than a year ago, or longing for an idealized Swedish childhood with dizzy contours.
I spend most of today on trains, and doing this in Sweden 2011 is something that reminds me a lot more about Bulgaria than about Sweden in the late eighties/ early ninties.
The trip from Lund to Gothenburg turned out a lot more convenient than I had feared at one moment. Due to strong winds (more about this later), trains did not run on schedule from Malmö, which affects the entire southern Sweden.
My train was merely 20 minutes late, but trains have been rescheduled we stop only once between Lund and Goteborg, which means that I know no one will come asking for my seat, and I wasn't pennywise to not buy a seat reservation. My brother did, though. His train is on time, but the seat hehad booked turned out to be one for wheel chairs.
There is nothing particularly about a delayed train, or a misunderstanding about a seat reservation. Things like that happens once in a while everywhere. What gives me the feeling of being back at the balkans is that every single time I have been travelling with train in Sweden the last year, something similar has happened.
Trains replaced with buses, criminals on the train and delays. Hours of delays. My brother could add his own experiences to this list, and so could thousands of other Swedish travellers. Not only Swedish, by the way. Last week the German travel bureau Dertours announced that they will stop selling train trips in Sweden, due to the unreliable schedule. Sad news.
It is comparably comfortable to be delayed in Sweden, though. Trains and stations are warm and cosy, and nothing like a Bulgarian train. What gives you the feeling of being in the Balkans is the certainity that some kind of surprise will await you at the station. You count on the train being delayed but go there a long time in advance to be on place when the plan changes. When the train is on time, that is so uncommon, that it also counts as a surprise...
It is a tense feeling in the stomach, a heightened attention about what is happening around you. Is that train over there yours? What is that update on the screen? What did the loudspeaker just say? There can be no relaxation until you get off the train at the right destination. Brace yourself.
Could this be otherwise? Every delay usually have a pretty good explanation. Temperatures were very low this winter, and it did blow hard winds today. But when problems occur this often, there is a systematic error. A train system must be adapted to the weather being where the trains run. And while we are struggling to cope with 20th century weather, we by now know for sure that temeperatures will be more extreme and winds blow harder in a not very distant future. The weather is already more extreme than it was back in my idealised Swedish childhood but there is more to come.
The spectre of climate change poses a formidable challenge to the Swedish train infrastructure. I hope that engineers are already counting on more weather resistant trains, and that polticians are getting ready to pay. For we do need trains, in order to keep our civilisation alive without fossil fuels.
Unlike most disasters in our time, the tsunami in Japan was neither related to fake liberalism, nor to climate change. Yet it gives us a lot of food for thought, when comntemplating the world we've set to change.
Earth quakes and tsunamis have existed since before mankind existed. They are a part of this world, which is something we should bear in mind. This world is getting hotter, and when we change the temperature in the atmosphere, we do not add an unknown number of natural disasters to a tabula rasa - we add the catastrophes that we have created to the one's that were there before us.
Reading the news from Japan tonight, one might feel that latter ones are more than enough. Through climate change, we create an awesome potential of an earth quake like this, and floods like in Paktisan simultaneously. Stocks fell in the US on the news form Japan, earing that widespread destrrucion will have ramifications for the world economy. From where will we take the cash to rebuild houses after disasters like that in the future?
Writing from another highly developed country, it is in many wasy easier to relate toa disaster in Japan, than one in Pakistan, simply because the infrastructure in Japan is more like the one I live in. As climatic conditions deteriorate, the disaster we now read about in Al Jazeera, will become the new normal also in the rich world. Japan offers a glimps of what that might look like.
No country could be better prepared to cope with an earthquake, and no country have better economic means to deal with a disaster. The ease or pain with which Japan raises after this disaster will tell us a lot about our own vulnerability, and hopefully it will be a case study to learn from.
But Japan is not a typical rich country. If our economic thories were valid, Japan should be a very poor country. On both sides of the atlantic politicans have been sacrificing social welfare and democratic rights for one fundamental goal - Economic growth. Japan on the other hand have, forced by circumstances live through an entire decade without growth. Which obviously hasn't ruined the country.
That does not make Japan a perfect example of a sustainable civilisation - the country is struggling to bring down its co2 emissions, but it does prove one thing - that growth and wealth are not the same thing. Japan has no economic growth. But it does have the wealth to deal with a massive earthquake. Which is all that counts in the end.
COP 15 was a failure. Can something good come out of the COP16? meeting in Cancun in November? In Copeenhagen too much time was spent on blaming other governments, and the to the watered out Copenhagen accord
Today is eight of March. Amnesty International in Lund, where I am an active member, has highlighted domestic violence. Mainstream Swedish media try benchmarking the state of gender equality in Sweden today. I don't hesitate to call myself a feminist, but it is a tragic fact that in ten last years, feminism in Sweden has developed much faster than gender equality.
Meanwhile, women all over eastern Europe receive flowers, chocolates, restaurant visits etc. by their lovers. My humble guess is that most women feel quite comfortable with the tradition, but that does not prevent east European feminists to use this day to highlight gender politics. For example the Romanian blog Monkey monkey underpants, or the Bulgarian left wing students' organisation Priziv, asking whether 8th of March is "a day for struggle or a day for flowers".
Photo: Nationaal Archief
Maybe the struggle we actually want to win is fought with flowers. But what is the rationale behind working for gender equality? Yesterday maybe 500 people were killed in ethnic violence in Nigera. Last week an earthquake shook Chile, only months after the catastrophe in Haiti that killed 200 000 people and left a country in ruins. On top of this there is the threat of a hotter climate that will render some of the poorest countries in the world uninhabitable, and farmland into deserts. Are these not bigger issues that deserve bloggers' and activists' attention more than gender equality?
The question is rethorical, and the answer is no. For three reasons: Women are human beings and women are victims. And last but not least - female empowerment is part and parcel of saving the world.
Women are humans and as such they do have human rights. It is a shame that we still need to write such truisms in 2010, but it is a fact beyond discussion that women in many countries are denied their human rights, simply for being women. Every human has a right to education, but in Zambia, many girls go to school fearing sexual harrasment from their teachers. The fact that we know speaks good about Zambia - a government that has the courage to bring this problem up deserves respect. The Indian government vows to combat gender inequality, which is visible in "low health, education and nutritional indicators of women that have made achieving our MDGs a far cry" Times of India writes. All humans have a right to eat and to live healthy. Also Indian women. But again, acknowledging the problem is part of the solution.
Also in Europe gender inequality is manifest in lower salaries for women and domestic violence. Not to mention the criminal networks trafficing women throughout the continent. A lucurative business that requires customers in wealthy countries as well as desperate women in poor countries. No human being should live in slavery. Not even if they are destitute women.
As long as humans are being denied their rights because they are women, we need to discuss gender issues. But it does not halt there. In all the other problems, the big ones that get precious TV time, like wars and natural catastrophes, where women suffer from studpidity, greed and politics not for being women per se, but for being breadwinners in the world's poorest families. In military conflicts, more men than women take part, but no one suffers so much as female civilians - starving, fleeing and in addition being raped and abused by soldiers, or civilians in the chaos that conflicts bring.
Climate change is already affecting women harder than men, which might be the reason why less than educated men are allowed to doubt about the existance of climate change even in respectable media. Women suffer from droughts becase of their "marginalized status and dependence on local natural resources, their domestic burdens are increased, including additional work to fetch water, or to collect fuel and fodder" an IUCNreport from 8th of March 2007 states.
There is no major problem in the world today where women are not hit harder than men. Fortunately, there is also no major problem where the empowerment of women is not also part of the solution. there is no magic about this. Only the simply fact that problems are best solved by the individuals that encounter them daily. The UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro in her
opening speech of the fifty-fourth session of the Commission on the Status of Wome on 1 March highlighted the role of women's organisations in development work, and underscored: "Where women are fully represented, societies are more peaceful and stable. Standing up for women’s rights and development is standing up for the global good."
It is a great dissapoiontment, therefore, that the gap is still so wide between the UN's policy statements, and political praxis. In the new UN Climate Change financing group, a group that will hold immense power over what happens next in the global cooperation to restrain climatechange, only 1 out of 19 names is a woman's Grist writes. That is embarrasing, and potentially dangerous. We need women to come to grip with climate change, and everything else.
After the COP15 was judged a failure by the European left, right and green movement alike, one culd easily fall into despair over the possibilities to reach international policy agreements. The Copenhagen accord failed to reach an agreement on anything more substantional than a vague promise to lower co2 emissions. Especially bitter was the question about who is responsible for the current high co2 levels. Is it the rich countries, who built their wealth on fossile fuels, without knowing, or is it the developing countries who argue for their right to grow richer, while knowingthat co2 levels must down.
It could be surprising, then , that the support for the principle "The polluter pays", which clearly defines a culprit, is almost unanimous. The left loves it, because it promises to tax multinationals. The right revers it, because it is ideologically pure liberalism - if a market system is supposed to work, big companies can not be allowed to pollute, and destroy the resources of smaller, equally important entrepeneurs. Those greens who avoid leaning left or right believe in it because a system that it targets the morally bad companies, rather than private entrepeneurship as such, is both more moral, an likely a more efficient way to achieve political change.
It is a pity that it doesn't work. Or at least has worked very poorly, so far. The Guardian earlier this week published findings from a study written by Trucost for the UN, due to be published in the summer. The study that the world's top firms cause staggering $2.2tn of environmental damage. "The figure equates to 6-7% of the companies' combined turnover, or an average of one-third of their profits, though some businesses would be much harder hit than others."
According to the Guardian, the report is likely to end up in proposals to end state subsidies to industries like agriculture, energy and transport. Personally, I think the consensus about "the Polluter pays" will end the minute specific companies are targeted with claims.
There are lot of reasons to be pessimistic about the possibility to ask companies for this kind of responsibility. The political world, especially the part of it dealing with social- and environmental issues, is not void of beautiful words, or good ideas. But when it comes down to action, changing the world is a hard thing to do. These $2.2tn of environmental damage that noone takes repsonsibility is an ample illustration of this fact.
One could also get pessimistic by the fact, that taking one-third of profits from some of the worlds biggest companies would be harmful, to say the least for the word economy. As if it was not already in havoc. Just imagine the headlines in FT and the Economist, and the political response from the targeted companies.
But one could also see a hope in these numbers. Their merit is not that they work as legal claims, but that they can help educating society about the gravity of the matter. Something must change. Rather sooner than later.
I think we need a kind of truth commission, assesing how businesses have used and misused our common environment, so that we can find better ways to feed, transport and amuse ourselves. The better ways to grow food and transport people already exists, but how can we make "ecological" the only legal alternative? This must be an open and throughout discussion. But there should not be any reason to hide information about how business have been actually been done - therefore the guilt question must not be central. Criminal behavior can be forgiven, but not forgotten. What is really important is not what has been done up to now, but with what mindset the kids who are now in school will go into business fifteen years from now.
But forgivance comes with a demand - that the foul behavior is not repeated. No one should be allowed to destroy what belongs to everyone - therefore the principle about "The Polluter pays" has to be enacted with legal force in the very near future. Companies, states or individuals should face justice for environmental crimes. Some rules are simply more important than others. Environmental protection is one of those you just can not bend.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
This video was made by the blogger Jodi Bush, and is part of the Th!ink about it project. We waste unbelieveable amounts of food, plastics, whatever, and it is time to deal with it. Please help spreading this video in any way you can!
Wired has a nice post on the topic... appearantly strange light phenomena, similar to Aurora Borealis are visible over the northern hemsphere. Beautiful, and most likely man made.
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