The World's Fine Balance
Philippe Escande, Les Echos
What will they be thinking about in Poznan? Officially, the delegates from 190 countries must relaunch negotiations over the battle against global warming. But will they be able to get their heads around that? The Americans will be focused on their financial crisis, the Europeans on their divisions, the Indians on their deaths, the Chinese on their unemployed ... The clock has moved forward all too quickly since the previous meeting on the same subject in Bali in 2007.
The world hangs in the balance as delegates from 190 countries meet in Poznan, Poland, this week to advance the global fight against climate change. (Photo: Sergey Kuznetsov / Virtual Tourist)
Also see below:
Corruption Threatens the Carbon Market •
From now on, short-term considerations will invite themselves onto the agenda. Once again, the next six months preoccupy people more than the coming twenty years, the interval that separates us from climatic catastrophe. Therein lies the entire problem of the issue. If we don't do something today, it will be too late tomorrow. But suddenly, other - equally imperative - priorities arise. What good does it do to save the planet if only to die cured? In this sinister autumn of 2008, the world finds itself threatened by three formidable demons. Three risks that feed on each other, rule one another out and respond to one another. Economic risk, first of all, with its cortege of social misery. It makes one forget the long period of good investments and expensive energy that incited economization. The sole consolation: recessions, by slowing down economic activity, also brake greenhouse gas emissions. But is it a consolation to see the United States, India and China pollute the planet less because they are plunged in social uncertainty? Then there's political risk, a consequence of economic risk, as is the explosion of inequalities and the rise of every kind of extremism. The Bombay bloodbath is its latest expression. Finally, there's environmental risk, more distant, but palpable and capable of interacting with the two other risks to blow the planet apart. The world's fine balance, to play on the title of Indian Rohinton Mistry's great novel, rests on this fragile triangle. Hence, the anguished appeals we will hear from Poznan not to sacrifice the environment to the crisis and to the immediate gratification of cheap oil, but rather to profit from these difficulties to adopt the opposite approach, the one that will consist in orienting the economic recovery toward clean energy and reduction of social inequalities. To transform such threats into opportunities will require courage, vision and determination. Will we have enough?
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Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.
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Corruption Threatens the Carbon Market
Monday 01 December 2008
by: Herve Kempf, Le Monde
The fight against climate change has provoked the creation of a "carbon market" where a new currency is exchanged - "the right to emit CO2." Transcribed into ordinary currency, its total could reach 500 billion Euros in 2020, according to Jean-Louis Borloo, French environment minister.
But specialists are beginning to fear that these sums are exciting some people's greed. That was one of the main themes of the Thirteenth International Conference against Corruption, which ended November 2 in Athens. Festus Mogae, United Nations special envoy for climate change and former president of Botswana, deemed that the fight against climate change "opens new terrain for corruption."
In its final declaration, the conference described climate change as "the greatest problem in governance ever to confront the world." The conference considers that "significant and growing risks of corruption" exist "at every stage of the process," and warns that it is "essential that corruption not undermine the effectiveness or the support of the public in the fight against climate change."
If misappropriations of funds occur, the effect on public opinion could be devastating. The question of corruption is mentioned mezza voce by the delegates with respect to deforestation: aren't the possibilities there in countries with rather weak governance for misappropriation of funds?
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Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.