Earth Day 2020 saw reports of less industrial pollution, less car pollution, less noise pollution, and even less litter on streets. Hell, even India reported pollution so low that blue skies were seen in some cities for the first time in over 10 years.
But all of that just raised the obvious question:
- How will mankind survive if it takes an existential pandemic to save our planet…?
Sure enough, with life returning to normal, so too are the levels of pollution. Ironically, most notable in this respect are the used personal protective equipment people used to survive the pandemic.
Meanwhile, President Biden is convening a ‘Leaders Summit on Climate’ today to mark Earth Day 2021. According to the White House Briefing Room, the main objectives of this summit are:
- Galvanizing efforts by the world’s major economies to reduce emissions during this critical decade to keep a limit to warming of 1.5 degree Celsius within reach.
- Mobilizing public and private sector finance to drive the net-zero transition and to help vulnerable countries cope with climate impacts.
- Highlighting the economic benefits of climate action, with a strong emphasis on job creation, and the importance of ensuring all communities and workers benefit from the transition to a new clean energy economy.
- Spurring transformational technologies that can help reduce emissions and adapt to climate change, while also creating enormous new economic opportunities and building the industries of the future.
- Showcasing subnational and non-state actors that are committed to green recovery and an equitable vision for limiting warming to 1.5 degree Celsius, and are working closely with national governments to advance ambition and resilience
Those are all very ambitious and commendable. The problem is that they are very similar to the objectives of the Kyoto Protocol, which President Bill Clinton signed way back in 1998, to no avail. The US Senate refused to ratify it, citing the potential damage to the economy. This, of course, is the reason every country has cited, and will likely continue to cite, for non-compliance of every climate change accord.
That’s why, like every other summit before, I fear this one will only exacerbate the climate crisis by emitting more CO2. In fact, China has already indicated that Hell will freeze over before it complies with any accord to reduce carbon emissions that impacts its economic growth.
It appears Chinese President Xi Jinping is still smarting from Western censure over China’s genocidal treatment of Uyghurs. Because, in a televised address this week, he railed against powerful countries bossing others around and meddling in their internal affairs. More to the point, he insisted that China will address the climate crisis on its own terms.
Evidently Russian President Vladimir Putin is not the only totalitarian leader who projects and gaslights … to deflect. Because China clearly has no compunction about bossing others around and meddling in their internal affairs. South Africa found this out in September 2011 when it dared to invite the Dalai Lama to attend the 80th birthday of fellow Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu. So world beware, China is not only bossy and meddlesome; it’s petty-minded too.
As for Xi’s shot across Biden’s bow on climate change, one of my favorite analogies comes to mind. Because attending a climate change summit on your own terms is rather swimming in a public pool that allows peeing only in the deep end.
The point is that, past being prologue, getting each country to ratify any agreement, to say nothing of getting each to abide by its terms, will eventually devolve into a terminal winter of pettifoggery. In fact, as it was with the Kyoto Protocol, we are witnessing this right now with the Paris Agreement, which provoked me to vent my abiding cynicism in “Paris Talks on Climate Change to Avert an Apocalypse? Hardly…,” December 2, 2015.
More to the point, the following about governments making pledges might put my take on their pledges to reduce carbon emissions into perspective:
As pledges in the wake of the Indonesian Tsunami proved, governments that rush for the limelight to make grand pledges of financial aid often hide in the shadows when it comes to honoring them.
(“Haiti’s Catastrophic Earthquake,” The iPINIONS Journal, January 14, 2010)
That said, did you happen to catch last night’s NBC Nightly News report on the “environmental degradation” the war America waged in Syria caused?
Really, what did the purportedly environmentally conscious United States think was going to happen when it began carpet bombing Syrian oil refineries in a myopic effort to deny ISIS access to oil revenues?
Well, the so-called collateral damage from the oil waste didn’t just ruin soil and vegetation as far as the eye could see, but also caused cancers the eyes couldn’t see – cancers that are now rearing their terminal heads.
Yet here is Biden about to lecture the world on environmental protection. This, after sitting by as President Obama ordered an environmental tragedy that made the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill he condemned so self-righteously look like spilled milk. Imperial hypocrisy like this only hints at why the developing world rolls its collective eye when America talks about environmental protection.
Ultimately, though, we need only analogize America’s failure to combat gun violence to understand the world’s failure to combat climate change. And I can do this with five points:
- Everyone bemoans it as an existential crisis;
- Those seriously engaged in the fight keep sounding alarm whenever a new tragedy reminds us of this crisis;
- Everyone knows what measures need to be taken to avert the crisis;
- Far too many politicians are more vested in the short-term economic benefits of doing nothing than in the long-term environmental benefits of implementing change; and
- Just as mass shootings and gun crimes have not moved America to take combating gun violence seriously, oil spills and nuclear accidents have not moved the world to take combating climate change seriously either.
And so we await our doom, which might come suddenly from gun violence or slowly from climate change.
Related commentaries:
Earth Day 2020… Dalai Lama… Syria… masturbatory Bombing of ISIS… government pledges…