Reaping the whirlwind
U.S. stance on climate control enrages world
By Deirdre
Griswold
A world summit on climate control opened in Bonn on July 16
on a somber note. Without an agreement on curbing greenhouse
gases, said the opening speakers, the world faces more severe
climate change and weather disasters.
In 1998, an international agreement was worked out in Kyoto,
Japan. While far from perfect, it did set limits on emissions,
especially by the developed industrialized countries. Ratifying
the Kyoto Protocol would roll back the release of carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the levels of 1990.
But it appears dead in the water. And it's the United States
government that killed it.
The Bush administration says it won't sign the agreement,
and that it also is against a new proposal that would provide
subsidies to poorer countries in order to help them develop
clean energy in place of fossil fuels.
George W. Bush says the Kyoto Protocol is "fatally flawed"
because it doesn't place the same restrictions on developing
countries as on highly industrialized ones like the U.S.,
which, with only 4 percent of the world's people, is
responsible for almost a quarter of the greenhouse gas
emissions. Bush has singled out China, especially, saying it is
a potential "threat" because of its large population.
This is a false argument that Bush, using his bully pulpit,
is using to cloud the issue. The People's Republic of China,
per capita, emits greenhouse gases at one-sixth the U.S. rate,
according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Furthermore, China, despite not being required to do so under
the Kyoto accords, has already moved ahead on its own to
dramatically reduce emissions.
China has made dramatic progress
An article in the June 15 New York Times reported that
"treaty obligation or not, China has already achieved a
dramatic slowing in its emissions of carbon dioxide in the last
decade, Chinese and Western energy experts say."
The article added, "In the most surprising development,
China's annual output of carbon dioxide in the last four years
of rapid economic growth has actually declined, according to
data compiled by the United States Department of Energy."
An April report from researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory in California said that "China's emissions
of carbon dioxide have shrunk by 17 percent since the
mid-1990s. Remarkably, over the same period, GDP grew by 36
percent."
The gross domestic product is the total of goods and
services produced in a country.
Despite having turned to market mechanisms to boost its
development, the Chinese government still has a great deal of
central control over its economy. The government that exercises
this control was created by a great social revolution that
developed over decades and has not been negated, even though
the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe painfully set back its socialist agenda.
The ability of China to plan its development in such a way
as to reduce the long-term negative effects of
industrialization demonstrates that the state has retained
control over planning. Another evidence of this came when the
Chinese government, after experiencing very severe flooding of
the Yangtze River in 1998, stopped all lumbering in the
upstream watershed area and coupled that with a massive
reforestation effort.
Can any capitalist government in the developing world--that
is, the countries so plundered and impoverished by colonialism
that they must do the bidding of the global imperialist banks
and corporations just to survive--devise and stick to such an
economic plan?
A capitalist government is beholden to giant corporations
that have spent billions of dollars on getting the politicians
they want in office. What would it take to get Weyerhaeuser,
for instance, to agree to stop lumbering in a vast area of this
country? Or to get Mobil Oil to stop its drilling in an
ecologically sensitive area?
In the U.S. it takes years of intense protests by committed
movements, sometimes risking life and limb, to get legislation
passed that curbs polluting corporations. Their response is
often to move their operations to poor countries where people
are so vulnerable to dying of starvation or easily preventable
contagious diseases that cancer or other pollution-caused
illnesses seem a much lesser evil.
While greenhouse gases come overwhelmingly from
industrialized countries, they most affect people in oppressed
nations with poor infrastructure and few reserves, reported the
June 29 Guardian of Britain.
Report says weather disasters
have doubled
In its annual World Disasters Report, released on June 28,
the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies say that
floods, storms, landslides and droughts, which numbered about
200 per year before 1996, rose sharply and steadily to 392 in
2000. "Recurrent disasters, from floods in Asia to drought in
the Horn of Africa, to windstorms in Latin America, are
sweeping away development gains and calling into question the
possibility of recovery," said the report.
The hardest-hit places in the world are low-lying islands.
Between 1991 and 2000, 41 percent of the 380,000 people of the
Solomon Islands in the South Pacific were killed or otherwise
affected by tropical storms.
The anti-Bush struggle, which is growing stronger all over
the world, encompasses many issues. Global warming is but one
of them. This question, however, enlightens thoughtful people
of many different social backgrounds to the role of monopoly
capitalism and how far it will go in its mad pursuit of
profits.
Bush is known as a creature of Big Oil and the richest
corporations and banks. While the polls show that the great
majority of people in the United States are aware of global
warming and support taking measures to curb it, he is flaunting
his disregard for them and the rest of the world. His cavalier
treatment of all but his cronies in the ruling class ensures
that the movement against U.S. imperialism will grow stronger
and broader in the months and years to come.
Bush is sowing the wind and will reap the whirlwind--both
literally and figuratively.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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