Copenhagen circus: Too much talking, doing too little

COMMENTARY

MANILA, Philippines – What shalle we do with gold?

The highly vulnerable countries like the small-island states and the Philippines are now suffering irreversible damage and irreparable injury as a result of climate change.

The crumbs that the overconsuming countries (OCCs) are dangling before the highly vulnerable countries (HVCs) as possible adaptation funds are a form of legalized bribery to the leaders of these countries to silence them in international forums.

Money poured into the HVCs, which often suffer from a lack of good governance systems, often simply find their way into wasteful projects, if not lining undesirable pockets.

Besides, what will small-island states do with all the gold in the world when they are sinking? Gold will only weigh them down, making the small islands and low-lying areas sink faster and deeper. Can the three billion people in mainland Asia who depend on the melting of the Tibetan-Himalayan ice sheets for their water drink or eat paper money?

The wise words of a native American leader more than a century ago comes to mind: “Only when we have cut down all the trees, poisoned all the rivers and killed all the fish will we suddenly realize that we cannot eat money.”

Delegates’ toxic emissions

The climate change negotiations in Copenhagen which will culminate for the year in the next six days is a circus. It is a case of too much talking and doing too little too late.

The islands are drowning, the rivers are fast drying up, and the soils are cracking from drought. Yet international negotiators talk and talk. By doing so, they increase methane emissions from their alimentary canals and the carbon dioxide emissions from the food they produce, the airplanes they take to and from Copenhagen, and all the heating and air-conditioning of their hotel rooms and conference venues.

And at the end of the conference, and after all is said and done, more is said than done. The OCCs refuse to change their overconsumptive lifestyles. They refuse to turn off the wasteful lighting that turn night into day, their heaters and air-conditioning units that run 24/7. They refuse to stop using their wasteful SUVs, or reduce their wasteful packaging and change their throw-away habits. They say they cannot do these because they do not want to disrupt their economies.

Clean Development Mechanism

Instead, they dangle a few million dollars before the low-consuming highly vulnerable countries and urge them not to copy their overconsuming lifestyles. They call it the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) which, before one even sees the first dollar, one must spend at least a hundred thousand dollars to pay for consultants and verifiers which all come from the OCCs. This is a perfect case of getting fried in our own lard. (See related story in World, Page A25.)

The low-consuming HVCs, or at least some of their leaders, are only too eager to lick the crumbs from the hands of the OCCs. Worse, formerly low-consuming countries like China, India, the Philippines and the rest of the so-called developing countries all want to copy the lifestyle of the OCCs in order to develop.

A recent study showed that if every human being in the world were to copy the lifestyle of the average American, we would need five earths to satisfy our consumption needs. Since there is only one Earth, the lifestyle of America and the other OCCs is, therefore, not the way to go.

Return to balance

The OCCs—Britain, the United States, etc.—invented the technology to bring the world to the environmental crisis that we find ourselves in. It is their moral and legal duty to do all that is necessary to return the atmospheric balance into what it was before they fouled it up, to restore the carbon dioxide content in the air to where it was in preindustrial levels.

The OCCs will say that this is not possible. If so, then let them write this into the international documents that will come out of Copenhagen or in subsequent conventions, as a record for posterity. This record will come in handy 10, 50, a hundred years from now and many generations hereafter, when descendants of the countries that will run out of water or will sink into the oceans can point to this as their principal evidence. This will serve as excellent piece of evidence of the arrogance of the OCCs in a case to be filed in court filed by our descendants against theirs for the damage and deaths that we and the rest of the world will suffer.

Faltering negotiations

In the spectrum of state relations, negotiations come before legal action. But with the climate change negotiations now faltering and failing, and with the HVCs now suffering multibillion damage and multiple deaths, it is a matter of time, a very short period of time, before they resort to legal action.

In fact, some of the top international environmental litigators are already gearing up for this eventuality. The obvious targets will be the overconsuming countries and possibly, car manufacturers, cement factories, fossil-fuel producers and coal-fired power plants.

Yes, it is a matter of time.

The author is an environmental lawyer and a 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee. He serves as legal adviser and delegate of the Federated States of Micronesia to the Montreal Protocol and to the climate change negotiations. –Tony Oposa Jr., Philippine Daily Inquirer