Climate Change

The Irish Times asks this morning if International Agreements are the best way of addressing Climate Change. The reality is that it is the worse offenders or their surrogate offenders (China etc) that are setting the rules by which climate change will be addressed. This is a kin to asking murderers if they believe they should be convicted of murder or a lesser charge even when the evidence clearly points to murder in the first degree.

While I believe that International agreements are the best way forward the difficulty is that these agreements appear to be at the bottom of the must do list when Industrial nations are setting their targets and budgets. Particularly now when the capitalist world is crumbling on its own foundations it is unlikely that any government is going to push a green agenda, there will of course be tokenism such as here in Ireland where the green party is in coalition with Fianna Fail, however no real change. If the planet is waiting to be rescued by Brown and Cowen it is in for a long wait.

It is of course a matter of debate whether the planet is actually heading towards melt down, big business is producing intellectual mouth-piece after intellectual mouth-piece to reassure the public that the planet earth is not melting like a blob of butter on a hot pan, while short term ineffective Governments have feathered their won nest rather than put solid policies and practices in place to protect the planet. There is little value in householders having blue, brown and black bins when there is no recycling facilities available and most end up in land fill sites.

International agreements are necessary and useful but only if there are real punishments put in place to stop offenders re-offending, such as countries refusing to take products that are clearly causing pollution beyond their worth. For example nobody would argue that we don't need medical equipment even if it does cause some environmental damage, but do we need billions of plastic toys from China, most of which are being ordered by western countries who are side stepping their responsibilities by pointing the finger at China for their poor environmental record. Are we now to be subject to decades of Hot War as western countries get their unnecessary products made in China and India etc and these western countries point the finger at China and India etc as poor environmentalists.