What if instead of asking, what temperature rise, and CO2 slowdown rate, can the world's capitalist economies endure, you asked, what hard cap on temperature increase would minimize human suffering? You might get an answer like Evo Morales's:
Bolivian President Evo Morales called on the world leaders to raise their ambitions radically and hold temperature increases over the next century to just 1C. In the most ambitious statement yet made at the climate summit, Morales demanded rich countries pay climate change reparations and proposed an international climate court of justice to prosecute countries for climate "crimes".
"Our objective is to save humanity and not just half of humanity. We are here to save mother earth. Our objective is to reduce climate change to [under] 1C. [above this] many islands will disappear and Africa will suffer a holocaust," he said. Limiting warming to 1C would need an end to all emissions and billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide to be sucked from the air and stored.
What if instead of asking, how can we slowly re-structure our economic system to as to stave off the worst of climate change, you asked, what's the name of the system that's causing climate change? You might get an answer like Hugo Chavez's:
"The total income of the 500 richest people in the world is greater than the 450m poorest living on $2 a day. We have to change direction. How long are we going to tolerate the current international economic order, and allow the hungry not to have food?
"Let's eradicate poverty and bring in climate justice. If capitalism resists we have to do battle with it. If we do not, then mankind, the greatest creation in the universe, will disappear," he said.
And what are the leaders of the world going to emerge with out of Copenhagen? Chicken-scratches on paper that they will promptly tear up. No wonder they booted Via Campesina and Friends of the Earth out of the climate summit. They're ashamed.
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Love this:
“…in those promises of capitalism, there is no solidarity or complementarity. There’s no reciprocity. So that’s why we’re trying to think about other ways of living lives and living well, not living better. Not living better. Living better is always at someone else’s expense. Living better is at the expense of destroying the environment.” –Evo Morales
Yes. If you read Spanish, the Stefanoni article takes issue with Evo’s actual policies. But rhetoric is important, too. He’s doing it to placate a big section of his base. And if that section becomes a majority, and pushes hard, rhetoric can become policy.
We are drawn to the synthesis which rhetoric can provide us with. The bird’s-eye view is especially attractive to so many leftists or progressives in the US who feel they are excluded from the overall process of policy making. When we see a head-of-state sounding rhetoric that is true, we become exhuberant and often resonate beyond a critical point of view. There is a literary quality to such as Chavez and Morales which is very appealing. However the truth of such rhetoric must strive to maintain a quantifiable correlation with the facts on the ground, which arguably is feasible only through unrelenting pressure from those on the ground-level. I read this once on a wall: “Grassroots agitation is the only hope.”
[…] reality demonstrates that time is infinite in only one possible outcome for the Universe. …Evo Says, to stop global warming, Stop Global Warming | JewbonicsWhat if instead of asking, what temperature rise, and CO2 slowdown rate, can the world’s capitalist […]