Boardman writes: "World 'leaders' hold world hostage, no release seen soon.
Maybe that sub-head is too bleak, maybe it's unjustified, maybe there is an
invisible political will to survive more than the next fiscal quarter or
election."
Activists of global anti-poverty charity Oxfam, wearing masks depicting some
of the world leaders, stage a protest ahead of the 2015 Paris Climate
Conference, known as the COP21 summit, in Paris, France, November 28, 2015.
(photo: Benoit Tessier/Reuters)
Environmental Terrorists Meet in Paris
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
03 December 15
World leaders hold world hostage, no release seen soon
Maybe that sub-head is too bleak, maybe its unjustified, maybe there is an
invisible political will to survive more than the next fiscal quarter or
election. If COP21, the UN climate conference that began November 30,
actually manages to provide some reason to believe the world will not
continue to stumble deliberately toward self-incineration, that would beat
present expectations. But even that unlikely result would be far short of
the profound changes needed to prevent the world from heating more than the
2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) already considered inevitable
and calamitous.
COP21 stands for the 21st session of the Conference of Parties of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international
treaty established in 1992 (at the Rio Earth Summit) to consider what they
could do to limit global temperature increases and the resulting climate
change, and to cope with its impacts. Like the UN, UNFCCC is dominated by
the richest and most powerful countries, whose perceived interests give
little weight to the needs of the poorest or most vulnerable countries.
That underlying structural problem of power imbalance is amplified at COP21
by sheer numbers. COP 21 has at least 36,276 registered individual
participants. Of these, 23,161 people represent 198 countries (two of which
are only observers). There are another 1,236 observer organizations,
including 36 units of the UN, 71 intergovernmental organizations, and 1,109
non-governmental organizations, altogether represented by 9,411 people. And
there are 1,366 media organizations with 3,704 registered participants. All
of them (and all of us) will have to slog through jargon and Orwellian
language which have the effect of obscuring meaning, not exposing it.
The official goal of this gathering of world leaders is: COP21, also known
as the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, will, for the first time in over 20
years of UN negotiations, aim to achieve a legally binding and universal
agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C.
COP21 is theatre of the absurd, diverting the frogs as the water boils
What passes for global leadership has already pissed away more than three
decades since climate change was identified as a clear and present danger to
life on earth. Even now the worlds leaders appear content to lounge in
their comfortable bubbles of denial of reality and conflicts of interest
that reinforce that useful denial. We live in a time when shameful leaders
almost everywhere appear to lack the capacity for shame, much less the
capacity to change their shameful behavior.
They aim to achieve a legally binding agreement on climate? If they wanted a
legally binding agreement, or even an agreement that worked, they would have
had one long since.
They aim to achieve a universal agreement on climate? They dont need a
universal agreement on climate, they need only to agree among the powerful
few and the agreement would then be universal.
Those making a globe-saving agreement unlikely, if not impossible, are the
ones who brought the globe to the climate brink in the first place. These
are the governments that have for decades subsidized their oil and coal
companies, whose social conscience is exemplified by Exxon. Almost 40 years
ago, in 1977, Exxon learned that carbon dioxide produced by burning oil and
gas was warming the planet and could threaten humanity. Exxon immediately
blew the whistle on sharing that information. Continuing to accept
government subsidies, Exxon poured millions of dollars into a decades-long
disinformation campaign debunking the climate change it knew to be real. In
effect, even after the government knew through other sources about global
warming, government continued to subsidize Exxons possibly criminal lies to
the government and the public. Forbes magazine defends Exxon, arguing that
Exxon was right because global warming has increased more slowly than
predicted by some.
Corporate polluters embedded in UNFCCC (go ahead, pronounce it)
Exxon and its ilk have long had a heavy hand in UN activities to address
climate change and they arewell-represented at COP21. It is not in their
interest to have the conference reach an enforceable and universal
agreement, because most of their corporate assets are oil and coal in the
ground and they cant cash in on the value of those assets without burning
them, no matter what they do to the planet.
When a society, in this case a global society, sets out to confront criminal
behavior, if theyre serious, they dont convene a conference of criminals.
Assuming that planetary destruction is at least a crime against humanity
(this is controversial in some circles) what earthly sense does it make to
have the worlds global plunderers, governmental and corporate, choose
themselves to figure out how to reduce their plunder without reducing their
profits and power?
Having absolute authority to take ameliorative steps on their own
initiative, the plunderers swamp the credulous media with claims that an
unwieldy conference with a track record of 23 years of failure is the only
possible way to find a solution to the dangers of climate change. To
emphasize that opinion, the plunderers exclude the most articulate voices
against plunder from their conference. Those are the lucky ones. The less
lucky are deposed by military coup and jailed, while the US is quick to
recognize the coup government of the Maldives as it promptly issues offshore
oil leases, showing their willingness to see their own people drown sooner
or later. Like the Marshall Islands (under US protection), the Maldives
are a looming test case of whether the world prefers long term humanity over
short term profit.
The Marshall Islands were the subject of a long, lavishly illustrated page
one piece in the December 2 New York Times fatalistically headlined Pacific
Island Nation Struggles Against Relentless Rising Sea (and worse online:
The Marshall Islands Are Disappearing). The story is strangely
disconnected from COP21, as if assuming theres nothing that can be done to
save the Marshall Islands. The Times even characterizes foreign minister
Tony A. deBrum as somewhat unconcerned with saving his country:
Mr. deBrums focus is squarely on the Wests wallets recouping loss and
damage, in negotiators parlance, for the destruction wrought by the rich
nations industrial might on the global environment. Many other low-lying
nations are just as threatened by rising seas.
But the Marshall Islands
holds an important card: Under a 1986 compact, the roughly 70,000 residents
of the Marshalls, because of their long military ties to Washington, are
free to emigrate to the United States, a pass that will become more enticing
as the water rises on the islands shores.
Speaking, as it typically does, in the voice of the plundering class, the
Times frames the destruction of a sovereign nation in terms of issues that
matter to the plunderers: they want our money, and they want to come here
the horror. But the full moral squalor of the Times as plunderer mouthpiece
comes later. The Times describes neighborhoods in the Marshall Islands that
already suffer periodic flooding with salt water and raw sewage, followed by
sickness and disease, fever and dysentery, in a cycle that will only repeat
more quickly as warming continues. Such health conditions would be forbidden
in the US. The Times, sounding like Marie Antoinette with the monstrous
detachment of the rich and unaffected, worries only that Marshall Islanders
could see their homes unfit for human habitation within the coming
decades.
If youre not at the table, youre on the menu
The plunderers also ban peaceful protest against plundering, using the
terrorism threat as an excuse to prevent protest against the eco-terrorism
of the plunderers. When the plunderers gag on free speech is met with
non-violent protest, the plunderers police respond with a violent put down
and 200 arrests. This is Paris now. The local police state also used the
terrorism smear to raid the homes of climate change activists, putting
them in house arrest without charges. French President François Hollande, a
head of a leading plunderer state, lied about the police actions this way:
This is why these protests are not authorized. We knew there would be
troublemakers, who by the way have nothing to do with climate activists, or
those who want the conference to succeed, and who are there only to create
problems. Thats why they were put under house arrest. And its doubly
unfortunate, Id even say scandalous, Place de la Republique, where there
are all these flowers and also candles placed in memory of those who were
killed by the bullets of terrorists.
While Hollandes first remarks are commonly dishonest, unprovable smears of
unnamed and uncharged citizens, his last remark is a callous, demagogic lie.
Video of the police attack shows that the memorial at the Place de la
Republique was protected by the protesters and trashed by the police.
As with past UN climate meetings, peaceful protesters have been kept away
from the eyes and ears of registered participants. What does it say about
the participants arguments about climate change to see that they need
police to protect them from counter-arguments? As one protester said,
commenting on their exclusion from any meaningful part in the process: If
youre not at the table, you are on the menu. So, we want to be at the
table.
Do the people at the table care what happens after theyre dead?
If the people at the table actually thought and felt in global terms, if
they actually thought and felt in generational terms, they could not
possibly act as they do, fecklessly, ineffectively, self-servingly and
soullessly. Their terrorism is magnitudes larger than the terrorism they
pretend to protect us against with their creeping totalitarian controls.
If it were otherwise, there would not be so many casualties among climate
change action advocates. Another such excluded expert is Pablo Solon, a
former chief negotiator for Bolivia, now denied a seat at the table. He went
to Paris to protest against the scripted charade of COP21, where there is no
negotiation of unenforceable national promises to reduce emissions. Perhaps
the conference would be better named COP-OUT21, if Solon is right:
There is an official document from the UNFCCC that says,
we are going to be
increasing the temperature between 2.7 to 3.9 degrees Celsius
. And now to
be speaking about [global warming of] four degrees or five degrees Celsius
is, to put it in other terms, to burn the planet. So the Paris agreement is
an agreement that will see the planet burn.
For that prediction to be wrong, our global leaders need to change their
behavior in radical ways that they have so far shown every intention of
resisting. More likely Paris is another sham. Its as if a ship captain with
a vessel taking on water demands that the crew bail faster, and viciously
punishes anyone trying to plug the hole. Faced with the need to reverse
course to avoid calamity, the captains of our ships of state have gathered
to discuss only the possibility of slowing down, while maintaining the same
course.
50% of the worlds population, the poorer half, cause only 10% of
greenhouse gas emissions.
10% of the worlds population, the richest 10%, cause almost 50% of
greenhouse gas emissions.
The plunderers show little interest in sacrificing their wealth to save the
poor, or the planet. Among US presidential candidates so far, only Bernie
Sanders has acknowledged that climate change is the most serious national
security issue this (or any other) country faces. His campaign is predicated
on the possibility of a political revolution from below, which might allow
the possibility of US actions consistent with protecting the planet. Its
not that the ways to protect the planet are unknown or unachievable. But the
best ways to protect the planet especially keeping fossil fuels in the
ground are fundamentally unacceptable to those whose present interests are
in conflict with efforts to keep the planet from burning. And the plunderers
still control the game at the top.
________________________________________
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Activists of global anti-poverty charity Oxfam, wearing masks depicting some
of the world leaders, stage a protest ahead of the 2015 Paris Climate
Conference, known as the COP21 summit, in Paris, France, November 28, 2015.
(photo: Benoit Tessier/Reuters)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Environmental Terrorists Meet in Paris
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
03 December 15
World leaders hold world hostage, no release seen soon
aybe that sub-head is too bleak, maybe its unjustified, maybe there is an
invisible political will to survive more than the next fiscal quarter or
election. If COP21, the UN climate conference that began November 30,
actually manages to provide some reason to believe the world will not
continue to stumble deliberately toward self-incineration, that would beat
present expectations. But even that unlikely result would be far short of
the profound changes needed to prevent the world from heating more than the
2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) already considered inevitable
and calamitous.
COP21 stands for the 21st session of the Conference of Parties of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international
treaty established in 1992 (at the Rio Earth Summit) to consider what they
could do to limit global temperature increases and the resulting climate
change, and to cope with its impacts. Like the UN, UNFCCC is dominated by
the richest and most powerful countries, whose perceived interests give
little weight to the needs of the poorest or most vulnerable countries.
That underlying structural problem of power imbalance is amplified at COP21
by sheer numbers. COP 21 has at least 36,276 registered individual
participants. Of these, 23,161 people represent 198 countries (two of which
are only observers). There are another 1,236 observer organizations,
including 36 units of the UN, 71 intergovernmental organizations, and 1,109
non-governmental organizations, altogether represented by 9,411 people. And
there are 1,366 media organizations with 3,704 registered participants. All
of them (and all of us) will have to slog through jargon and Orwellian
language which have the effect of obscuring meaning, not exposing it.
The official goal of this gathering of world leaders is: COP21, also known
as the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, will, for the first time in over 20
years of UN negotiations, aim to achieve a legally binding and universal
agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C.
COP21 is theatre of the absurd, diverting the frogs as the water boils
What passes for global leadership has already pissed away more than three
decades since climate change was identified as a clear and present danger to
life on earth. Even now the worlds leaders appear content to lounge in
their comfortable bubbles of denial of reality and conflicts of interest
that reinforce that useful denial. We live in a time when shameful leaders
almost everywhere appear to lack the capacity for shame, much less the
capacity to change their shameful behavior.
They aim to achieve a legally binding agreement on climate? If they wanted a
legally binding agreement, or even an agreement that worked, they would have
had one long since.
They aim to achieve a universal agreement on climate? They dont need a
universal agreement on climate, they need only to agree among the powerful
few and the agreement would then be universal.
Those making a globe-saving agreement unlikely, if not impossible, are the
ones who brought the globe to the climate brink in the first place. These
are the governments that have for decades subsidized their oil and coal
companies, whose social conscience is exemplified by Exxon. Almost 40 years
ago, in 1977, Exxon learned that carbon dioxide produced by burning oil and
gas was warming the planet and could threaten humanity. Exxon immediately
blew the whistle on sharing that information. Continuing to accept
government subsidies, Exxon poured millions of dollars into a decades-long
disinformation campaign debunking the climate change it knew to be real. In
effect, even after the government knew through other sources about global
warming, government continued to subsidize Exxons possibly criminal lies to
the government and the public. Forbes magazine defends Exxon, arguing that
Exxon was right because global warming has increased more slowly than
predicted by some.
Corporate polluters embedded in UNFCCC (go ahead, pronounce it)
Exxon and its ilk have long had a heavy hand in UN activities to address
climate change and they arewell-represented at COP21. It is not in their
interest to have the conference reach an enforceable and universal
agreement, because most of their corporate assets are oil and coal in the
ground and they cant cash in on the value of those assets without burning
them, no matter what they do to the planet.
When a society, in this case a global society, sets out to confront criminal
behavior, if theyre serious, they dont convene a conference of criminals.
Assuming that planetary destruction is at least a crime against humanity
(this is controversial in some circles) what earthly sense does it make to
have the worlds global plunderers, governmental and corporate, choose
themselves to figure out how to reduce their plunder without reducing their
profits and power?
Having absolute authority to take ameliorative steps on their own
initiative, the plunderers swamp the credulous media with claims that an
unwieldy conference with a track record of 23 years of failure is the only
possible way to find a solution to the dangers of climate change. To
emphasize that opinion, the plunderers exclude the most articulate voices
against plunder from their conference. Those are the lucky ones. The less
lucky are deposed by military coup and jailed, while the US is quick to
recognize the coup government of the Maldives as it promptly issues offshore
oil leases, showing their willingness to see their own people drown sooner
or later. Like the Marshall Islands (under US protection), the Maldives
are a looming test case of whether the world prefers long term humanity over
short term profit.
The Marshall Islands were the subject of a long, lavishly illustrated page
one piece in the December 2 New York Times fatalistically headlined Pacific
Island Nation Struggles Against Relentless Rising Sea (and worse online:
The Marshall Islands Are Disappearing). The story is strangely
disconnected from COP21, as if assuming theres nothing that can be done to
save the Marshall Islands. The Times even characterizes foreign minister
Tony A. deBrum as somewhat unconcerned with saving his country:
Mr. deBrums focus is squarely on the Wests wallets recouping loss and
damage, in negotiators parlance, for the destruction wrought by the rich
nations industrial might on the global environment. Many other low-lying
nations are just as threatened by rising seas.
But the Marshall Islands
holds an important card: Under a 1986 compact, the roughly 70,000 residents
of the Marshalls, because of their long military ties to Washington, are
free to emigrate to the United States, a pass that will become more enticing
as the water rises on the islands shores.
Speaking, as it typically does, in the voice of the plundering class, the
Times frames the destruction of a sovereign nation in terms of issues that
matter to the plunderers: they want our money, and they want to come here
the horror. But the full moral squalor of the Times as plunderer mouthpiece
comes later. The Times describes neighborhoods in the Marshall Islands that
already suffer periodic flooding with salt water and raw sewage, followed by
sickness and disease, fever and dysentery, in a cycle that will only repeat
more quickly as warming continues. Such health conditions would be forbidden
in the US. The Times, sounding like Marie Antoinette with the monstrous
detachment of the rich and unaffected, worries only that Marshall Islanders
could see their homes unfit for human habitation within the coming
decades.
If youre not at the table, youre on the menu
The plunderers also ban peaceful protest against plundering, using the
terrorism threat as an excuse to prevent protest against the eco-terrorism
of the plunderers. When the plunderers gag on free speech is met with
non-violent protest, the plunderers police respond with a violent put down
and 200 arrests. This is Paris now. The local police state also used the
terrorism smear to raid the homes of climate change activists, putting
them in house arrest without charges. French President François Hollande, a
head of a leading plunderer state, lied about the police actions this way:
This is why these protests are not authorized. We knew there would be
troublemakers, who by the way have nothing to do with climate activists, or
those who want the conference to succeed, and who are there only to create
problems. Thats why they were put under house arrest. And its doubly
unfortunate, Id even say scandalous, Place de la Republique, where there
are all these flowers and also candles placed in memory of those who were
killed by the bullets of terrorists.
While Hollandes first remarks are commonly dishonest, unprovable smears of
unnamed and uncharged citizens, his last remark is a callous, demagogic lie.
Video of the police attack shows that the memorial at the Place de la
Republique was protected by the protesters and trashed by the police.
As with past UN climate meetings, peaceful protesters have been kept away
from the eyes and ears of registered participants. What does it say about
the participants arguments about climate change to see that they need
police to protect them from counter-arguments? As one protester said,
commenting on their exclusion from any meaningful part in the process: If
youre not at the table, you are on the menu. So, we want to be at the
table.
Do the people at the table care what happens after theyre dead?
If the people at the table actually thought and felt in global terms, if
they actually thought and felt in generational terms, they could not
possibly act as they do, fecklessly, ineffectively, self-servingly and
soullessly. Their terrorism is magnitudes larger than the terrorism they
pretend to protect us against with their creeping totalitarian controls.
If it were otherwise, there would not be so many casualties among climate
change action advocates. Another such excluded expert is Pablo Solon, a
former chief negotiator for Bolivia, now denied a seat at the table. He went
to Paris to protest against the scripted charade of COP21, where there is no
negotiation of unenforceable national promises to reduce emissions. Perhaps
the conference would be better named COP-OUT21, if Solon is right:
There is an official document from the UNFCCC that says,
we are going to be
increasing the temperature between 2.7 to 3.9 degrees Celsius
. And now to
be speaking about [global warming of] four degrees or five degrees Celsius
is, to put it in other terms, to burn the planet. So the Paris agreement is
an agreement that will see the planet burn.
For that prediction to be wrong, our global leaders need to change their
behavior in radical ways that they have so far shown every intention of
resisting. More likely Paris is another sham. Its as if a ship captain with
a vessel taking on water demands that the crew bail faster, and viciously
punishes anyone trying to plug the hole. Faced with the need to reverse
course to avoid calamity, the captains of our ships of state have gathered
to discuss only the possibility of slowing down, while maintaining the same
course.
50% of the worlds population, the poorer half, cause only 10% of
greenhouse gas emissions.
10% of the worlds population, the richest 10%, cause almost 50% of
greenhouse gas emissions.
The plunderers show little interest in sacrificing their wealth to save the
poor, or the planet. Among US presidential candidates so far, only Bernie
Sanders has acknowledged that climate change is the most serious national
security issue this (or any other) country faces. His campaign is predicated
on the possibility of a political revolution from below, which might allow
the possibility of US actions consistent with protecting the planet. Its
not that the ways to protect the planet are unknown or unachievable. But the
best ways to protect the planet especially keeping fossil fuels in the
ground are fundamentally unacceptable to those whose present interests are
in conflict with efforts to keep the planet from burning. And the plunderers
still control the game at the top.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
