Bali a big balloon
Monday, December 10, 2007 | 05:33 PM ET
By Eve Savory, CBCNews.ca
If we really spoke in balloons, like cartoon characters, there would be a mushroom cloud over Bali.
That must be one noisy island right now.
There are national governments, municipal governments, international think tanks, oil companies, nuclear lobbyists, solar lobbyists, carbon traders, journalists, artists, women’s groups, justice groups, and every major environmental group on the planet that could scare up the funds there for a big meeting on climate change. Twenty thousand of them. Talking.
There will be demos, the giant thermometer, the fossil of the day award (Canada wins, hands down), side meetings, secret meetings, public meetings, news conferences, speeches, panels, reports, and blogs, blogs, blogs.
Noise.
The real work is quieter. It will be going deep into the night, and sometimes through it. By Wednesday, when the ministerial meetings begin, the word-by-word negotiations need to have produced a document that politicians can fine-tune and agree on by the end of the week.
No one wants failure, but there are 190 or so countries represented in Bali, each with their own national interest to protect and forward. The question for the week is: can the global interest score some points?
Just today, the UN Environment program released yet another warning. The report Climate Change and Conflict
says if unchecked, climate change is likely to “aggravate old and trigger new tensions” that could spiral into violence, conflict and war.
Meaning, the global interest is the national interest.
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Comments
Bill Lee
Vancouver
And isn't part of the Afghanistan war about scarce resources in a dry climate.
The failure of the rains, or the surplus, is a disaster in such a country. And with 'power' in the form of a gun, one can take from the others who might be more unfortunate.
Yet, while the public will accept radical changes, the politicians seem to be conservative, tentative and not willing to be bold.
It will change our lives and we'll be watching the CBC on a lightweight analogue set, having abandoned the power-hungry digital ones, by the LEDs of our interactive tools as we poll Mansbridge to shelf all the political coverage in favour of science and medicine news.
Posted December 14, 2007 02:32 AM