Paul Kingsworth, writing in the Guardian, Wed 25th November 09, is dispondent about the prospects of the Copenhagen Summit. He speaks of false hope, comparing the potential Copenhagen Treaty to that of Chamberlain’s Munich Agreement (that heralded peace in ’38).
I must admit that the pitiful 17% reduction in emissions by 2020 mooted by Obama made my heart sink, and did not instil great faith in me that there is any real political will to implement measures that are significant enough to slow climate change.
However, if we agree with Kingsmith, that our human society is about to experience ‘a painful decline after a period of over-expansion’ then we almost give carte blanche to the lack of political action by our leaders….
We need to have some faith that our own concerted efforts to prevent our world getting hotter than mojave will have an impact, because if we dont we may as well give up now, build plastic houses, heat them with coal, drive diesel fuelled 4x4s and live on palm oil and blue fin tuna.
We need to have hope if we are to be motivated to act. Shouting ‘we are all doomed’ achieves worse than nothing.
Having a brother who lives in New Zealand, I battle regularly with the impact of flying to visit my sibling. Price and distance means that a visit is unlikely more than every four years, and in the interim we tend to take staycations. Flying by the Good Green Gifts household is a rare event (deliberately may I add). Nonetheless, even as an infrequent flyer, I do fear the consequences of the impact that my family visits will have…