<<India said on Tuesday that poor nations had to give priority to ending poverty rather than fighting global warming at 189-nation U.N. climate talks criticised by environmentalists as a rambling talk shop.
Nations from Papua New Guinea to Iceland gave speeches during a novel two-day U.N. "dialogue" trying to bridge huge policy divides about how to slow a rise in temperatures that many scientists say could trigger catastrophic climate changes.
In one of the most forceful talks, India told rich nations to take the lead in cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases from fossil fuels, saying India needed more energy to end poverty for the 35 percent of its people living on less than a dollar a day.
"Removal of poverty is the greater immediate imperative" than global warming, Prodipto Ghosh, Secretary of India's Environment Ministry, told the 1,600 delegates.
Environmentalists expressed disappointment at the free-wheeling nature of the speeches.>>
Gregg Easterbrook emphasises the hypocrisy of attitudes in the West: "It's still possible in affluent circles in the United States or Europe to see people sitting in an air-conditioned room eating free-range chicken and sipping Chablis, talking amongst themselves about how farmers in Africa shouldn't have tractors, because it might disrupt the soil, or how peasants in India shouldn't be allowed to have hydroelectric power, because it's not appropriate to their culture.... What would really be immoral is if we insisted on keeping material affluence for ourselves and try to deny it to the billions of others in the world who want and deserve exactly the same thing."
Our attitude to the Third World, as Frank Furedi puts it, is that "... your societies are doomed to be poor-houses for the rest of the world. It purports to be ever so radical and ever so sensitive, but what it does is it sets a Western agenda on the rest of the world. It's as intrusive today as imperialism was in the 19th century. "
"The problem isn't that we have so much that we're squandering resources, the real problem is that most people do not have access to even the most basic needs of everyday life. The real problem is that they're denied good education and good health. Therefore, the answer does not lie in going backwards and trying to be anti-technological, close down factories and not build roads.... Only through the appliance of science and technology can people's aspirations be realised even at the most elementary level."
ourcivilisation.com
People today face many difficulties in the First World as well as the Third: poverty and squalor, ignorance and disease. But the battle against these evils cannot be won by returning to nature or some mythical past. Instead, we must go forwards to a better future with confidence in our ability to understand and change the world.
The environmentalist movement today is rich and powerful: the top 12 Green organisations in the US alone have an annual turnover of just under a billion dollars. In the UK, four million people are members of Green organisations — that's more than are members of all the other political organisations put together.Environmentalists today have been accused of effectively imposing their views on the Third World, and causing immense suffering in the process.
"The new focus on environmental issues too often has the consequence of turning societies into theme parks," argues Frank Furedi. "They are very attractive for the voyeuristic Western imagination, but actually doom people in those societies to a life of poverty."
"The new focus on environmental issues too often has the consequence of turning societies into theme parks," argues Frank Furedi. "They are very attractive for the voyeuristic Western imagination, but actually doom people in those societies to a life of poverty."
"And it seems to me that there is no accountability here. It's not the people of Africa and Asia or Latin America that have demanded environmental policies; these are policies that are being pushed by everybody in the West, from the World Bank to Green organisations. Who gave them the authority? By what moral right do they dictate the terms of how these societies can develop and realise their potential for the future?"
"And it seems to me that there is no accountability here. It's not the people of Africa and Asia or Latin America that have demanded environmental policies; these are policies that are being pushed by everybody in the West, from the World Bank to Green organisations. Who gave them the authority? By what moral right do they dictate the terms of how these societies can develop and realise their potential for the future?" |
