Earth Equity News

The Anti-Climate Summit. Commentary by Walden Bello, Foreign Policy in Focus, July 15, 2008. "The G8 climate communiqué demonstrates that not only Washington but the other powerful economies of the world are opposed to effective climate action. And without the rich... countries committing themselves to obligatory radical cuts... it will be impossible to convince China, India, and other rapidly industrializing economies... With Washington's posture so retrograde, the policies of other developed country governments appear in a more positive light. But this is an illusion... Japan and Canada, for instance, have retreated from their previous support for a regime of mandatory reductions and saved Washington from total isolation... The E.U., while it continues to support a mandatory regime, does not appear to be willing to support the cuts of up to 80-90% by 2050 that are necessary to prevent irreversible large-scale climate change... The E.U., like the U.S., has increasingly given a central role to the corporate-friendly market approach of carbon trading. On the critical issue of providing the South with assistance for technology and adaptation, the EU, again like U.S., prefers to channel the relatively little money it has so far been willing to commit not through institutional mechanisms set up under U.N. auspices but through those established by the World Bank, such as the Bank's Climate Investment Funds. The reason is simple: the North controls the World Bank... The G8 -- the directorate of global capitalism -- is trying hard to avoid just such radical controls on growth, consumption, profits, and the market that a viable strategy to stave off the looming climate catastrophe will necessitate. Voluntary cuts, technofixes, and carbon trading are desperate efforts to prevent the inevitable. Just like the U.S. economy during World War II, it will take planned economies with severely regulated markets and profits, strictly controlled consumption, and equitably shared sacrifice to win the war against climate change." Walden Bello is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus, a senior analyst at the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines.