SOAN 337: Globalization,
Culture, and Everyday Life
MW 1:20-2:35, Alumni 108
Colgate University
Spring 2005 Professor Thomas Hall
NEW Office: B3 Alumni, x7042, email: tdhall@mail.colgate.edu
OFFICE HOURS: M 4-5, TU 2-3, W
11-12, & by appointment
Last Updated 2-22-05
On the Kyoto Accords
-----Original Message-----
forwarded to me by a colleauge on 2-22-05
From: IRC Communications [mailto:communications@irc-online.org]
Sent: Thursday,
February 17, 2005 7:01 PM
Subject: FPIF News | The Kyoto Protocol, and Beyond
A
Glass Half-Full?
The Kyoto
Protocol, and Beyond
By Tom Athanasiou
The first thing to say about Kyoto’s entry into force (Feb 16th) is that it is a significant victory, won particularly by the Europeans, over social and economic complacency, cash-amplified, flat-earth pseudo-science, the carbon cartel, and, of course, the Bush Administration. The second is that, if it’s not soon followed by other victories, deeper and even more challenging ones, the Earth’s climate will soon – think 2050 or even sooner – be transformed into one that is far more inhospitable, and even hostile, than even most environmentalists imagine.
For the movement, all this means reorienting a tired debate, and a harder look at the challenges of protecting global commons resources. It means, particularly, that it’s time to abandon all the pointless high-flown critiques of emissions trading that conflate the weaknesses of the Kyoto mechanisms with the commodification of nature, and which somehow, in the process, lose track of the immediate challenge – using emissions trading to fund both decarbonization and sustainable development.
In a nutshell: We need a crash program of energy sector decarbonization, around the world, and the only way we’re going to get it in time is if the developed and developing countries make the right sort of deal. Leave aside the details, and it comes to this: The developed world is going to have to ante up. In exchange, the South is going to have to agree to a new kind of development, one that produces as little carbon as possible. And none of this is going to happen, not fast enough, unless the poor and the vulnerable are protected along the way.
To stabilize the climate, we’re going to have to do much more than stabilize the climate. The irony is that admitting this does not in any way make the prospect seem more daunting. Just the opposite. Because if this was just an environmental problem, we’d be toast. It’s only because so much is at stake that we have a chance at all.
Tom Athanasiou (toma@ecoequity.org) is the co-director of EcoEquity ( www.ecoequity.org) and, most recently, the co-author, with Paul Baer, of Dead: Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming. He's a regular contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus ( www.fpif.org).
See full article online at: http://www.fpif.org/papers/0502glass.html
With printer-friendly PDF version at: http://www.fpif.org/pdf/papers/0502glass.pdf
For
Related Analysis From Foreign Policy In Focus:
Global Warming
Backgrounder
By Tom Athanasiou
(January 2004):
http://www.fpif.org/papers/03petropol/climate.html
Two
Futures and a Choice
By Tom Athanasiou (March 6, 2003):
http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2003/0303choice.html
Climate
Change After Marrakesh:
Should Environmentalists Still Support the
Kyoto
Protocol?
By Tom Athanasiou
and Paul Baer (December 2001):
http://www.fpif.org/papers/marrakesh.html
Bonn
and Genoa: A Tale of Two Cities and Two Movements
By Tom Athanasiou and Paul Baer (August 2001):
http://www.fpif.org/papers/kyoto.html
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