The Bigger Picture
Published on August 20th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Given the fact that I don’t believe the citizens of the EU or America are sufficiently alarmed about the consequences of climate change to sanction paying developing countries money in order to avoid them, I think the prospects for a meaningful global agreement to cut carbon emissions is still a long ways off.
I have come to this conclusion based on my experience dealing with problems and my research regarding how difficult it is to get political leaders into action addressing their countries domestic difficulties, much less any issues that are of global concern. Government leaders outside of America would have us believe that the current economic recession could not have been anticipated and that it is all America’s fault anyway, while politicians in the US blame greedy Wall Street bankers. Poppycock!
In 2005 economists in America were warning us that our easy access to mortgage financing and the consequent ever upward trajectory of housing prices was creating a “housing bubble” that was bound to burst sooner or later. These same economists were also warning American consumers that they were spending too much on non-essential luxuries with their credit cards and not saving enough money to sustain their finances in the event of another recession. Economists also warned us that we were putting too much faith in investment portfolios that were based on inflated stock market values.
The US Comptroller General was warning us in 2003 that our healthcare expenses were gobbling up an increasing percentage of our disposable income and that the US Congress could not afford to provide Americans with a prescription healthcare benefit. He pointed out that this new benefit was unfunded and would only further add to America’s Iraq War induced budget deficit. The US Comptroller also warned us that our Medicare and Social Security entitlement programs were underfunded and would collapse unless we raised the retirement age, raised taxes and or cut benefits. Did most American consumers listen? NO! Did most of America’s politicians listen? NO!
Closer to home here in Ireland, economists warned that the housing market was overheated back in 2005. Economists here also decried the rise in both public sector employment and wage agreements because these actions were based on government revenues that ballooned thanks to stamp duties from that same overheated housing market. Economist also noted that healthcare and pension costs were rising at unsustainable rates unless action was taken to restrict benefits or raise taxes. Did most Irish consumers listen? NO! Did most of Ireland’s politicians listen? NO!
Is America, and it’s very lose regulation of Wall Street and American financial institutions, a culprit in the current global economic recession? Yes it is! But America had many willing accomplices around the globe. Without the contributions of those accomplices, consumers as well as government officials in other countries, this recession would not have been such a global affair. If we want to avoid a repeat of the current economic nastiness, we need to first look at our own behaviour and contributions to this mess before we go off pointing fingers at others for what they did or didn’t do!
Unfortunately, what I see and hear in America, Ireland and in other countries, is a complete lack of any sense of personal responsibility or accountability on the part of individual citizens, much less their political leaders. But we can not avoid repeating the same mistakes again unless we first acknowledge that we played a part in them. Only then can we begin to learn from them so we don’t find ourselves repeating these same mistakes again in 15 or 20 years. I wish I saw more evidence of this; but frankly I don’t!
The truth is; most of the time consumers and their political leaders in all countries see what they want to see and hear only what they want to hear. Economists and others who are warning us to conserve or change our spendthrift ways when our economies are booming; are routinely ignored or treated as economic Cassandra’s and criticized for their “pessimistic” perspectives. Then when the crisis they warned us would happen is upon us we ask “How could this happen?” Then we begin playing the blame game.
The issue of climate change due to carbon emission fueled global warming represents a similar conundrum for the world’s consumers and politicians. Instead of respected economists warning us about our borrowing and spending habits, we have respected climate scientist warning us about the consequences of not reducing our carbon emissions. But while there has always been some level of disagreement among economists about the economic consequences of consumer and government profligacy, there is virtually no such disagreement among the world’s climate experts.
The fact that a composite of various climate change scenarios suggests severe environmental consequences, which will disrupt the lives of all living species, should make effectively dealing with this problem our number one policy issue. Mind you these scientific models are not the worst-case scenarios, but rather the most likely results of a catastrophic rise in global temperatures based on our present carbon emissions levels.
But, unfortunately for us and future generations, both consumers and politicians tend to respond and demand policy changes only when they find themselves in the middle of a crisis, such as the recent global economic meltdown. Climate change is more insidious because it is a creeping threat and the full dimensions of the crisis won’t be apparent for many years. But by the time rising temperatures and sea levels have become so obvious that even the most skeptical observers have been silenced, it will be too late to avert the catastrophic environmental and economic consequences of climate change.
The world won’t be facing several years of economic consequences like falling house prices or rising unemployment that governments can attempt to address with economic stimulus measures. Unless we act now, it will take decades to reverse the environmental consequences that await us and, more importantly, our children. Next week, I’ll discuss what we can do now.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
What will happen in Copenhagen this December
The Bigger Picture
Published on August 13th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Even though I still plan to attend this year’s UN Global Climate Change Conference from 7-18 December in Copenhagen, I do not realistically expect a truly effective treaty or even a relatively toothless agreement to cut global carbon emissions to emerge from these negotiations. While the current global recession is being blamed by many politicians for a lack of progress on this global environmental issue, I believe the situation would be basically the same even if the global economy was booming.
Why do I feel this way? Well there are several loosely related factors that have led me to draw this somewhat pessimistic conclusion. It would be easy to blame various different politicians and political leaders but I think doing so is just an easy cop out for most of us. While many of them do bear some measure of responsibility for the current impasse on reducing carbon emissions, I think the lack of leadership many of them have demonstrated thus far is really a reflection of their constituents. Our politicians’ lack of political will to deal with the problem is due to the lack of urgency felt by citizens.
The reality of politics around the globe is that truly gifted political leaders like Barack Obama, with the ability to inspire people and marshal popular support from the general public for economically painful solutions to their countries problems, only come along once in a generation. The rest of the time our democratic political leaders tend to be people who attain their positions of power by using divide and conquer schemes to outwit their opponents and or manipulate public opinion. They aren’t inspiring natural leaders.
Authoritarian rulers also get to the top of their nations’ political heaps using the same methods that their democratic counter-parts use except they only have to contend with their countries’ business and social élites. They have an easier time of it than democratic leaders do, in terms of pushing unpopular policies on the general public, because they don’t have to worry about winning popular elections in the future.
But outside of a few extremely repressive regimes, even the most gifted and or authoritarian political leaders still have to be able to deal effectively with popular opposition to their policies if they want to maintain their grip on the reins of power.
President Obama is a gifted political leader who won election with a substantial majority of the popular and electoral vote. But he still has to grapple with winning the legislative support of Democratic members of Congress for his policy prescriptions, many of whom won election by only the barest of margins. Those legislators are worried about their prospects for winning re-election if their constituents or the business and social elites who fund their re-election campaigns decide they don’t like those policies.
As a result, the Climate Change bill that barely squeaked through the US Congress at the end of June was at best a very weak prescription for dealing with an ailment that is rapidly worsening. The good news is that the US Congress finally agreed to cut America’s carbon emissions, but the bad news is America will only cut them by 17% come the year 2020. Instead of a cap-and-trade system where credits for carbon emissions are sold to the highest bidders in order to provide money to offset increasing energy bills, the US will give 85% of them away to America’s biggest polluters for free.
While I agree with environmental NGOs that this bill fits the description of being “too little, too late”, I still can’t understand why Greenpeace actually came out against it. It has only taken the US Congress twenty years to get to the point where it was finally willing to play ball and cut America’s carbon emissions, so Greenpeace’s response, that no bill that cuts carbon emissions is preferable to a weak one, strikes me as disingenuous.
I am all for much stronger carbon reduction measures but please, let’s be a bit more realistic. A flawed climate change bill can still be tightened and strengthened in future years while some progress is made in the meantime; but no climate change legislation means no progress whatsoever until the political will exists for stronger measures. It is precisely this kind of thinking, on the part of some environmentalists, that leads many of their opponents to conclude that there is no point in negotiating with them.
Looking ahead to the UN Climate Change conference this December there are seven major entities that will be involved in negotiating a carbon emissions treaty to replace the ineffective Kyoto Protocol. The EU has the most political will to negotiate meaningful cuts in global carbon emissions, largely because a more educated citizenry that elects its leaders is more concerned about the consequences of climate change. Weak though it may be, there is at least some political will to address the problem of climate change due to global warming in America.
But what about the political will of China’s authoritarian regime? Or India’s democratically elected political leaders? Or the political will of Putin and Russia’s quasi-democratic political regime? These three countries are the largest sources of industrial carbon emissions outside of America and the EU and their combined emissions exceed those of the EU and America. Then we have the democratic governments of Brazil and Indonesia which have been unable to halt the illegal logging and clearing of their tropical rainforests even though they have designated them as “protected” national forests.
These seven entities account for approximately 70% of global carbon emissions, but the wealthier EU and America emit much more carbon per person than the denizens of the other five nations. The core of these countries collective position towards the EU and America is; that we need to “pay” them to reduce their emissions. Unfortunately for our global climate, I don’t see much evidence that the citizens of the EU or America are sufficiently alarmed about the consequences to be willing to pay to avoid them.
Published on August 13th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Even though I still plan to attend this year’s UN Global Climate Change Conference from 7-18 December in Copenhagen, I do not realistically expect a truly effective treaty or even a relatively toothless agreement to cut global carbon emissions to emerge from these negotiations. While the current global recession is being blamed by many politicians for a lack of progress on this global environmental issue, I believe the situation would be basically the same even if the global economy was booming.
Why do I feel this way? Well there are several loosely related factors that have led me to draw this somewhat pessimistic conclusion. It would be easy to blame various different politicians and political leaders but I think doing so is just an easy cop out for most of us. While many of them do bear some measure of responsibility for the current impasse on reducing carbon emissions, I think the lack of leadership many of them have demonstrated thus far is really a reflection of their constituents. Our politicians’ lack of political will to deal with the problem is due to the lack of urgency felt by citizens.
The reality of politics around the globe is that truly gifted political leaders like Barack Obama, with the ability to inspire people and marshal popular support from the general public for economically painful solutions to their countries problems, only come along once in a generation. The rest of the time our democratic political leaders tend to be people who attain their positions of power by using divide and conquer schemes to outwit their opponents and or manipulate public opinion. They aren’t inspiring natural leaders.
Authoritarian rulers also get to the top of their nations’ political heaps using the same methods that their democratic counter-parts use except they only have to contend with their countries’ business and social élites. They have an easier time of it than democratic leaders do, in terms of pushing unpopular policies on the general public, because they don’t have to worry about winning popular elections in the future.
But outside of a few extremely repressive regimes, even the most gifted and or authoritarian political leaders still have to be able to deal effectively with popular opposition to their policies if they want to maintain their grip on the reins of power.
President Obama is a gifted political leader who won election with a substantial majority of the popular and electoral vote. But he still has to grapple with winning the legislative support of Democratic members of Congress for his policy prescriptions, many of whom won election by only the barest of margins. Those legislators are worried about their prospects for winning re-election if their constituents or the business and social elites who fund their re-election campaigns decide they don’t like those policies.
As a result, the Climate Change bill that barely squeaked through the US Congress at the end of June was at best a very weak prescription for dealing with an ailment that is rapidly worsening. The good news is that the US Congress finally agreed to cut America’s carbon emissions, but the bad news is America will only cut them by 17% come the year 2020. Instead of a cap-and-trade system where credits for carbon emissions are sold to the highest bidders in order to provide money to offset increasing energy bills, the US will give 85% of them away to America’s biggest polluters for free.
While I agree with environmental NGOs that this bill fits the description of being “too little, too late”, I still can’t understand why Greenpeace actually came out against it. It has only taken the US Congress twenty years to get to the point where it was finally willing to play ball and cut America’s carbon emissions, so Greenpeace’s response, that no bill that cuts carbon emissions is preferable to a weak one, strikes me as disingenuous.
I am all for much stronger carbon reduction measures but please, let’s be a bit more realistic. A flawed climate change bill can still be tightened and strengthened in future years while some progress is made in the meantime; but no climate change legislation means no progress whatsoever until the political will exists for stronger measures. It is precisely this kind of thinking, on the part of some environmentalists, that leads many of their opponents to conclude that there is no point in negotiating with them.
Looking ahead to the UN Climate Change conference this December there are seven major entities that will be involved in negotiating a carbon emissions treaty to replace the ineffective Kyoto Protocol. The EU has the most political will to negotiate meaningful cuts in global carbon emissions, largely because a more educated citizenry that elects its leaders is more concerned about the consequences of climate change. Weak though it may be, there is at least some political will to address the problem of climate change due to global warming in America.
But what about the political will of China’s authoritarian regime? Or India’s democratically elected political leaders? Or the political will of Putin and Russia’s quasi-democratic political regime? These three countries are the largest sources of industrial carbon emissions outside of America and the EU and their combined emissions exceed those of the EU and America. Then we have the democratic governments of Brazil and Indonesia which have been unable to halt the illegal logging and clearing of their tropical rainforests even though they have designated them as “protected” national forests.
These seven entities account for approximately 70% of global carbon emissions, but the wealthier EU and America emit much more carbon per person than the denizens of the other five nations. The core of these countries collective position towards the EU and America is; that we need to “pay” them to reduce their emissions. Unfortunately for our global climate, I don’t see much evidence that the citizens of the EU or America are sufficiently alarmed about the consequences to be willing to pay to avoid them.
The role Chimerzilia must play
The Bigger Picture
Published on August 6th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
In my previous columns I have discussed some of the reasons why we must take more individual responsibility and action to address climate change due to global warming. But I am also painfully aware that there is only so much that we can do as individuals to reduce global carbon emissions. The world’s governments and their political leaders must do more as well but there is also one group of countries that is more important than all of the other countries in the world. I call them Chimerzilia.
Chimerzilia is the G5 of carbon emitters. Without their agreement to do more, and I mean a whole lot more, to reduce their countries’ carbon emissions there will be little, if any, reduction in global warming and the resultant climate change we will all experience.
Chimerzilia represents an amalgam of the names of the five countries (China, America, Brazil, Indonesia and India) that are the world’s largest carbon emitters and they are collectively responsible for more than 50% of global carbon emissions. Although the EU and Russia are also big carbon emitters and are responsible for more than 20% of global carbon emissions between them, the future depends on the G5 aka Chimerzilia. The G5 are also the 5 most populous countries in the world and, except Indonesia, among the world’s 7 largest nations by land area along with Australia, Canada and Russia.
Surprisingly, the reason why less industrialized countries like Brazil and Indonesia are in the top 5, instead of the more industrialized countries of the EU and Russia, is because of the amount of carbon that enters the earth’s atmosphere due to deforestation. While many of you may have also seen satellite photos of the smog blanketing Southeast Asia that was caused by fires in Indonesia a few years ago, what you may not know is that research shows that 70% to 90% of the fires were set by large, officially sanctioned companies to clear land for timber, oil-palm, and rubber plantations.
In Brazil tropical rainforest fires are set illegally in order to clear land for cattle grazing and agricultural uses after the best trees have been logged. But as a consequence of this activity the Amazon rainforest is losing its ability to stay green year round because the combination of deforestation and drought make it dangerously flammable. Scientists believe that as much as 50 percent of the Amazon could someday go up in smoke if these land clearing fires continue due to the lowering of the Amazon’s humidity levels.
But while the smoke and smog inducing carbon emissions that result from fires in the rainforests of Indonesia and Brazil causes problems for those suffering from breathing problems, all of the world’s citizens pay a price in the longer term. That’s because deforestation releases carbon stored in tropical peat and rainforests into the air while also reducing the earth’s ability to absorb existing levels of carbon in the atmosphere.
So the importance of the G5, aka Chimerzilia, is this; while China, America and India must agree to cut the 50% of the world’s carbon they are emitting, Brazil and Indonesia must also cut their own carbon emissions by reducing or eliminating deforestation, which is simultaneously eating up our global sponge for carbon emissions. Doing one or the other but not both is simply not an option if we want to avoid even more catastrophic consequences from climate change than the ones we are currently facing.
Both individually and collectively, the nations that compose the EU have done much more than most other countries around the world to address the problem of man-made global warming. I applaud the EU for their actions to reduce carbon emissions and hope that the EU will continue to push other countries like Russia to follow its lead.
But I am also a realist. Without the Chimerzilia G5, I see no hope for an effective global agreement to replace the largely ineffective Kyoto Protocol and address the causes of climate change. I hope that the political leaders of the EU will come to the same conclusion and not raise too big of a ruckus when America starts bilateral negotiations with the other members of the Chimerzilia G5. Like it or not, those negations have already begun albeit privately not publically. Yet!
While the EU is China’s largest trading partner, America is a close second and China is also the world’s largest holder of American debt securities. America is also the world’s largest economy and importer of foreign goods. America is also the world’s only true superpower notwithstanding the fact that China envisions becoming a superpower itself in the very near future. Indonesia’s largest trading partner is America but it is also the largest member of the 10 nation ASEAN which is China’s 3rd largest trading partner. India and Brazil’s largest trading partners are also China and America.
Is the picture I’m trying to paint here starting to emerge yet? The Chimerzilia G5 has a vested interest in maintaining these lucrative trade relationships among themselves as well as their trading relationships with the EU. But America has not been as aggressive as the EU when it comes to reducing carbon emissions, so the other members of Chimerzilia have decided that their own economic interests will be better served by any carbon emission reduction agreements that they can negotiate bilaterally with America.
I may be wrong, but I believe an effective post-Kyoto global climate change treaty will be one based on bilateral environmental agreements between and among the member states of the Chimerzilia G5. While the consequent global treaty won’t be the kind of agreement the world truly needs to stave off global warming, it may set the stage and provide a framework for later negotiations that will lead to much more aggressive action.
This, incidentally, is my most optimistic scenario for how the world’s political leaders might actually begin to deal with the issue of climate change. I will offer a much more realistic assessment next week.
Published on August 6th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
In my previous columns I have discussed some of the reasons why we must take more individual responsibility and action to address climate change due to global warming. But I am also painfully aware that there is only so much that we can do as individuals to reduce global carbon emissions. The world’s governments and their political leaders must do more as well but there is also one group of countries that is more important than all of the other countries in the world. I call them Chimerzilia.
Chimerzilia is the G5 of carbon emitters. Without their agreement to do more, and I mean a whole lot more, to reduce their countries’ carbon emissions there will be little, if any, reduction in global warming and the resultant climate change we will all experience.
Chimerzilia represents an amalgam of the names of the five countries (China, America, Brazil, Indonesia and India) that are the world’s largest carbon emitters and they are collectively responsible for more than 50% of global carbon emissions. Although the EU and Russia are also big carbon emitters and are responsible for more than 20% of global carbon emissions between them, the future depends on the G5 aka Chimerzilia. The G5 are also the 5 most populous countries in the world and, except Indonesia, among the world’s 7 largest nations by land area along with Australia, Canada and Russia.
Surprisingly, the reason why less industrialized countries like Brazil and Indonesia are in the top 5, instead of the more industrialized countries of the EU and Russia, is because of the amount of carbon that enters the earth’s atmosphere due to deforestation. While many of you may have also seen satellite photos of the smog blanketing Southeast Asia that was caused by fires in Indonesia a few years ago, what you may not know is that research shows that 70% to 90% of the fires were set by large, officially sanctioned companies to clear land for timber, oil-palm, and rubber plantations.
In Brazil tropical rainforest fires are set illegally in order to clear land for cattle grazing and agricultural uses after the best trees have been logged. But as a consequence of this activity the Amazon rainforest is losing its ability to stay green year round because the combination of deforestation and drought make it dangerously flammable. Scientists believe that as much as 50 percent of the Amazon could someday go up in smoke if these land clearing fires continue due to the lowering of the Amazon’s humidity levels.
But while the smoke and smog inducing carbon emissions that result from fires in the rainforests of Indonesia and Brazil causes problems for those suffering from breathing problems, all of the world’s citizens pay a price in the longer term. That’s because deforestation releases carbon stored in tropical peat and rainforests into the air while also reducing the earth’s ability to absorb existing levels of carbon in the atmosphere.
So the importance of the G5, aka Chimerzilia, is this; while China, America and India must agree to cut the 50% of the world’s carbon they are emitting, Brazil and Indonesia must also cut their own carbon emissions by reducing or eliminating deforestation, which is simultaneously eating up our global sponge for carbon emissions. Doing one or the other but not both is simply not an option if we want to avoid even more catastrophic consequences from climate change than the ones we are currently facing.
Both individually and collectively, the nations that compose the EU have done much more than most other countries around the world to address the problem of man-made global warming. I applaud the EU for their actions to reduce carbon emissions and hope that the EU will continue to push other countries like Russia to follow its lead.
But I am also a realist. Without the Chimerzilia G5, I see no hope for an effective global agreement to replace the largely ineffective Kyoto Protocol and address the causes of climate change. I hope that the political leaders of the EU will come to the same conclusion and not raise too big of a ruckus when America starts bilateral negotiations with the other members of the Chimerzilia G5. Like it or not, those negations have already begun albeit privately not publically. Yet!
While the EU is China’s largest trading partner, America is a close second and China is also the world’s largest holder of American debt securities. America is also the world’s largest economy and importer of foreign goods. America is also the world’s only true superpower notwithstanding the fact that China envisions becoming a superpower itself in the very near future. Indonesia’s largest trading partner is America but it is also the largest member of the 10 nation ASEAN which is China’s 3rd largest trading partner. India and Brazil’s largest trading partners are also China and America.
Is the picture I’m trying to paint here starting to emerge yet? The Chimerzilia G5 has a vested interest in maintaining these lucrative trade relationships among themselves as well as their trading relationships with the EU. But America has not been as aggressive as the EU when it comes to reducing carbon emissions, so the other members of Chimerzilia have decided that their own economic interests will be better served by any carbon emission reduction agreements that they can negotiate bilaterally with America.
I may be wrong, but I believe an effective post-Kyoto global climate change treaty will be one based on bilateral environmental agreements between and among the member states of the Chimerzilia G5. While the consequent global treaty won’t be the kind of agreement the world truly needs to stave off global warming, it may set the stage and provide a framework for later negotiations that will lead to much more aggressive action.
This, incidentally, is my most optimistic scenario for how the world’s political leaders might actually begin to deal with the issue of climate change. I will offer a much more realistic assessment next week.
Doing our part to reduce carbon emmisions
The Bigger Picture
Published on July 30th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to continue my discussion about the need for all of us as families and as individuals to take more aggressive steps to deal with climate change caused by global warming. Even though some of us are already doing some of the easier things to reduce our energy consumption that I mentioned in previous columns, precious few of us have actually altered our lifestyles in any kind of meaningful way.
Turning out the lights, lowering the thermostat and buying more energy efficient appliances represent minor tweaks to our daily living that reduce our carbon emmisions and save us money as well. But parking our cars, or selling that second (or third) automobile our family owns, and taking public transportation to work or school embodies a much more significant reduction in our carbon emissions. Granted, taking these kinds of steps means that some of us, or our family members, will be “inconvenienced” from time to time, but we will also realize significant cost savings by taking such actions.
I must say that I can’t help but laugh whenever I hear someone patting themselves on the back for their environmental consciousness after having purchased a hybrid or other more fuel efficient automobile. That’s because when I follow-up with a question about why they don’t use public transportation instead, the usual response is that they don’t like waiting for the bus or train. So despite the fact that owning and operating a car to serve one’s transportation needs is also much more expensive, many of us still refuse to use public transport instead because we don’t like to be inconvenienced.
If a friend or family member told us they wouldn’t come by to pick us up on the way to a party because it was inconvenient, wouldn’t we think they were being selfish and inconsiderate if not downright rude? The answer is obvious! So why shouldn’t our children and grandchildren think we were being just as selfish and inconsiderate because we refused to use public transportation in an effort to reduce our individual contributions to global warming? Humph! Most of us will probably just lie and blame other people, including our political leaders, instead of admitting the truth about our own behaviour.
Maybe some of us are comfortable with the idea of lying to our children and grandchildren, lest they think ill of us for our selfish and inconsiderate behaviour. Then of course there are those of us who will try to justify continuing our energy wasting, carbon emitting lifestyles by arguing that we shouldn’t have to alter them because we can’t really make much of a difference by ourselves. This is similar to the justification some of us try to use for not exercising our right to vote. “It’s inconvenient”, “I don’t have time” and or “My vote won’t really make a difference anyway.” Bulls—t!
I happen to prefer another alternative. I prefer to be part of the solution instead of continuing to be a part of the problem. I choose to try to change my lifestyle in ways that significantly reduce my own contribution to global carbon emissions. One of the key benefits of this approach is that I won’t have to lie to my children and or grandchildren about the part I played in the climate change consequences they will have to adapt to.
Notice I underlined the word will. That is because even if the world stopped all man-made carbon emissions today, our lack of action to reduce these emissions over the past twenty years means that global temperatures will continue to rise for at least another decade or more. So given the fact that we are currently only trying to negotiate a climate change treaty that will reduce the rate of increase in such emissions followed by a gradual reduction of greenhouse gas emissions over the next forty years, both current and future generations will experience the consequences of climate change due to global warming.
Make no mistake, coping with these consequences will also prove to be very costly to all nations, some more than others. Unfortunately it will be the poorest counties and poorest people in this world who will suffer the most severe consequences even though they have not actually contributed much to global warming. Ironically, it is those countries and people that have benefitted most from fossil fueled economic development who will suffer less severe impacts and will be able to afford to adapt to climate change.
Polar melting and rising sea levels have already led to relocations of several Eskimo villages in North America. Who do you think is paying for the costs of these relocations? The Eskimos themselves as well as American and Canadian taxpayers are paying for these relocations. But these Canadian and Alaskan natives are the lucky ones. Who do you think will pay for the relocations of millions of poor people who currently live in low-lying costal areas of Bangladesh and other Southeast Asian countries?
By doing my part to reduce my own carbon footprint I don’t have to feel guilty about the harmful consequences that others will suffer and I can be a morally legitimate participant in the debate about who should pay to mitigate these consequences. But just like those who do not vote, if I don’t do my part then I have no right to voice my opinions about who should pay and how best to adapt to the consequences of climate change.
Morality aside, there is another important reason why we should all do more as individuals to reduce our carbon emissions. While doing so may be inconvenient at times, in both the near term and in the long run it will also save us money. Money that we and our families can put to other uses and that we will also need down the road to pay for the costs of adapting to climate change if nothing else.
Next week I will discuss the role Chimerzilia must play in reducing carbon emissions.
Published on July 30th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to continue my discussion about the need for all of us as families and as individuals to take more aggressive steps to deal with climate change caused by global warming. Even though some of us are already doing some of the easier things to reduce our energy consumption that I mentioned in previous columns, precious few of us have actually altered our lifestyles in any kind of meaningful way.
Turning out the lights, lowering the thermostat and buying more energy efficient appliances represent minor tweaks to our daily living that reduce our carbon emmisions and save us money as well. But parking our cars, or selling that second (or third) automobile our family owns, and taking public transportation to work or school embodies a much more significant reduction in our carbon emissions. Granted, taking these kinds of steps means that some of us, or our family members, will be “inconvenienced” from time to time, but we will also realize significant cost savings by taking such actions.
I must say that I can’t help but laugh whenever I hear someone patting themselves on the back for their environmental consciousness after having purchased a hybrid or other more fuel efficient automobile. That’s because when I follow-up with a question about why they don’t use public transportation instead, the usual response is that they don’t like waiting for the bus or train. So despite the fact that owning and operating a car to serve one’s transportation needs is also much more expensive, many of us still refuse to use public transport instead because we don’t like to be inconvenienced.
If a friend or family member told us they wouldn’t come by to pick us up on the way to a party because it was inconvenient, wouldn’t we think they were being selfish and inconsiderate if not downright rude? The answer is obvious! So why shouldn’t our children and grandchildren think we were being just as selfish and inconsiderate because we refused to use public transportation in an effort to reduce our individual contributions to global warming? Humph! Most of us will probably just lie and blame other people, including our political leaders, instead of admitting the truth about our own behaviour.
Maybe some of us are comfortable with the idea of lying to our children and grandchildren, lest they think ill of us for our selfish and inconsiderate behaviour. Then of course there are those of us who will try to justify continuing our energy wasting, carbon emitting lifestyles by arguing that we shouldn’t have to alter them because we can’t really make much of a difference by ourselves. This is similar to the justification some of us try to use for not exercising our right to vote. “It’s inconvenient”, “I don’t have time” and or “My vote won’t really make a difference anyway.” Bulls—t!
I happen to prefer another alternative. I prefer to be part of the solution instead of continuing to be a part of the problem. I choose to try to change my lifestyle in ways that significantly reduce my own contribution to global carbon emissions. One of the key benefits of this approach is that I won’t have to lie to my children and or grandchildren about the part I played in the climate change consequences they will have to adapt to.
Notice I underlined the word will. That is because even if the world stopped all man-made carbon emissions today, our lack of action to reduce these emissions over the past twenty years means that global temperatures will continue to rise for at least another decade or more. So given the fact that we are currently only trying to negotiate a climate change treaty that will reduce the rate of increase in such emissions followed by a gradual reduction of greenhouse gas emissions over the next forty years, both current and future generations will experience the consequences of climate change due to global warming.
Make no mistake, coping with these consequences will also prove to be very costly to all nations, some more than others. Unfortunately it will be the poorest counties and poorest people in this world who will suffer the most severe consequences even though they have not actually contributed much to global warming. Ironically, it is those countries and people that have benefitted most from fossil fueled economic development who will suffer less severe impacts and will be able to afford to adapt to climate change.
Polar melting and rising sea levels have already led to relocations of several Eskimo villages in North America. Who do you think is paying for the costs of these relocations? The Eskimos themselves as well as American and Canadian taxpayers are paying for these relocations. But these Canadian and Alaskan natives are the lucky ones. Who do you think will pay for the relocations of millions of poor people who currently live in low-lying costal areas of Bangladesh and other Southeast Asian countries?
By doing my part to reduce my own carbon footprint I don’t have to feel guilty about the harmful consequences that others will suffer and I can be a morally legitimate participant in the debate about who should pay to mitigate these consequences. But just like those who do not vote, if I don’t do my part then I have no right to voice my opinions about who should pay and how best to adapt to the consequences of climate change.
Morality aside, there is another important reason why we should all do more as individuals to reduce our carbon emissions. While doing so may be inconvenient at times, in both the near term and in the long run it will also save us money. Money that we and our families can put to other uses and that we will also need down the road to pay for the costs of adapting to climate change if nothing else.
Next week I will discuss the role Chimerzilia must play in reducing carbon emissions.
Changing our lifestyles to avert Climate Change?
The Bigger Picture
Published on July 23rd in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
I closed last week’s column by asking how many of us as individual citizens in more developed countries are willing to take personal responsibility for the CO2 emissions that are a result of the lifestyles we live. I could be wrong, but thus far the evidence suggests precious few of us either have been or are willing to change our lifestyles in an effort to fix or pay for the environmental damage we are causing.
How can we blame politicians when almost half of us don’t even bother to vote? Judging by the lack of electoral success experienced by political candidates who are advocates of stronger measures to address climate change, even the roughly half of us who do vote have thus far shown little inclination to give politicians the power to do so.
Furthermore the response of most people to the idea of adding carbon taxes to the cost of the petrol, electricity and plastics, which are all derived from fossil fuels, has been decidedly negative so far. The main complaint I hear about proposals for carbon taxes is that these carbon based products already cost too much so we shouldn’t be forced to pay more for them even though we know using them is harming the global environment.
While I’m not happy about paying more for gas or electricity either, I also know that it is both selfish and irresponsible for me to continue to advocate getting a free pass for my CO2 emissions now that I know this is harmful to our global environment. It was one thing to use carbon based products to enhance our lifestyles before we knew there were negative consequences associated with using them. But it is quite another thing to continue using them without paying for the environmental costs associated with their use.
Most people are unwilling to face up to the fact that by not paying for the environmental costs associated with their continued use of fossil fuels today, their children and grandchildren will end up paying much more in the way of taxes to cope with the negative consequences of climate change in the future. How can sticking future generations with the bill for the consequences of climate change, due to our refusal to pay the costs of avoiding this, be considered anything but selfish and irresponsible?
We have already begun to experience some of the negative consequences of a warming world such as more extreme forms of weather in our lower latitudes including more intense tropical storms as well as longer lasting droughts. These more intense storms and droughts have also led to an increase in deaths caused by floods or starvation in many parts of the world. Rising sea levels have also led to increased erosion of costal areas around the world and made some tropical islands and costal areas uninhabitable. Furthermore the melting of permafrost in the northern hemisphere’s tundra areas has forced some natives of these regions to relocate their villages to more stable ground and disrupted the life cycles of native wildlife they depend on for their survival.
The reality of our current situation is that the governments of the world and their citizens as taxpayers have already begun to foot the bill for our unfettered use of fossil fuels and deforestation. After all, who do you think is paying for the costs of property damage and the household relocations caused by floods and costal erosion or the costs of crop failures caused by droughts? But the current costs of coping with climate change are only a small fraction of the costs and taxes that we and, to an even greater extent, our children will have to pay. If we expect our children to act responsibly and protect the global environment, then we must begin by examining the kind of example we’re setting.
Unfortunately what we adults have shown our children so far are that we are only willing to take relatively easy steps towards addressing the problem of global warming. Many of us do in fact turn down our thermostats and turn off the lights to conserve energy. Some of us have purchased more fuel efficient cars and or energy efficient appliances, while others have even gone so far as to install solar panels to provide for their homes or businesses electricity needs. I applaud those who have done these things, but the truth is these measures also usually pay for themselves within a matter of months or years so we have much to gain and little to lose financially by taking these steps.
Some people also like to point to various government mandates that have led a decrease in our usage of plastic bags or to an increase in the use of bio-fuels in our cars. But these steps are also relatively easy for us to implement since it merely means we pay a few cents more to bag our groceries and our car engines don’t have to be adapted to run on a blend of ethanol and conventional petrol.
But we have also recently discovered that the increased use of bio-fuels has not only resulted in increased prices for our food supplies but it has also led to an increase in CO2 emissions as well. That’s because we have cut down forests to clear land in order to raise bio-fuel crops like corn, palm oil, sugarcane or soybeans and released more CO2 into the atmosphere than we would had we left those forests alone. Yes, using food crops to produce atmosphere friendly petrol initially sounded like an easy way to help address global warming by cutting our use of conventional petrol. Unfortunately when something sounds too good to be true that is because it usually isn’t true.
The reality of the steps we have taken to address the problem of global warming is that few of them required us to change our energy wasting lifestyles. Parking the car and using public transportation is one of those lifestyle changes I’ll discuss next week.
Published on July 23rd in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
I closed last week’s column by asking how many of us as individual citizens in more developed countries are willing to take personal responsibility for the CO2 emissions that are a result of the lifestyles we live. I could be wrong, but thus far the evidence suggests precious few of us either have been or are willing to change our lifestyles in an effort to fix or pay for the environmental damage we are causing.
How can we blame politicians when almost half of us don’t even bother to vote? Judging by the lack of electoral success experienced by political candidates who are advocates of stronger measures to address climate change, even the roughly half of us who do vote have thus far shown little inclination to give politicians the power to do so.
Furthermore the response of most people to the idea of adding carbon taxes to the cost of the petrol, electricity and plastics, which are all derived from fossil fuels, has been decidedly negative so far. The main complaint I hear about proposals for carbon taxes is that these carbon based products already cost too much so we shouldn’t be forced to pay more for them even though we know using them is harming the global environment.
While I’m not happy about paying more for gas or electricity either, I also know that it is both selfish and irresponsible for me to continue to advocate getting a free pass for my CO2 emissions now that I know this is harmful to our global environment. It was one thing to use carbon based products to enhance our lifestyles before we knew there were negative consequences associated with using them. But it is quite another thing to continue using them without paying for the environmental costs associated with their use.
Most people are unwilling to face up to the fact that by not paying for the environmental costs associated with their continued use of fossil fuels today, their children and grandchildren will end up paying much more in the way of taxes to cope with the negative consequences of climate change in the future. How can sticking future generations with the bill for the consequences of climate change, due to our refusal to pay the costs of avoiding this, be considered anything but selfish and irresponsible?
We have already begun to experience some of the negative consequences of a warming world such as more extreme forms of weather in our lower latitudes including more intense tropical storms as well as longer lasting droughts. These more intense storms and droughts have also led to an increase in deaths caused by floods or starvation in many parts of the world. Rising sea levels have also led to increased erosion of costal areas around the world and made some tropical islands and costal areas uninhabitable. Furthermore the melting of permafrost in the northern hemisphere’s tundra areas has forced some natives of these regions to relocate their villages to more stable ground and disrupted the life cycles of native wildlife they depend on for their survival.
The reality of our current situation is that the governments of the world and their citizens as taxpayers have already begun to foot the bill for our unfettered use of fossil fuels and deforestation. After all, who do you think is paying for the costs of property damage and the household relocations caused by floods and costal erosion or the costs of crop failures caused by droughts? But the current costs of coping with climate change are only a small fraction of the costs and taxes that we and, to an even greater extent, our children will have to pay. If we expect our children to act responsibly and protect the global environment, then we must begin by examining the kind of example we’re setting.
Unfortunately what we adults have shown our children so far are that we are only willing to take relatively easy steps towards addressing the problem of global warming. Many of us do in fact turn down our thermostats and turn off the lights to conserve energy. Some of us have purchased more fuel efficient cars and or energy efficient appliances, while others have even gone so far as to install solar panels to provide for their homes or businesses electricity needs. I applaud those who have done these things, but the truth is these measures also usually pay for themselves within a matter of months or years so we have much to gain and little to lose financially by taking these steps.
Some people also like to point to various government mandates that have led a decrease in our usage of plastic bags or to an increase in the use of bio-fuels in our cars. But these steps are also relatively easy for us to implement since it merely means we pay a few cents more to bag our groceries and our car engines don’t have to be adapted to run on a blend of ethanol and conventional petrol.
But we have also recently discovered that the increased use of bio-fuels has not only resulted in increased prices for our food supplies but it has also led to an increase in CO2 emissions as well. That’s because we have cut down forests to clear land in order to raise bio-fuel crops like corn, palm oil, sugarcane or soybeans and released more CO2 into the atmosphere than we would had we left those forests alone. Yes, using food crops to produce atmosphere friendly petrol initially sounded like an easy way to help address global warming by cutting our use of conventional petrol. Unfortunately when something sounds too good to be true that is because it usually isn’t true.
The reality of the steps we have taken to address the problem of global warming is that few of them required us to change our energy wasting lifestyles. Parking the car and using public transportation is one of those lifestyle changes I’ll discuss next week.
Who do we blame for the lack of action to avert climate change?
The Bigger Picture
Published on July 16th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
I closed last week’s column by asking how those of us who live in the nations of the industrialized world plan to explain to our children and grandchildren our decision to avoid addressing the problem of climate change by continuing to elect political leaders who won’t take any real action on this issue. I believe a truthful answer for most of us would be that we were simply too greedy and selfish to care. We also know our inaction will probably only lead to adverse consequences for other people instead of ourselves.
Many of us can and do blame our political leaders for failing to take more concrete steps to reduce our use of fossil fuel based energy and resources. But before you do, first ask yourself how politically active have you been supporting those politicians who favor more stringent measures to protect the global environment? Since 40% or more of us usually don’t exercise the democratic rights that we have come to take for granted in more developed countries, did you even bother to vote? Or were you too busy to take the time and make an effort to do so?
Or maybe we defend our inaction by taking a position, similar to former US President George Bush, which was that we wouldn’t agree to cut our own CO2 gas emissions until the poorer countries in the developing world also agreed to reduce their use of fossil fuels. Unfortunately many citizens in the developing world don’t have the same democratic political rights that we have. Even those that do, in countries like India, must also be excused because most of them are simply trying to survive economically and feed their families by whatever means possible.
While I was disappointed that the political leaders of the developing countries, led by China and India, refused to agree to commit to specific goals for cutting their carbon emissions by 2050 at the G8 summit in Italy last week, I am sympathetic to their arguments against doing so. After all these countries are merely following the same path out of poverty that the nations of the industrialized world used. If we want them to develop economically by using cleaner forms of energy, then we must help them to do so.
Developing countries are well aware that their increased use of fossil fuels in conjunction with deforestation is only making the problem of global warming worse. In fact China has now overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases due to its reliance on coal for energy and the 3rd and 4th largest sources of CO2 gases are Indonesia and Brazil because of rampant tropical deforestation. Even so, these countries still emit only 1/3 of the CO2 gases that developed countries do on a per person basis. Why should they now be expected to retard their own economic development in order to fix the damage caused by the past and current actions of the industrialized nations that produced the bulk of the pollution that causes global warming?
While I applaud the fact that the industrialized world has finally agreed to cut its own CO2 emissions by 80% come the year 2050, their agreement at last weeks G8 summit nonetheless leaves open the question of setting realistic mid-term goals to achieve this reduction during the next decade. Small wonder then why the developing countries have thus far refused to agree to cut their own CO2 emissions so that a 50% global reduction can be achieved by 2050.
Emerging countries want to see interim goals for reducing gas emissions as well as firm commitments to provide financial and technological help from more developed counties before they will agree to their own CO2 gas reduction targets. Sure they don’t trust us, but why should they given our past history of not meeting such goals?
Setting appropriate environmental standards for reducing CO2 pollution forty years hence is all well and good, but only if those goals also include realistic benchmarks that can be used to assess our progress. Telling developing countries you will help them cut their own emissions without undue harm to their own economic development sounds good, but it’s meaningless unless it’s accompanied by firm financial and technological commitments. Otherwise these agreements are nothing more than so much “hot air”.
Regardless of how the world’s political leaders, or ourselves, may choose to justify the lack of concrete action to deal with the causes of climate change and global warming, we cannot escape the roles we play as individuals in dealing with this problem. If we don’t take the time to vote and or study the positions of political leaders so that we can vote for candidates who favor aggressive steps to deal with climate change, then we must share the blame for a lack of action to deal with the issue with our political leaders.
Even closer to home we must also accept responsibility for our own actions or inaction to address the causes of climate change. Will we take the time to educate ourselves about what we can do in our own homes and businesses to reduce our carbon emissions? Will we take the actions necessary to cut our own contributions to the problem once we are aware of what they are?
How many of us are willing to park, much less sell one of our cars and take public transportation to school or work instead? How many of us are willing to conserve energy by turning down the thermostat or turning out the lights when we leave our homes or workplaces? How many of us are willing to pay for better insulation or more energy efficient appliances? How many of us are willing to pay carbon taxes for the petrol and electricity we use as a means of offsetting the costs of fixing this global problem?
If we are honest about it, from where I sit the answer to these questions for most of us is; we aren’t willing to.
Published on July 16th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
I closed last week’s column by asking how those of us who live in the nations of the industrialized world plan to explain to our children and grandchildren our decision to avoid addressing the problem of climate change by continuing to elect political leaders who won’t take any real action on this issue. I believe a truthful answer for most of us would be that we were simply too greedy and selfish to care. We also know our inaction will probably only lead to adverse consequences for other people instead of ourselves.
Many of us can and do blame our political leaders for failing to take more concrete steps to reduce our use of fossil fuel based energy and resources. But before you do, first ask yourself how politically active have you been supporting those politicians who favor more stringent measures to protect the global environment? Since 40% or more of us usually don’t exercise the democratic rights that we have come to take for granted in more developed countries, did you even bother to vote? Or were you too busy to take the time and make an effort to do so?
Or maybe we defend our inaction by taking a position, similar to former US President George Bush, which was that we wouldn’t agree to cut our own CO2 gas emissions until the poorer countries in the developing world also agreed to reduce their use of fossil fuels. Unfortunately many citizens in the developing world don’t have the same democratic political rights that we have. Even those that do, in countries like India, must also be excused because most of them are simply trying to survive economically and feed their families by whatever means possible.
While I was disappointed that the political leaders of the developing countries, led by China and India, refused to agree to commit to specific goals for cutting their carbon emissions by 2050 at the G8 summit in Italy last week, I am sympathetic to their arguments against doing so. After all these countries are merely following the same path out of poverty that the nations of the industrialized world used. If we want them to develop economically by using cleaner forms of energy, then we must help them to do so.
Developing countries are well aware that their increased use of fossil fuels in conjunction with deforestation is only making the problem of global warming worse. In fact China has now overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases due to its reliance on coal for energy and the 3rd and 4th largest sources of CO2 gases are Indonesia and Brazil because of rampant tropical deforestation. Even so, these countries still emit only 1/3 of the CO2 gases that developed countries do on a per person basis. Why should they now be expected to retard their own economic development in order to fix the damage caused by the past and current actions of the industrialized nations that produced the bulk of the pollution that causes global warming?
While I applaud the fact that the industrialized world has finally agreed to cut its own CO2 emissions by 80% come the year 2050, their agreement at last weeks G8 summit nonetheless leaves open the question of setting realistic mid-term goals to achieve this reduction during the next decade. Small wonder then why the developing countries have thus far refused to agree to cut their own CO2 emissions so that a 50% global reduction can be achieved by 2050.
Emerging countries want to see interim goals for reducing gas emissions as well as firm commitments to provide financial and technological help from more developed counties before they will agree to their own CO2 gas reduction targets. Sure they don’t trust us, but why should they given our past history of not meeting such goals?
Setting appropriate environmental standards for reducing CO2 pollution forty years hence is all well and good, but only if those goals also include realistic benchmarks that can be used to assess our progress. Telling developing countries you will help them cut their own emissions without undue harm to their own economic development sounds good, but it’s meaningless unless it’s accompanied by firm financial and technological commitments. Otherwise these agreements are nothing more than so much “hot air”.
Regardless of how the world’s political leaders, or ourselves, may choose to justify the lack of concrete action to deal with the causes of climate change and global warming, we cannot escape the roles we play as individuals in dealing with this problem. If we don’t take the time to vote and or study the positions of political leaders so that we can vote for candidates who favor aggressive steps to deal with climate change, then we must share the blame for a lack of action to deal with the issue with our political leaders.
Even closer to home we must also accept responsibility for our own actions or inaction to address the causes of climate change. Will we take the time to educate ourselves about what we can do in our own homes and businesses to reduce our carbon emissions? Will we take the actions necessary to cut our own contributions to the problem once we are aware of what they are?
How many of us are willing to park, much less sell one of our cars and take public transportation to school or work instead? How many of us are willing to conserve energy by turning down the thermostat or turning out the lights when we leave our homes or workplaces? How many of us are willing to pay for better insulation or more energy efficient appliances? How many of us are willing to pay carbon taxes for the petrol and electricity we use as a means of offsetting the costs of fixing this global problem?
If we are honest about it, from where I sit the answer to these questions for most of us is; we aren’t willing to.
America's first climate Change legislation (really)
The Bigger Picture
Published on July 9th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
For the first time in US history, on Friday afternoon of 26 June 2009 the US House of Representatives finally passed a comprehensive bill dealing with climate change. So in my next series of columns I want to discuss the pros and cons of this historic piece of legislation as well as its implications for the upcoming United Nations Framework for Climate Change (UNFCC) Convention in Copenhagen this December.
But before I begin this discussion, I want to share some closing thoughts regarding last week’s column dealing with the dangers of mixing religious codes of morality with politics and law, aka moral absolutism.
I believe that inherent in all of us as human beings, is a basic sense of right and wrong. Granted there may be a few exceptions, such as those sociopaths and psychopaths who are seemingly devoid of any sense of guilt for their actions, but for the most part we know that we should treat other people in society the same way that we would wish people to treat us. Even primitive societies with no religious codes or a belief in God, have been shown to have established codes of moral conduct that govern interactions among their members. So why is it that so many “more advanced” societies around the world insist on incorporating various different religious moral codes into their laws?
I believe they do so because many religious leaders in “more advanced” societies are afraid that they will lose their positions of power and influence if their respective societies don’t reflect their particular religious values. If their own particular religious faith is dominant in the society they live in, then they seek to reinforce their positions of dominance and prominence within that society by ensuring that the laws governing it reflect their own religious moral values. Sometimes they are very subtle about how they go about doing this and at other times they are anything but subtle with their approach.
Most of the religious moral codes of right and wrong that I am familiar with emphasize a belief in God and treating others with respect. But many so-called spiritual leaders harp on their own specific religious and doctrinal differences in an effort to impress upon their followers the superiority of their own particular religious beliefs. In the process of doing this they not only convince their followers of the need to follow the rules of moral conduct that they espouse, but also to disregard laws or spiritual beliefs that conflict with their own since they are obviously “inferior” or lacking in some respect.
While I believe in God and am a practicing Catholic, I also happen to believe that God gave us brains and the ability to think for ourselves for a reason. My experiences in life have been such that I simply don’t believe in moral absolutes. While I find the notion of abortion personally abhorrent, I cannot know what is like to be a woman faced with the reality of giving birth to a child under difficult circumstances.
If I was a teenage girl who had been raped by my father would I still think it was wrong to get an abortion? If I was a young woman in Darfur who had been raped by members of the Janjaweed would it be wrong for me to get an abortion instead of facing a life of ostracism from my own people and an uncertain future filled with pain and suffering for that child because of something beyond my control?
In a similar vein while lying and stealing are universally considered to be morally wrong, is this always true regardless of the circumstances? If I knew that telling the truth would result in great emotional pain or suffering for another person would I be wrong to lie? If I was desperate to feed my family would I be wrong to steal a loaf of bread, a ration of rice or some milk if this was my only choice?
During the course of our lives most of us will confront some tough moral questions from time to time. Maybe we will make the right decisions sometimes and the wrong decisions at others. But in the end we will also have to live with the consequences of those decisions, be they right or wrong. I have no problem with those who use a particular set of religious or moral codes to guide them in addressing these tough questions so long as they don’t judge me or others as wrong when we disagree with them.
This issue of one’s religious and or moral conduct also provides me with a nice segue into the topic I will be discussing in this and future columns; climate change due to man made global warming.
While there are still some politicians and segments of the population who question whether or not climate change is actually occurring and if so is it really due to man made causes, there is now a large body of scientific evidence that points to the fact that man made global warming is a reality we must come to grips with. I therefore think it is exceedingly irresponsible for nay saying politicians and their supporters to continue to resist changing our lifestyles to address this concern until there is incontrovertible proof. It has been people like this who have heretofore prevented the world’s biggest energy waster, the United States, from taking concrete steps to address global warming.
But the bigger problem I have is with the general population of the US and the rest of the world that doesn’t dispute the evidence that industrial and economic development fueled by energy from the burning of fossil fuels is causing climate change and harm to the global environment. What do they plan to tell their children and grandchildren who will inherit a world that has been changed for the worse? That they were more concerned about preserving their own energy intensive lifestyles than trying to address this problem earlier on?
Published on July 9th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
For the first time in US history, on Friday afternoon of 26 June 2009 the US House of Representatives finally passed a comprehensive bill dealing with climate change. So in my next series of columns I want to discuss the pros and cons of this historic piece of legislation as well as its implications for the upcoming United Nations Framework for Climate Change (UNFCC) Convention in Copenhagen this December.
But before I begin this discussion, I want to share some closing thoughts regarding last week’s column dealing with the dangers of mixing religious codes of morality with politics and law, aka moral absolutism.
I believe that inherent in all of us as human beings, is a basic sense of right and wrong. Granted there may be a few exceptions, such as those sociopaths and psychopaths who are seemingly devoid of any sense of guilt for their actions, but for the most part we know that we should treat other people in society the same way that we would wish people to treat us. Even primitive societies with no religious codes or a belief in God, have been shown to have established codes of moral conduct that govern interactions among their members. So why is it that so many “more advanced” societies around the world insist on incorporating various different religious moral codes into their laws?
I believe they do so because many religious leaders in “more advanced” societies are afraid that they will lose their positions of power and influence if their respective societies don’t reflect their particular religious values. If their own particular religious faith is dominant in the society they live in, then they seek to reinforce their positions of dominance and prominence within that society by ensuring that the laws governing it reflect their own religious moral values. Sometimes they are very subtle about how they go about doing this and at other times they are anything but subtle with their approach.
Most of the religious moral codes of right and wrong that I am familiar with emphasize a belief in God and treating others with respect. But many so-called spiritual leaders harp on their own specific religious and doctrinal differences in an effort to impress upon their followers the superiority of their own particular religious beliefs. In the process of doing this they not only convince their followers of the need to follow the rules of moral conduct that they espouse, but also to disregard laws or spiritual beliefs that conflict with their own since they are obviously “inferior” or lacking in some respect.
While I believe in God and am a practicing Catholic, I also happen to believe that God gave us brains and the ability to think for ourselves for a reason. My experiences in life have been such that I simply don’t believe in moral absolutes. While I find the notion of abortion personally abhorrent, I cannot know what is like to be a woman faced with the reality of giving birth to a child under difficult circumstances.
If I was a teenage girl who had been raped by my father would I still think it was wrong to get an abortion? If I was a young woman in Darfur who had been raped by members of the Janjaweed would it be wrong for me to get an abortion instead of facing a life of ostracism from my own people and an uncertain future filled with pain and suffering for that child because of something beyond my control?
In a similar vein while lying and stealing are universally considered to be morally wrong, is this always true regardless of the circumstances? If I knew that telling the truth would result in great emotional pain or suffering for another person would I be wrong to lie? If I was desperate to feed my family would I be wrong to steal a loaf of bread, a ration of rice or some milk if this was my only choice?
During the course of our lives most of us will confront some tough moral questions from time to time. Maybe we will make the right decisions sometimes and the wrong decisions at others. But in the end we will also have to live with the consequences of those decisions, be they right or wrong. I have no problem with those who use a particular set of religious or moral codes to guide them in addressing these tough questions so long as they don’t judge me or others as wrong when we disagree with them.
This issue of one’s religious and or moral conduct also provides me with a nice segue into the topic I will be discussing in this and future columns; climate change due to man made global warming.
While there are still some politicians and segments of the population who question whether or not climate change is actually occurring and if so is it really due to man made causes, there is now a large body of scientific evidence that points to the fact that man made global warming is a reality we must come to grips with. I therefore think it is exceedingly irresponsible for nay saying politicians and their supporters to continue to resist changing our lifestyles to address this concern until there is incontrovertible proof. It has been people like this who have heretofore prevented the world’s biggest energy waster, the United States, from taking concrete steps to address global warming.
But the bigger problem I have is with the general population of the US and the rest of the world that doesn’t dispute the evidence that industrial and economic development fueled by energy from the burning of fossil fuels is causing climate change and harm to the global environment. What do they plan to tell their children and grandchildren who will inherit a world that has been changed for the worse? That they were more concerned about preserving their own energy intensive lifestyles than trying to address this problem earlier on?
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