Global warming: a public threat?

Contribution by George Sbokos (info@ecothesis.gr)

Dear Antonis,

thanks for delivering the ISWA White Paper Summary on Waste and Climate Change. I hope your message will be a part of the decision making proccess in Copenhagen. On the same day, the 7th of Dec. “…an important piece of news came from the U.S.: the Environmental Protection Agency found that the gases contributing to global warming threaten public health and opens the way for establishment of standards regardless of developments in Congress…”. So I first had to ask myself, how tight could the american evaluation range of the importance of global warming be, in order to be understood and manageable only as a "public threat".

Then I questioned if is it not a matter of a tight evaluation range. The Irak and Afganistan issue had to be labeled as a “terrorist threat” in order to legalize the bombardments, the H1N1 had to be upgraded to a “pandemie” in order to forward the use of untested vaccines. I came up to the conclusion that Bureaucracy and laws have to be neutralized, in order to move on with some political issues. In that meaning, “public threat” might be the key word to put the U.S. Congress off.

Even if so, that might be a "CHANGE WE CAN". I mean, till now we were only common to the famous words of President George Bush senior "the American lifestyle is non-negotiable", delivered to justify its refusal to participate in the first World Summit on Environment in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Or the words of the George Bush junior administration in 2002, which refused to sign the Kyoto agreement on climate change and reiterated its refusal to the G8 Summit in July 2005, arguing that “the U.S. economy will be destroyed if we try to reduce emissions from industry to the levels indicated the Kyoto agreement”.

Consider, the world would only need 66,7 billions per anno to apply the goals against global warming. Consider, this amount is 12 times less than the money given to the banks last year. Consider, it represents the 2/3 of the annual worldwide military spending. Consider it is the ½ of the money given to advertisement (Le Monde, 6.12.2009).

Wish the best and raise your voice to an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen!