Martin LeFevre: Global Warming As Metaphor

The verdict is in. Copenhagen proved that national governments and international institutions, even led by the wunderkind Barack Obama, cannot and will not provide an adequate response to the man-made ecological crisis.

Barack the Smooth was never going to allow the climate conference to end in obvious failure. Like his health reform bill domestically, he has smoothed out the rough edges of the fact and called it a success. Even though, as the New York Times said, “the conference did not meet even the modest expectations that leaders set for this meeting, notably by failing to set a 2010 goal for reaching a binding international treaty to seal the provisions of the accord.”

As reported, with the Copenhagen conference unable to agree on binding limits on greenhouse gases linked to climate change, Obama settled for a three-page agreement with no short or midterm goals but a long-term commitment to prevent world temperatures from rising by more than two degrees by mid-century.

Never think God doesn’t have a sense of humor. (And yes, I’m being metaphorical, since though there is an intrinsic intelligence in the universe, there is no supreme being.) Obama had to leave Copenhagen to get into DC before the worst snowstorm in the city’s history, without even signing the five-nation ‘accord’ between China, India, South Africa, Brazil, and the United States.

Yes that’s another ‘G,’ which stands for G-5, which really stands for god-awful excuse for action. These five (and Barack and Hillary had to crash a meeting of the other four at that, since they had gotten together without the ‘sole remaining superpower’ to work out a deal), presented a toothless fait accompli to the other 188 nations.

The Unites States is applying the same principal it did to its crooked banks and financial institutions last year as the world teetered on the edge of an economic abyss: Too big to fail. But we have failed; the game’s up and everyone knows it except the politicians and blissfully ignorant masses in the United States.

The day after the most important gathering of nations in the world’s history, the environmental summit didn’t even make the evening news in the States. A meaningless Rubicon was crossed--the purported attainment of 60 votes in the Senate for a half-assed health care bill. That’s the margin needed to prevent Republican filibuster for a no-public-option bill that bends over backwards for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Whereas George Junior was conducting an experiment to see how long he could look straight into the camera and bald-faced lie, Barack is conducting an experiment to see how suave he can be in passing off gold-leafed turds.

“For the first time in history,” Mr. Obama said, “all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change.” Pardon me while I throw up my eggnog.

Copenhagen marks the ignominious end of a nearly two decade long process of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which entailed a series of 15 conventions following the 1992 climate summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro. As Jeffrey Sachs said simply and unequivocally after the chaos and contentiousness of the talks were over, “the process is broken.”

Where to now? Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations said in a statement that managed to be both laughably understated and aggravatingly ambiguous, “The climate treaty process isn’t going to die, but the real work of coordinating international efforts to reduce emissions will primarily occur elsewhere.”

OK, but where on our shrunken globe is elsewhere? Is it where Arnold “The Terminator” Schwarzenegger, governor of the late, great state of California, who also was in Copenhagen, pointed to in proposing that “subnational governments” like his disaster in Sacramento take the lead in environmental issues? Everyone took that seriously, especially after Arnold reminded people that he was last in Copenhagen to make “movie promotions and do weight lifting and body building.” It’s gotten downright surreal out there.

We’re now in the position, given the failure of the UN framework, of having fulfilled the extreme Right’s hatred of international law and enforcement (a position that squares well with China’s ideas of sovereignty), as well as the extreme Left’s dreams of anarchy. But then, given the curve of the space-time continuum, if you go far enough in either direction you meet the other end.

Not that President Obama’s obsession with the great middle path is correct. Walking down the dotted line in the middle of the road is a certain way to get run over, which is how both Barack and Hillary looked on Friday.

Impossibly, Obama promised to reduce American greenhouse gas emissions and raise tens of billions of dollars to help other countries deal with global warming. That simply isn’t going to happen next year, as hard-assed Republicans and noodle-spined Democrats worry about their own political hides in the mid-term elections. Nobody is in any mood to consider major changes in the American oil economy, no matter how much Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry repeat the idiot-line that a green economy will create “jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.”

And what about the developing countries, which are and will be most affected by climate change? As the Times reported, “speaker after speaker from the developing world denounced the deal as a sham process fashioned behind closed doors by a club of rich countries and large emerging powers.” Given no other option on Saturday, the remaining countries “took note” of the accord, to which Ban Ki-Moon said without irony, “Finally, we sealed the deal.”

What is required to meet the ecological crisis that humans have created, a crisis that for which global warming has served as both emergency and as metaphor for threats to most of the earth’s animals, to the oceans and air, to clean water and arable land?

Obviously, there must be transmutation, leadership, and decentralization. The change and leadership will not come, as hoped, from Barack Obama and the United States.

The future, to the extent humankind has a viable future, belongs to undivided human beings (the literal meaning of individual), and to cities and regions working in collaboration with individuals, cities, and regions.

The Treaty of Westphalia ended in Copenhagen. But an accord by human beings has yet to be forged. Let’s get to work.

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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