Durban is better than nothing
by David Atkins
So this is a pleasant surprise:
UN climate conference approves landmark deal
New accord will put all countries under the same legal requirements to control greenhouse gases by 2020 at the latest.
The president of the UN climate conference in South Africa has announced agreement on a programme mapping out a new course by all nations to fight climate change over the coming decades.
Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who is also South Africa’s foreign minister, said the 194-party conference had agreed to start negotiations on a new accord that would put all countries under the same legal regime to enforce their commitments to control greenhouse gases.
“We came here with plan A, and we have concluded this meeting with plan A to save one planet for the future of our children and our grandchildren to come,” Nkoana-Mashabane said.
“We have made history,” she said.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said the deal represents “an important advance in our work on climate change”.
Delegates agreed to start work next year on the new treaty to be decided by 2015 and to come into force by 2020.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, of course. Details of the treaty still need to be hammered out. It doesn’t go nearly far enough, fast enough to where we need to be. Of course, it’s anybody’s guess what where “we need to be” even is, or can be.
But small steps are better than no steps. The best hope for humanity right now that worldwide protests against the financial oligarchy continue, that the austerity craze becomes increasingly seen as the awful and insanely stupid trend that it is, that the inevitable global climate-change-induced weather events of the next few years drive more attention to this issue, and that the nations of the world cooperate on an international Apollo Program of sorts to achieve sustainable energy innovations and conservation investments to quickly mitigate the problem.
That’s optimistic by far, but it’s the best shot for humanity’s future–to say nothing of the future of the millions of other species on the planet that are rapidly dying off due to our lack of action.
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