Cancun was not a surprise. Nor was it a failure. This much is easy to say.
But was it a success? This is a more difficult question. I used to have an irritating friend. Every time you made a strong, implausibly simple claim – something like “Cancun was a success” – he would reply “Compared to what?” It was a pedantic device, but it worked well enough. It made you think, which, I suppose, is why it was irritating.
Rumors running through the halls of the Moon Palace, the Cancun resort where delegates from the 192 countries that belong to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are meeting, paint a bleak picture of the possibility of moving toward a fair and effective climate deal in the near future.
The UN Climate Conference (COP16) in Cancun is turning out to be both anti-climactic and anti-climatic.
Colombia’s ambassador to Mexico called the Cancun regional summit an “expression of Banana Republic discourse.”
The first thing to say about the climate negotiations – meeting soon in sunny Mexico – is that they’re teetering at the edge of what, back in the day, we used to call a “legitimation crisis.” On every side, folks are eager to suggest the negotiations have become a waste of time. It’s gotten to the point where people are apologizing for going to Cancun, as if it were bad for their image to be seen at the climate talks.
As deserts expand and droughts persist, desperate people begin fighting over the water that remains. Elsewhere, rising sea levels create mass migrations. These portraits of human tragedy caused by climate change have become environmental security threats that the U.S. military now worries about.
After suffering through months of intense battles between Islamist militants and the army, the impoverished northwestern region of Pakistan must now endure the severe ramifications of a fierce wave of flooding in September that has so far claimed close to 2,000 lives, wiped out whole villages, and left innocent families clinging to the tops of their submerged homes hoping to be rescued.
Fears of an aging planet and becoming outnumbered by immigrants have helped to make overpopulation a political third rail in the West.
They had to eat spam and Pop-Tarts. They had to shower in the dark with cold water. The toilets overflowed. When the Carnival Cruise ship finally docked in San Diego last week after three days on the high seas without electricity, CNN interviewed two of the youngest passengers in an attempt to play up the drama of the ordeal. Frankly, the kids didn’t look particularly discomfited by the 72-hour experience. They got bored playing board games. They didn’t like the smelly toilets. The cheese sandwiches really sucked. Still, if given another opportunity, they would go on a cruise again.
Under the guise of developing ‘climate-ready’ crops, the world’s largest seed and agrochemical corporations are pressuring governments to allow what could become the broadest and most dangerous patent claims in intellectual property history. A new report by ETC Group[1] reveals a dramatic upsurge in the number of patent claims on ‘climate-ready’ genes, plants and technologies that will supposedly allow biotech crops to tolerate drought and other environmental stresses (i.e. abiotic stresses) associated with climate change.