Agrofuel development has arrived on the global stage. Just this year, the number of declarations, dollars, and development plans that have gone to agrofuels are unparalleled in any other sector. An idea that languished for decades has suddenly become the darling of politicians, big business, international financiers and the media.
Albert Beveridge was a promising politician in his thirties when he stood up to speak in favor of war and the promotion of democracy to his peers in the U.S. Senate. A historian, Beveridge unabashedly called for the United States to remake the globe. “We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world,” Beveridge proclaimed. “And we will move forward to our work, not howling out regrets like slaves whipped to their burdens but with gratitude for a task worthy of our strength and thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world.”
Back in September 2002, Maher Arar was passing through JFK airport in New York. He was expecting a simple transit. A Syrian-born Canadian citizen and wireless technology consultant, Arar was traveling home to Ottawa after a vacation with his family in Tunis. The stopover in New York was the best deal he could get with his frequent flyer miles. He had no inkling of what would happen next. He didn’t know that he would spend the next ten months being tortured in a secret jail.
Asha Hagi Elmi was horrified at what was happening in her country. A member of the Somali parliament and leading women’s rights activist, Elmi watched the Ethiopian invasion in December 2006 push her country from precarious stability over the edge into catastrophe.” There is no food, no shelter, no water, no medicine and people are dying every day, children are dying every day,” she told a British reporter in April 2007.1 In the ensuing war among Somali insurgents, Somali clans, and Ethiopian troops, thousands have died. The fighting has also created a large-scale humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Topon Mondal doesn’t drive a big car. The temperature inside his home often rises above 100 degrees, but he never runs an air conditioner. In fact, living in a hut and laboring by hand, the Bangladeshi farmer doesn’t contribute very much at all to global warming. Still, climate change has already transformed his life. He used to grow rice and vegetables, as his father did, in the village of Munshiganj, about 55 miles from the Bay of Bengal in thesouthwestern corner of the South Asian country. Then the sea levels began to rise and salt leached into the groundwater beneath Topon Mondal’s village. The rice and vegetable harvests—which had helped to feed his family, his village, and his country—began to decline. Mondal switched to shrimp farming. Virtually all the shrimp harvest, however, now goes overseas. “The shrimp are far too valuable for us to eat,” he says.
With its emphasis on military solutions, the Bush administration has insisted that we focus just on security. We must focus instead on a just security, because there can be no real security without justice.
On the opening panel of the Arctic Science Summit Week, Jeff Miotke announced, “Climate change policy must be based on sound silence.” It was a poignant and telling slip of the tongue. Miotke, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary of Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental Scientific Affairs, joked that his error might have “just cost me my job.” Then he promptly corrected himself: “sound science not silence.” The audience at the March 2007 meeting, a veritable who’s who of leading polar scientists, burst into laughter.
Miotke’s Freudian slip was bittersweet given the failure of leadership on climate change from Washington in general and the White House in particular. The Bush administration’s legacy of denials has morphed into present-day foot-dragging. In November 2006 the shrill pronouncements of President Bush and his advisors prompted outgoing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to note that climate skeptics “are out of step, out of arguments, and out of time.”
The headlines in the lead-up to the Group of Eight (G8) meeting here in Rostock have focused on the dispute over the proposed declaration on climate change. German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants the rich countries to commit to limiting global warming to two degrees centigrade. This will involve cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 50% of their 1990 levels by 2050 and increasing energy efficiency by 50% by 2020. Merkel’s proposal drew predictable opposition from George W. Bush. However, to contain further damage to his battered image, Bush called for a conference of the biggest greenhouse gas polluters to deal with global warming. This has alarmed Merkel, who wants to keep the process securely within the United Nations.
Kalamu ya Salaam is a writer and educator from New Orleans. He talks here with poet E. Ethelbert Miller.
With over 1400 local events, the April 14 National Day of Climate Action offered a national wakeup call, with citizens in every state raising their voices. But even as we build on this powerful day to move forward, we need to talk about why it’s been so hard for Americans to recognize the climate issue’s urgency.