I had a very busy end of the week and now I’m out of town, so I haven’t been reporting. Here, however, are two pretty interesting reads for you, from two of my favorite writers.
The first is from Fiona Harvey, indefatigable environmental correspondent for the FT. She has some unkind words for some of the more visible environmental organizations whose performance in Copenhagen she found, let’s say “wanting.” Green is the colour of climate discord is the title of her analysis on the op-ed page yesterday. While she notes that there was a lot more substance than many credited coming out of Copenhagen – as I also noted here in December – she also excoriates Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Oxfam for playing “…an exceptionally destructive role in the two weeks of the Copenhagen summit. They fomented discord among developing nations and their rejection of all compromises provided a cover for those governments with a vested interest in the talks’ failure. Climate sceptics rejoiced – the greens were doing a far better job of wrecking Copenhagen than they ever could.” Ouch! I think, however, that she should be a little more circumspect in this, simply in not tarring all the environmental groups with the same brush. Important groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Fund, among others, were constructive before, during and after. Nevertheless, she’s right about some of the more visible groups being unrealistic in their expectations and unhelpful in their rhetoric.
The other piece I would commend to you is from Andrew Leonard at Salon.com. He writes “How The World Works” which is a terrific column. You may have heard about Al Qaeda’s leader – if he’s still alive and in the driver’s seat – calling out the US for causing the climate crisis. Osama bin Laden: Eco-terrorist is the title. The insight here is he equates the sincerity of the efforts of this particular mass murderer to that of several Republicans in the Senate who have just offered a “No Cost Stimulus” proposal that “…aims to boost the economy by weakening the environmental impact review process, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and forbidding the Environmental Protection Agency from classifying greenhouse gases as air pollution.” (See The Reaction from me recently on one particularly dark aspect of all this: the attempt to subvert the EPA’s responsibility to protect the public from harm.)
Leonard says, eloquently: “The only thing more ridiculous than the GOP’s No Cost Stimulus Act is a mass murderer parading his passion for Gaia. The two sides are made for each other, and their unholy matrimony will help assure that nothing worthwhile gets done.”
