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Blogs by Gregory K Sams
COPENHAGEN – do they give a damn? 12/14/2009 4:22:30 AM
Putting our hopes in summits such as Copenhagen is giving more power to those who perpetuate the problems we seek to solve. YES – we need to do something about the rampant destruction that humanity is raining up on the environment on all levels. We need to respect our beautiful planet and treat it like a gracious host who is letting us share their roof. You would not shit in your host’s drawing room or chop up their dining room table to make firewood? Yet this is how we treat our planet.
All that the “great and the good” who have flown into Copenhagen will do, if anything, is devise new means to tax us, utilizing the great rationale of saving the world thereby. Much of their harvest will, of course, apply to funding all their new fully staffed green departments as well as junkets to Dubai, Copenhagen and the like.
Funds left over to be spent will continue to be applied to daft and environmentally damaging schemes such as biofuels that can use more oil in their production than is displaced by their use, whilst depriving the world of food for human consumption. More will be spent to permanently disfigure our landscape with a new generation of nuclear power plants even though no funds seem to be forthcoming for the insanely costly process of decommissioning old plants. No doubt the automotive industry lobbyists will convince government that subsidies on new cleaner cars is the answer. And then there are carbon trading schemes, having a curious resonance with the old Papal indulgences.
I am not being bitter but realistic, for governement and politicians are the problem – it is they who have been subsidizing the destruction of rainforests for decades and destroying our Western agricultural system in order to subsidize cheap meat and animal products. It is they who have subsidized and insured the uninsurable nuclear power industry. It is they who spend hundreds, if not thousands, of times more on military spending then they do on anything peace-oriented or environmentally beneficial. This will not change.
It is we who need to change, and the less power we give to government to solve the problems of the world the more likely we are to find means to solve them ourselves. For a deeper understanding of this fundamental dilemma, please go to my online book (also available in print) titled “Uncommon Sense – the State is Out of Date. Online at www.gregorysams.com
