I Woz Right - Political Will Vanishes at Copenhagen

While Obama has a ready excuse not to make a deal at Copenhagen, the others aren't so lucky. We certainly aren't. The House won't allow heavy cuts in carbon emissions through the US legislature. The EU didn't want to sign up to 30% by 2020, without others signing up to a similar cut in emissions. The Chinese say that 'It's not fair,' like some proverbial spoilt bastard. What is abundantly clear from all of this, is that money is more important than survival. Better to burn out in a frenzy of consumerism than to fade away as puritan environmentalists, knitting their way to salvation.

The left has always owned the environmental arguments. And that is kind of the problem. The right who are forever macho and uncaring, think that job security overrides environmental protection every time. Sensible people, (and I guess now a little more scared than they were), know that environmental security trumps economic security. But we're not dealing with sensible people. We're dealing with the likes of Murdock, who knows that pushing the right wing agenda will earn him more money than the left. It is the left which is losing ground right now. And the public seem to be listening and becoming climate change deniers, much like the windbags in the US who shout at the TV camera's every time a crack appears in the left's argument. George Bonbiot and his fellow lefties then just come across as whingers and panickers. So what do we do? Do what I always believed we would do, sit tight and wait for the really big disasters to start happening. Then it will be too late. Then the public will want blood and cry 'Why didn't you protect us?' Maybe they'll say, 'we were just following orders.' It will be too late for embarrassment, and in a democracy most of the leaders at Copenhagen will have been moved on to the lecture circuit, leaving people of my generation and younger to make good with the apologies and excuses.

Maybe a miracle is what we need, as Polly Toynbee says in her opinion piece in the Guardian? (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/dec/18/gutless-planet-future-copenhagen-leaders) Who knows? I think I am right though. We won't change in time and we'll just have to live with all the chaos. That's exactly what's going to happen. I guarantee it. By the way Polly, what does pusillanimous mean?