Riccardo Petrella: the Copenhagen Call
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The outlook for for the future of planet Earth and its inhabitants is anything but good. The Copenhagen Conference will be held in December in order to decide on the post-Kyoto rules. The wealthy Countries that are responsible for 80% of all CO2 emissions are not prepared to make any commitments and, given this example, the poor Countries are not even thinking about it. The main role player at the Conference is Green Business, in other words, money. As far as the banks and multinational companies are concerned, it is sufficient to maintain the current development model and paint it green. The planet cannot wait any longer and with anything more than a two-degree increase in temperature, the first problem will be a shortage of water and billions of people suffering from thirst. An issue that will be totally ignored at the Conference. Riccardo Petrella, one of the worlds leading experts on issues related to water, will now explain precisely what we can expect in the future.

Interview with Riccardo Petrella:

The Kyoto objectives betrayed by the wealthy Countries

We should be extremely concerned about the progress of the preparations for the Copenhagen Conference, which is supposed to cover topics such as climate change and is expected to culminate in the signature of a new, post-Kyoto treaty, scheduled to come into effect in 2013, which would govern the world economy and the relationship between the economy, development, welfare and environmental management over the next fifteen to twenty years. This is set to be the greatest-ever global negotiation resulting in a global agreement on the future of humanity.
So why should we then be so concerned? The reason, based on what we see emerging, is that the wealthy Nations – dare we say it – are failing to maintain the promises that they committed themselves to in the past. As you know, all the studies conducted by the International Panel on Climate Change, a group of 1,500 scientists that has been working on the problem of climate change for a number of years on behalf of the United Nations, have shown that if the world wants to prevent a terrible environmental catastrophe, we have to limit the increase in average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere to less than two degrees from now until 2100. In order to achieve this objective, all of the studies show that the 1990 levels of CO2 emissions will have to be reduced by 60% by the year 2050. This would entail a reduction of 80% for the wealthy Countries and a reduction of 20% for other Countries.
We are now noticing that the wealthy Countries don’t want to maintain nor to comply with these indications and indeed, as regards the interim objectives to be achieved by 2020, which require wealthy nations to reduce their 1990 emission levels by 20%, only Germany and to some extent France have indicated that they still aim to achieve these quantitative emission reduction objectives. Meanwhile, on the 12th June, Japan stated that they are only prepared to commit to achieving a maximum reduction of 8% while the United States has said two important things: the first was that the Country had no intention of reducing its CO2 emissions by any more than 4%, which is a far cry from what they should be doing, and secondly that the new Administration has shown the same tendency as that of all the previous Administrations. Obama has confirmed that the United States is not in favour of a global agreement and that the guiding principle for the new Copenhagen treaty should be one where each Country makes its own commitment at the national level, but there should be no global agreement specifying mutual commitments and verifications to see whether Countries have met their targets. And so, on 12 June in Bonn, at a preparatory meeting for the Copenhagen Conference, they stated that they themselves would not be asking China to commit itself in any way, a gesture of understanding that says: “We understand that China is a developing Country and we cannot expect that Country to commit itself to achieving quantifiable objectives that would force the Chinese to not achieve the rate of growth that they actually deserve..”. In actual fact, what the United States is attempting to do is to create a United States/China agreement by saying: “you don’t need to make any commitment whatsoever because we won’t ask anything of you”, hoping that, in return, China will not require any equivalent emission reduction commitment from the United States. Now, we are well aware that Brazil, India, China, Russia and all the developing Countries have been saying for years that if the wealthy Countries refuse to accept their responsibilities and take the lead in terms of this issue, given that they have been guilty of plundering the planet’s resources over the past 100/150 years, if the wealthy Nations don’t significantly reduce their emissions, then the emerging Countries will rightly refuse to make any commitments whatsoever in this regard. The bulk of the responsibility lies fairly and squarely with the wealthy Nations. And so we are left with a huge problem. Will the wealthy Nations manage to meet their commitments? Will the wealthy Nations take the necessary action in order to avoid a huge catastrophe and the terrible potential upheaval that will result should the atmospheric temperature increase by more than two degrees?
The second issue that we should be concerned about is that we are seeing – and this was confirmed at the end of May – that not only the leaders of the wealthy Countries, but also those of the so-called emerging Countries are convinced that the problems associated with climate change and even the problems resulting from the current economic/financial crisis can be resolved purely by menas of a green economy and making changes to the energy system. So all they are doing at the moment is talking about green motorcars, green bridges, green railways, green Coca-Cola, green houses, green cinemas, green tomatoes and green everything: meaning, you understand, a green economy, but covered in the green sauce of capitalism, and they are all saying that we must re-establish the global economy by means of economic tools such as private investment, market mechanisms and the financial and market exploitation of the forests, trees, waters, etc.

The Copenhagen Call

This newly-found consensus, which I would call the global green consensus, was recently confirmed on the 24th and 26th May in Copenhagen, when the Danish Government took the initiative and brought together the world of business and finance. More than one thousand people came together at the World Business Summit held on 24 and 26 May and approved a document entitled “The Copenhagen Call”, in which the business world laid out its demands to the politicians and the future negotiators of the Copenhagen Treaty. In essence the business and financial world’s demands focus on two specific issues. The first is that technological innovation must be encouraged with regard to the lead times and yield mechanisms of the technical innovations themselves, in other words, in accordance with an economic and financial rationale, and the second is that it is the public sector’s duty to provide the incentive funding and the tax incentives for private enterprise. Therefore, the Copenhagen Call is an affirmative statement by the business world that, when all is said and done, green capitalism is a panacea for the problems that will have to be addressed in the new global agreement. To the extent that, two days ago, Danish Prime Minister Rassmussen declared that he agreed fully with the proposals that emerged from the World Business Summit in the form of the Copenhagen Call and that they would be the carriers of the ideas expressed by the business world.
And now for the second issue, namely, should any proposals be tabled in Copenhagen that do not coincide with the priorities set and adopted by the business world, what are the chances that these proposals would be adopted? Finally, here comes the main issue, namely that the Copenhagen Treaty is being monopolised by the issue of energy, in other words, that our leaders are telling us that the biggest global problem, and the one that needs to be resolved at this global negotiating table to ensure the future of humanity, is the issue of energy. However, while energy may well be the biggest global problem for us wealthy people, it is not really a problem for the 2,8 billion poor people in the world, in other words, for the African, Asian and Latin American people their main problems are access to water, access to food, access to healthcare, how to obtain decent housing, how to get a decent education, and not how to get green motorcars or green homes. Also because in the future, once we have 200 million additional green motorcars on the world’s roads, where will these 200 million green motorcars go? In which city and on which roads? And when we have green motorcars, green homes, new houses using passive and active energy, which we must have, in New York, Singapore, Melbourne and Paris, will this contribute to the upliftment of the three billion poor people around the world, or will it simply improve the quality of life of the billion or so rich people?
And so the problem becomes the following: "Why have our leaders identified the issue of energy as being the only priority on the agenda for the Copenhagen Conference?"

The future of humanity depends on the protection of our water supplies

Here is the real reason why our battle must continue: water. Water is the world’s number one problem, so much so that the inter-governmental climate change group has drafted a number of reports stating that the main consequence of climate change revolve around water. Water is set to become the one necessity of life that is most affected by climate change, namely the melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers that feed all of the world’s water catchment areas. Water will be the scene of the greatest devastation and the biggest problem, and the studies conducted by the GEC (Global Environment Centre Foundation) and the IPCC confirm that by 2050, 60% of the world’s population will be living in areas subject to severe water shortages and where there is no water, there can be no life. So one of the important consequences of climate change is access to water and to life itself, yet water is not even mentioned on the agenda items for discussion at the Copenhagen Conference, so we need to push to have the issue of water included on the Copenhagen agenda. We are not certain whether or not we will be successful and current indications are that we will not be. The problem is that it is not true that people have to accept as inevitable the belief that it is impossible to think about the interests and the future of humanity and the right to life, which is a recognised human right and one that is sacrosanct because life itself is sacred.
The Copenhagen Conference is scheduled to take place from 7 to 18 December and we therefore have six months left in which, I believe, all of the human rights movements and those dealing with matters such as citizenship and water must go to the attack on all fronts. As regards the various religions, we are now attempting to arrange a major meeting involving representatives of the various religions to draft an appeal to the Copenhagen Conference to respect the sanctity of life and to truly address the needs of the world. And what about the academics and researchers? Why don’t the researchers and the university academics organise some major demonstrations in an attempt to force the Copenhagen Conference to include the real problems affecting the future of our planet, scientifically speaking, on the Conference agenda? Irrespective of whether one is old or young, an academic or simply a man on the street, a pensioner, a woman, a Buddhist or a Christian, I believe that we have a tremendous agenda to deal with in the next six months, as well as a duty to be present on site at the Copenhagen conference.