With a crucial conference on climate change taking place in Durban, South Africa, in December, Patrick Bond cuts through the elite conspiracy that will result in a no deal scenario and a continued rise in global temperatures. ’The strongest possible stance will be needed to finally address the mess,’ he writes.
Judging by what transpired at last week’s global climate negotiations in the former West German capital, Bonn, it appears certain that in just over five months time, the South African port city of Durban will host a conference of procrastinators, the ‘COP 17’ (Conference of Parties), dooming the earth to the frying pan. Further inaction on climate change will leave our city’s name as infamous for elite incompetence and political betrayal as is Oslo’s in the Middle East.
It appears certain that Pretoria’s alliance with Washington, Beijing, New Delhi and Brasilia, witnessed in the shameful 2009 Copenhagen Accord, will be extended to other saboteurs of the Kyoto Protocol, especially from Ottawa, Tokyo and Moscow, along with Brussels and London carbon traders.
What everyone now predicts is a conference of paralysis. Not only will the Kyoto Protocol be allowed to expire at the end of its first commitment period (2012). Far worse, Durban will primarily be a conference of profiteers, as carbon trading - the privatisation of the air, giving rich states and companies the property-right to pollute - is cemented as the foundation of the next decade’s global climate malgovernance.