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Benno Hansen

New Report issues a warning about humanity's ability to survive without a major change ... - 0 views

www.clubofrome.org/?p=4211

report climate change sustainability Jørgen Randers Club of Rome

shared by Benno Hansen on 12 May 12 - No Cached
  • The Report says the main cause of future problems is the excessively short-term predominant political and economic model.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - 'The real enemy is humanity itself' - 2 views

pambazuka.org/...82402

sustainability environment energy climate change environmentalism food green

shared by Arabica Robusta on 26 May 12 - No Cached
nehasharma786 liked it
  • the first “Earth Summit,” was held in Rio, leading to the Agenda 21 “blueprint for a sustainable planet,” UN conventions on climate change and biodiversity, and the creation of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (UNSCD). Since then, an entire ecosystem of global, national, governmental and non-governmental organisations has emerged to advocate and implement the closer integration of human productive life with knowledge about the environment: to observe the “limits to growth.” The most notable of these is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), under which a global agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions is being sought.
  • There is vast disparity between what the advocates of political environmentalism have claimed and reality. So why are world leaders set to meet next month in Rio at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development?
  • The 1972 Stockholm meeting discussed the “need for new concepts of sovereignty, based not on the surrender of national sovereignties but on better means of exercising them collectively, and with a greater sense of responsibility for the common good.” In other words, the world can be fed, clothed and housed at the cost of autonomy. This surrendering of autonomy is a price worth paying, according to its advocates, whose argument has been reduced to a neat little slogan: global problems need global solutions.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • For instance, while trying to understand why scepticism of climate-change policies seems to correspond to a conservative persuasion, the Guardian’s Damian Carrington recently opined: “The problem is that global environmental problems require global action, which means cooperation if there are to be no free-riders. That implies international treaties and regulations, which to some on the right equate with communism.”
  • James Lovelock, has distanced himself from the more extreme implications of his hypothesis. Where Lovelock once predicted “Gaia’s revenge,” he has reflected in a short interview for MSNBC.com on his alarmist tome, and criticised others such as Al Gore for their over-emphasis on catastrophic narratives. This is a remarkable volte face in itself, but reflects a broader phenomenon: the coming to fruition of environmentalism’s incoherence.
  • The idea that there are too many people, or that the natural world is so fragile that these things are too difficult for normal, democratic politics to deliver, flies in the face of facts.
  • The truth of “sustainability,” and the meeting at Rio next month, is that it is not our relationship with the natural world that it wishes to control, but human desires, autonomy and sovereignty. That is why, in 1993, the Club of Rome published its report, The First Global Revolution, written by the club’s founder and president, Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider. The authors determined that, in order to overcome political failures, it was necessary to locate “a common enemy against whom we can unite.”
  • Arabica Robusta on 26 May 12
     
    On one level, the critique of the "managerial ethos" is commendable.  On another level, the author seems content with presenting arguments that range perilously close to the James Inhofe "climate change is a hoax" camp.  This is fine, but it is not enough to claim that sustainability is all about politics.  One should offer good arguments in support of this, and in response to strong arguments from opposing perspectives.
  • rextag on 17 Mar 17
     
    If humanity don't act in time it could be the end of our lifetime soon natural gas report.
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