A crime of unthinkable proportions was perpetrated by the Obama Administration and the other developed countries of the world that participated in the latest UN Global Warming conference during the last two weeks in Durban, South Africa. The conference concluded last Friday.
A deal was struck at the conference that put profit over people, resulting in the escalation of global warming deaths that are currently occurring at the rate of tens of thousands per year worldwide. Based on this deal, global warming deaths are now estimated to exceed hundreds of thousands of deaths per year by the end of the decade. Global warming apartheid is disproportionally impacting Africa because of their tropical climate. Scientists measure that for every 1 degree global temperature increase, Africa’s temperature increases 1.5 degrees.
Predictably, the US media, 80% of which is controlled by 5 corporations, is filling the echo chamber with stories indicating that an agreement was reached, that this is the next step in the previous Kyoto agreement, and that the governments of the world are working together to deal with Global Warming by 2020. This fabrication is also being echoed by the BBC and other worldwide news sources.
The reality is that what has been agreed to, despite the resistance of poorer countries, is a deal that allows global warming-causing polluters (like the US and other developed nations) to continue polluting at current or higher levels until 2018, which is when the first binding global warming reduction requirements take affect per this agreement.
World scientists have reached consensus that the 1990 global warming pollution levels need to be reduced by 40% to insure that the global temperature does not exceed an increase of 2 degrees Celsius by 2020. With this agreement, which delays enforcement another 7 years, global warming pollution is expected to actually exceed current levels by 2020. This will result in a 4 to 5 degrees Celsius increase worldwide, meaning Africa is likely to see an increase of 6 to 8 degrees.
Fortunately, we still do have news sources outside the tentacles of those 5 CEOs. The majority of today’s DemocracyNow.org’s one hour news broadcast is devoted to describing the details about this crime that just went down. (Note: if you are reading this after Dec. 12, 2011, you will need to go to the show archives and search for the Monday, December 12, 2011 episode.)
Further compounding the harm done to the 99% by this unfair deal, we have the Presidential Debate Corporation, a US presidential debate monopoly created by the Democratic and Republican Parties. This US presidential debate monopoly will once again be used in 2012 to keep Green Party and independent presidential candidates off the debate stage, resulting in little or no discussion regarding the looming catastrophic global warming crisis. Unfortunately, this may be our last chance before we hit the tipping point, when all the money in the world won’t be able to reverse mass human extinction.
The 99% have much work to do. This is yet another reason why I Occupy.
Steve Alesch
DuPage County Green Party, Chair, IL, USA
Occupy Naperville, Occupier since October 22, 2011
Petition Drive to Get Corporate Money Out of Elections