Beginning Monday, 15,000 world delegates, journalists and others swarmed to the sunny and spicy Cancun, Mexico, to discuss how in the world we should deal with the pending global climate crisis.
And the 193-country assemblage couldn’t come at a more appropriate time when 2010 is poised to tie the record for hottest year in the last 131 years of record keeping.
Can we get a Naples-Florida-Had-A-Temperature-Of-86-Degrees-Sunday amen?
But the meeting is sure to do little except make the world angry at the inability to get anything done as our thermometers creep higher and our shorts stay out longer.
For the past 13 years, for example, the high and mighty, spit-in-the-face-of-Mother-Nature U.S.A. has refused to join the U.N. in signing the Kyoto Protocol, a binding pact designed to greatly reduce fossil-fuel emissions.
Citing irreconcilable differences of sorts with its economy and environmental salvation, the U.S. is merely lukewarm about signing any type of binding accord to reduce its environmental impact.
President Barack Obama’s recent order to raise fuel efficiency of automobiles in the U.S. is, indeed, a fine start to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, but sadly, it does not go far enough.
If we intend to avoid a self-destructing, overheating planet, every country, including the U.S., must agree to put substantial effort into reducing and reversing climate change, and we must stop these foolish stories about our economy dipping into the doldrums with a greater value on the environment.
Even if the stories of economic collapse at the hands of proper environmental management were true, how much worse could things really get?
