‘When nobody important is paying much attention and nothing significant is likely to be at stake, then, as the Durban draft negotiations documents show, even diplomats can and will say any silly thing that they’d like.’
And some of the poorer countries’ actual motivations and self-interest for signing global climate treaties are interesting to note at Durban, especially when the rhetoric highlighting one of the key the moral arguments for climate change is so florid (we’re heading for imminent disaster…wealthier nations must sign off on economy-altering pledges to prevent doom…all peoples must united by this particular international law…why have you abandoned us?). It always was a bad way to organize so many disparate interests.
It’s a good, I think, to keep simply pointing out many of the political, ideological and monied interests in the West who need these ideas to be true, and many of the reasons for the need, apart from climate science.
Additional: Bailey has more here. The movement is at a low point it seems.
Another Addition: Per Bailey:
The 17th conference of the parties (COP-17) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change pulled back from the brink of collapse at around 3:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. Briefly, agreement between the negotiators from nearly 200 countries was achieved by adopting a formula that launches a process that commits the UNFCCC to negotiating a protocol, another legal instrument or an “agreed outcome with legal force.”
Related On This Site: Ronald Bailey At Reason: “I’ll Show You My Genome. Will You Show Me Yours?”… There’s science and there’s science education. Isn’t Dennett deeper than that? From The Access Resource Network: Phillip Johnson’s “Daniel Dennett’s Dangerous Idea’…Maybe if you’re defending religion, Nietzsche is a problematic reference: Dinesh D’Souza And Daniel Dennett at Tufts University: Nietzsche’s Prophesy…
Don’t immanentize the eschaton!: From The NY Times: ‘Atheists Sue to Block Display of Cross-Shaped Beam in 9/11 Museum’
How do these ideas fit in with our foreign policy and our own self-interest (if the Greens and general Western Left succeeds in getting us to sign something like this…what could come of that foreign policy-wise?): From Foreign Affairs Via The A & L Daily: ‘Conflict Or Cooperation: Three Visions Revisited’
