Lack of Coverage of Warsaw Climate Conference Does Not Bode Well

The devastation from the recent typhoon that hit the Philippines according to the country's lead negotiator at the United Nations climate summit in Warsaw, Naderev Sano,“was [like] nothing we have ever experienced before, or perhaps nothing that any country has ever experienced before”.
Despite the thousands of people killed and Sano's plea to nations to act on climate change and prevent super typhoons such as Haiyan, from becoming “a way of life” the UN Conference on Climate change in Warsaw seems currently deadlocked.


The UN climate change summit going on now in Warsaw might as well be occurring on an alternative universe. There is no coverage in the mainstream press.  The news today of a walk out among
"hundreds of environmental activists  over the absence of a binding agreement on curbing global warming coming on the heels of a group of 133 developing nations walking out of a key negotiating meeting about how much of the burden developed economies must pay for the cost of the damage they have caused seems to suggest deadlock is now inevitable. According to one source

"The paper makes it clear that, despite President Barack Obama's progressive stances on climate issues over the past year, the US continues to pose difficulties to closing an international global climate deal by strongly resisting the concept of historical responsibility for emissions and positioning itself in opposition to developing countries on the main issues at stake."

The memo is indicative as to how many western governments are now turning their backs on climate change. As the Guardian has reported,

"Recent decisions by the governments of Australia, Japan and Canada to downgrade their efforts over climate change have caused panic among those states most affected by global warming, who fear others will follow as they rearrange their priorities during the downturn.

In the last few days, Japan has announced it will backtrack on its pledge to reduce its emission cuts from 25% to 3.8% by 2020 on the basis that it had to close its nuclear reactors after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Australia, which is not sending a minister to this weekend's talks, signaled it may weaken its targets and is repealing domestic carbon laws following the election of a conservative government.

Canada has pulled out of the Kyoto accord, which committed major industrial economies to reducing their annual CO2 emissions to below 1990 levels.

These governments as well as the US have been allowed to get away with it by a compliant media that is owned in large part by corporate interests. If there is to be real change in terms of addressing the climate crisis it has to come from the grassroots.  Even though the NGOs are walking out of Warsaw only after mobilizing a sleepy public and a negligent media.

Corporate Climate Denial is Now Endangering our Children's Futures

So now we have the bitter truth we are in a race not just against the build up of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere but against the pollution industry and the billionaires who fund them. We already know that according to a recent report in The Guardian, "Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change..The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarising "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives. The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or more." Now we see the work of these trusts manifest themselves in state laws that are determined to overturn science just as surely as early efforts tried to overturn the teaching of evolution. According to EcoWatch "Oklahoma, Colorado and Arizona’s Legislatures are debating bills, all written by the pollution industry front group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The bills all refer to global warming as a “theory” and a “controversy” with scientific weaknesses. The Oklahoma bills say that students need to “develop critical thinking skills they need in order to become intelligent, productive and scientifically informed citizens.” As we learn in this report, "ALEC is comprised of corporate lobbyists who write bills that well-greased lawmakers then introduce to Congress and State Legislatures nation-wide. ALEC gets most of its funding from the fossil fuel industry, and its interests are solely to protect the industry’s bottom line. As Americans wake up to the reality of climate change, the corporate polluters responsible for global warming would prefer to put us back to sleep. They want us to lie in a warm blanket of cozy lies, and because their propaganda is not working as well with adults anymore, the polluters are targeting our children" Where are we as a country when money buys this kind of influence over our children's minds? It is a time to stop this notion that the Supreme Court has advanced that money is speech. Money spent by corporations to influence legislatures is not speech it is propaganda to advance their own selfish interests at the expense of the rest of us and our future.