14 DAY TRIAL // The new round of UN climate talks that started on November 29 in Cancun, Mexico is overshadowed from the get-go by failures on the part of developed nations to commit to and approve climate legislation, or even acknowledge that the problem was there.
The last two climate summits, in Copenhagen (2009) and Poznan (2008), were bogged down in procedures and failed to reach any legally-binding, meaningful accord. Now, with the economic crisis still looming overhead, 193 nations meet again.
In an atmosphere of increased taxation and budget cuts, participants at Conference of the Parties (COP) 16 are literally discussing the faith of the world. Global warming and climate change are truths that can no longer be ignored, politicians are starting to realize.
Naturally, there are voices that oppose the established knowledge and consensus that the planet's climate is indeed changing. There have been some attempts at discrediting the field as well, and many ignorant people fell into the trap.
The stolen climate-related emails from the University of East Anglia, conveniently published days before the Copenhagen meeting started in December 2009, showed nothing more than the fact that researchers can speak harshly and be competitive too. Who isn't?
Secondly, the scattered typographical errors that made their way in reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have received a lot of attention from media that had been paid to report things as if a catastrophe had happened.
Related to this, you should know that all review panels designated to investigate the so-called frauds that took place at both the UAE and IPCC found no fraudulent data being passed on as genuine.
However, among the religious, conservative right in the United States, the idea that climate change is not taking places has caught on roots. The terrain, especially among Republicans, was prepared to accommodate the idea, mostly among those with strong religious backgrounds.
In the words of experts at Our World, Earth's climate and atmosphere simply don't care if the US Senate passes or not a bill that needs 60 votes. The changes will keep on happening, depending on how much we pollute, and how much greenhouse gases we put in the air.
The time when global warming, as an idea and science, had to be validated, and further investigated to prove it's there, has long since passed, and people clinging to the idea that there is some huge Socialist conspiracy behind it should really take their heads out of the ground and pick up a book or a study.
Then, there is the special branch of climate change deniers, who do not argue against science, but use economics as an excuse for supporting the interest of big oil companies. Richard Tol and William Nordhaus are among the economists supporting the idea that the world simply cannot afford to fight climate change from an economic perspective. Not even a 2-year-old would believe their arguments.
Promoting the growth of alternative energy would increase national security, reduce dependency on foreign oils, create hundreds of thousands of jobs in research, development, constructions and operation of new power plant, and reduce the number of pollution-related diseases.
But other economists say that spending out 1 percent of the US GDP on averting climate change could avoid the country losing 5 percent of the GDP on mitigating the effects of global warming.
If money and economics are what it takes to persuade people (apparently empathy and common sense are not enough), then so be it.