Will Copenhagen conference tame G4M?

By SYLVESTER OLUOCH
Published December 11, 2009

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Bella Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark from December 6 to 18, should pay attention to G4M – greed, men, machines, mechanisms and money-  the hex that drives big business into chocking the universe with carbon emissions.

Bella Centre is fitting enough because of its sheer size. At 121,800 meters squared, it is symbolic of the significance of this gathering by world leaders, to discuss one of the stickiest issues of our times, which definitely is environmental degradation, also known by the euphemism, climate change. That change is one symptom of unrestrained industrialization.

The Bella Centre offers conference space comparable to 12 soccer fields. It has a 20,000 people-strong seating capacity, which will easily accommodate the more than 8,000 people, representing around 190 countries and Kingdoms.

The Copenhagen meeting should come up with a protocol that punishes greed and rewards responsible conduct, which should be benchmarked on environmental consciousness. Don’t I love US President Barack Obama’s carbon credits proposal?

They say politics is local, and so is this environmental degradation. Closer to home in East Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro’s crumbling glaciers and Mount Kenya’s melting icecaps, and fast ceding snowlines, are testimony to a world heating up, further evidenced by the falling intensity of fog in Limuru and the Uplands. Lakes Baringo, Nakuru and Natron have taken quite some beating from the environment’s vulnerability. Increasingly, riverbeds in the Rift Valley and its environs are turning into rocky trails. It is a result of man’s insatiable quest for resources.

In the Arctic Circle, the change is overwhelmingly evident. In the summer of 2007, a non-icebreaker-fortified sailboat effortlessly traversed the entire Northwest Passage that connects Canada with Russia, up till then unassailable because of “solid ice”. The navigation is becoming painless – thanks to the melting North.

Industrialized commercial activity is the leading factor in global devastation, even though Paul Sang, Kenya’s former health minister and Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate in their 2008 stab at the White House, will disagree. Amidst Palin’s denials that human activity has got nothing to do with climate change, her own state of Alaska’s hinterlands melt away, pummeled by chain-enhanced heavy commercial trucks that deliver merchandise to its Northern ports of call.

The Ethiopian children got it ahead of Sang and Palin, and contributed to a grand tree planting effort, which saw 700 million trees lodged last year alone. Creative science has helped us increase our productive capacity. We have reclaimed wet lands using drainages and, in smaller scales, planting eucalyptus because of its appetite for water. During these reclamations we have paid little or no attention to the impact on the species whose natural habitats we prowl, and their role in balancing the ecosystem.

Copenhagen climate conference highlights how inextricably connected our world is. This is why the activities of a menacing icebreaker in the North Pole, must concern me just as much as the covert activities, at the turn of the millennium of Timsales, Rayply and Pan Paper mills in the Mau should have concerned North Americans and Russians alike.

To more exactitude, the activities of the developed countries are supposed to cause us greater apprehension than ours should to them, because theirs are done at grander scales and at greater speeds. Sadly, the West’s activities impact developing nations more than their own countries. We are suffering double tragedy, producing the least, and bearing the wrath of mother nature disproportionately.

Driven by greed, men are designing finer machines and enhancing efficiency of mechanisms in blind pursuit of big money – that is the puzzle that G4M is. The platform is blind optimism, with the hope that the melting of Arctic Archipelagos will somehow stop or reverse on its own, even when we keep deploying some of the finest ship building technologies intended to cut North American – Eurasian trade distance by 4,000 kilometers. That is good for short-term business; it helps the bottom line, yet ignores the horizon.

Environmental imbalance has been created, and sustained, by icebreakers and earth movers, with the former defiling the Northern Archipelagos, as the later destroys the “waste” lands of the tropics. Stronger storms and winds, el-nino, and severe droughts trace their genesis to a people with little regard for the bionetwork, and senseless “pursuit of happiness.”

Our fortunes are intertwined, and just like in the mating dogs’ scenario, where there is no telling between the male and female, perpetrators and innocent victims drink from the same cup of decay, the greater misfortune being the disparate impact suffered by stagnated and developing nations.

With dwindling resources, come tribal, clan and even family wars over water points in Africa and Asia, famine because of failed crops and missed opportunities, water born diseases and malnutrition. Lost hope giving rise to contraband trade and “easy slavery” as witnessed in child trafficking, and “cheap” pirates for hire. Talk of gun runners of Somalia and their young men who stalk the Gulf of Aden.

We would have loved Bella Centre activities this winter to be about environmental degradation. But guess what? It is going to be horse trading by big business and arm twisting by strong governments. Good luck third world.

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