31 May 2016

Political Implications Of Climate Change

Anandi Sharan


Article 3 of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC)states“the Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects.” The U.S. is a signatory to the UNFCCC, as are all other countries in the world. Yet there is a free-for-all of fossil-fuel production and consumption. Armies and MNCsbreak the provisions of the treaty and no one takes them to court.
Similarly article 6 of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) states that each country shall “integrate, as far as possible and as appropriate, the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity into relevant sectoral or cross-sectoral plans, programmes and policies.” The U.S. is not a party to the CBD. But Japan, Russia, Ukraine, France, India, China, Canada, UK, Australia and all other countries barring Andorra, are. Yet they continue to manufacture and use nuclear energy, fossil-fuel and nuclear operated ships, plastics and chemicals that destroy millions of plants physically as well as the genetic material of life. A people’s movement is needed to hold the perpetrators of these crimes accountable. But there isn’t one. It shows that the democratic systemthat is supposed to uphold the rule of law has collapsed.
Recently the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) brought out a report called "Delivering a Sustainable Financial System in India."The only legally binding duty that requires companies to behave sustainablyis that big companies must spend 2% of profits on corporate social responsibility. The authors list the credit agencies such as the Reserve bank, public and private banks and multilateral fundsthat provide credit. Finally they conclude that companies have no underlying incentive to perform better as far as sustainability goes. They suggest that there should be an incentive for shareholders to send signals to the companies that environmental and social governance is important. Not once do they mention that there is a sovereign nation with a constitution that gives the government in power the power to issue the legal tender of the country. They do not question why money is created as credit, increasingly by private banks, and that governments create public funds through bonds, which, if they are not cancelled, create hardship and cause millions to commit suicide. The fact that a report written for an entire nation by a United Nations agency so painfully lists every flaw of the western capitalist system and then simply laments its inadequacy, without once supporting the government in question to use its constitutional powers to remedy the problem, shows that national sovereignty has become meaningless.
Indigenous people, women, untouchables, religious minorities, the unemployed, the landless and the rest who make up the 90% majority of humans who are not in charge of this world should realize what has happened. Western civilization is incompatible with the UNFCCC and the CBD. The law is not upheld nor can democracy uphold it. Surely this means western civilisation has collapsed and nation states along with it. You cannot be a civilisation based on the rule of law if your continued existence is based on breaking the law. If there is a continued free- for-all by all means we should be a part of it. But we should keep as a back up plan the greater wisdom inherited from our ancestors, -to live within our means and within the means of nature regardless of whatever civilisation comes and goes.
Half recognized as this state of affairs is, problems inevitably arise. Individual political identities are superimposed on a person’s traditions that provide ancestral wisdom. The patterns of behavior from competitive party politics interfere with the live-and-let-live culture of tribal or community living. Land is stolen and humans turned into labourers. Modern education teaches a separation of observer and observed, work and culture, faith and knowledge. Caste based on hierarchy and word-wide division of labour interferes with the instinct for equality in tribal society.
Life if it is to be lived according to ancient wisdom requires a certain innocence with regards to things that cannot be changed, a willingness to exert one’s self and do manual labour with regards to things that can. All this requires huge knowledge and skill learned from daily observation and is alien to those who grew up in western civilization. Democracy and nation-state are things of the past, the new is yet to be born. Land rights are yet to be given.
Manual labour is a key feature of tribal life. Knowledge emerges from doing, from loving, from falling in love and raising a family, from committing to other living creatures, to land, water, trees and animals. Homes must be built, seeds sown and crops harvested. Trees and animals and water must be understood and respected. Everything must be enjoyed. Life does not have a mission, vision or goal. Life simply is, and our work makes it so. Commercial energy and money are irrelevant at best but in reality they are part of the old, destroyers of harmony and environment.
Thus the new is far away from western civilization, from nation state and democracy, hidden away, where it cannot be perverted.But even this idea when spread through modern media, gets perverted, such is the destructiveness of western civilization, democracy and the nation state. The human species will certainly survive but only in those places where it remains untouched.

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