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LONDON - “Bush says: I Put US Interests First” was the headline banner with which English newspaper The Guardian
started this week of the G8 summit at Gleneagles. That candid statement
saved editors the countless column inches usually devoted to proving
exactly that point–-here was the President of America himself
professing to nothing other than self interest when it comes to
negotiating to reduce global warming.
However, his statement may not have been correct. A survey this week by Program on International Policy Attitudes,
a Washington-based research group, indicated that 94% of Americans want
their government to limit greenhouse emissions in line with other
developed nations. Or to paraphrase in the style of Bush’s statement
above – “America wants Kyoto”.
Why then is there still so much
disagreement over the issue of global warming? Useful lessons can be
learned from the issue of African poverty, the other topic on the
Gleneagles agenda. In the weeks before the summit, everyone from Prime
Ministers to Protestors agreed that, yes, Africa
is very poor and that, yes, it would be really good if they were less
poor. That common sentiment was brilliantly capitalised upon by the
Live8 concert last weekend in Hyde Park, but after the party was over,
confusion and then disagreement returned. The political cartoons in
Britain this week have as their common theme the metaphor of aid being
the petrol poured on the fires of African political corruption; or, as
one journal put it, “Mercs for Jerks”.
Global
warming, by contrast, not only involves some technical scientific
points, but lacks even a celebrity to keep it in the headlines. How can
a glacier compete with Birhan Weldu, the beautiful starving African
child who was the face of the first Live Aid, and last Saturday
embraced Madonna on stage? The popstars who do take up the cause of
climate change can find themselves on thin ice–-columnist George
Monbiot, writing in The New Statesman
last week, was quick to point out that rock group Coldplay’s professed
anger about the way people treat the planet didn’t sit comfortably with
their flying by private jet.
Given that much of the world’s oil
supply has depended on exploitation of African minerals, perhaps the
two issues should be considered together. London-based journal The Economist
reported last month on a new type of ‘debt’ being incurred in Nigeria:
oil futures contracts being sold to multinationals at discounted
prices. Payments are made at prices below that of today’s market for
oil that will be delivered long after the government in power has
retired, when prices will be much higher and the revenue already spent
by today’s generation. A legal and effective way to mortgage a nation’s
future, locking in cheap oil supplies from Africa regardless of future
market conditions.
Gleneagles would be the perfect place to
discuss such complex issues. However, there has no debate as to whether
inherited debt is the 21st version of slavery in Africa, or whether
African diamonds should become the fashion equivalent of a fur coat.
The arguments here at the moment are still the type that are simple
enough to fit onto a protestor’s placard. Or George Bush’s autocue.
The
only real consensus is that since America gives the smallest percentage
of GDP in aid and generates the most carbon dioxide per capita, they
must be principally responsible, and since Tony Blair is still on good
terms with George Bush he must be to blame too. In this respect the
current protests and support for Live8 have simply tapped into the
political sentiment which has been suppressed since the demonstrations
prior to the Iraq war. Those demonstrations all but dried up once the
Iraq war began; and even if more of the current political fervour can
be concentrated on climate change issues, it remains to be seen how
much momentum will be maintained once the concerts, and the summit, are
over.
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