I think Americans are so exasperated by healthcare reform as to ignore or be unaffected by the recent happenings in Copenhagen. To recapitulate, world leaders gathered there to try and hammer out some kind of consensus about how to deal with global warming. Barack Obama definitely came out the loser, with no deal and a slap in the face from Chinese diplomats. Apparently all the hokum about strong posturing being necessary to impress the orientals wasn’t as half-baked as we thought. I suspect Obama’s reconciliatory and ultimately officious attitude toward the Chinese on his visit to Asia was probably his undoing in the eyes of image-obsessed Chinese technocrats.
Most reports conclude China’s recalcitrance that was the undoing of the Copenhagen accord, not U.S. exceptionalism or defiance.
China’s now-apparent unwillingness to commit to any kind of deal raises some interesting questions. People sympathetic to the developing countries like George Monbiot are trying to spin things against the developed world in any case:
The immediate reason for the failure of the talks can be summarised in two words: Barack Obama.
The man elected to put aside childish things proved to be as susceptible to immediate self-interest as any other politician. Just as George Bush did in the approach to the Iraq war, Obama went behind the backs of the UN and most of its member states and assembled a coalition of the willing to strike a deal that outraged the rest of the world.
Diplomatic schemes aside, the real point of contention between the “developing” and “developed” world seems to be one of money and morals (as these things usually turn out). At its most basic, the issue is moral: Industrialized countries believe that everyone has the right to a comfortable middle-class existence. This is both a function of Western political ideas about the social contract (”I gave up these rights and these economic opportunities in exchange for a decent way of life from my government.” –In essence, the issue is tied up to our ideas about the welfare state) and what is seen as an unfair advantage enjoyed by the west: Britain and the United States had the opportunity to burn coal and fossil fuels with impunity for the past two centuries and thereby lift their lower classes into a comfortable existence of plentiful food, heat, and relative luxury.
Now that the cat’s out of the bag on global warming, most developing nations take the view that it is somehow unfair for the West to impose restrictions on the very things which lifted them out of poverty, just as the Indians and Chinese are doing so for their own countrymen.
This meshes well with Chinese ideas about morality. It takes a thoroughly Christian worldview to believe that someone does not bear some responsibility for the sins of his forebears. (Germany is a good example of how even the most self-aggrandizing and forgiving international movements cannot completely absolve a people of the blame for what is perceived as a national sin). The Chinese are unburdened (or burdened?) with notions of morality that are caught up in their ideas about familial and national legacies. Probably correctly, the Chinese see U.S. moral superiority as a self-serving illusion.
But is this the right way to see things? Obama’s willingness to pay for the wealth that will be lost to carbon restrictions in poor nations. In so doing he seems to tacitly accept the proposition that the United States and Great Britain bear most of the blame for the current mess.
If the West truly believes that morals derive from actions rather than the agents which act, then it must stand up to Chinese bad faith on global warming. It is our actions right now that matter, and the burdens of the past cannot weigh on the minds of the people who need to address today’s problems.
Historical morality and obstacles to carbon regulation
I think Americans are so exasperated by healthcare reform as to ignore or be unaffected by the recent happenings in Copenhagen. To recapitulate, world leaders gathered there to try and hammer out some kind of consensus about how to deal with global warming. Barack Obama definitely came out the loser, with no deal and a slap in the face from Chinese diplomats. Apparently all the hokum about strong posturing being necessary to impress the orientals wasn’t as half-baked as we thought. I suspect Obama’s reconciliatory and ultimately officious attitude toward the Chinese on his visit to Asia was probably his undoing in the eyes of image-obsessed Chinese technocrats.
Most reports conclude China’s recalcitrance that was the undoing of the Copenhagen accord, not U.S. exceptionalism or defiance.
China’s now-apparent unwillingness to commit to any kind of deal raises some interesting questions. People sympathetic to the developing countries like George Monbiot are trying to spin things against the developed world in any case:
Diplomatic schemes aside, the real point of contention between the “developing” and “developed” world seems to be one of money and morals (as these things usually turn out). At its most basic, the issue is moral: Industrialized countries believe that everyone has the right to a comfortable middle-class existence. This is both a function of Western political ideas about the social contract (”I gave up these rights and these economic opportunities in exchange for a decent way of life from my government.” –In essence, the issue is tied up to our ideas about the welfare state) and what is seen as an unfair advantage enjoyed by the west: Britain and the United States had the opportunity to burn coal and fossil fuels with impunity for the past two centuries and thereby lift their lower classes into a comfortable existence of plentiful food, heat, and relative luxury.
Now that the cat’s out of the bag on global warming, most developing nations take the view that it is somehow unfair for the West to impose restrictions on the very things which lifted them out of poverty, just as the Indians and Chinese are doing so for their own countrymen.
This meshes well with Chinese ideas about morality. It takes a thoroughly Christian worldview to believe that someone does not bear some responsibility for the sins of his forebears. (Germany is a good example of how even the most self-aggrandizing and forgiving international movements cannot completely absolve a people of the blame for what is perceived as a national sin). The Chinese are unburdened (or burdened?) with notions of morality that are caught up in their ideas about familial and national legacies. Probably correctly, the Chinese see U.S. moral superiority as a self-serving illusion.
But is this the right way to see things? Obama’s willingness to pay for the wealth that will be lost to carbon restrictions in poor nations. In so doing he seems to tacitly accept the proposition that the United States and Great Britain bear most of the blame for the current mess.
If the West truly believes that morals derive from actions rather than the agents which act, then it must stand up to Chinese bad faith on global warming. It is our actions right now that matter, and the burdens of the past cannot weigh on the minds of the people who need to address today’s problems.