By Patricia Lee Sharpe
There’d been highly hyped hopes for a couple of really cool gifts for Christmas this year, and I don’t include the snowstorm that roared up the East coast a couple of days ago.The global warming conclave in Copenhagen was supposed to feature a chorus of angels promising salvation for everyone, salvation in the form of strict agreed-upon goals—goals that would be enforceable. Well, at the very least the goals would be measurable, so that failures to deliver on schedule would be as obvious as an airport ETA sign announcing “on time,” “delayed” or canceled. I couldn’t buy either expectation. So far as that unrealistic transparency goal was concerned, who’d be able to ferret out the inevitable fudging? Worse, how would the international community manage to punish China or the US or any other country for not performing as promised? All in all, the belief that the species would be inspired to act harmoniously and altruistically seemed pretty unrealistic from the get go.
The other great gift for Americans was to be bipartisan health care reform, meaning broadly-backed coverage for every American at a cost the country can bear. Well, it looks as if the Senate Democrats will actually pass a bill on Christmas eve (talk about Christmas presents!), but can you say sausage factory? Who knows what’s in the package—and as for the process, it’s hardly what we want to promote as democracy abroad.
Waiting for a Savior
In both cases, there was always the rather pathetic hope for a messiah, a mahdi, a deus ex machina, a superman, whose charisma or moral force or sheer power would deliver the goods–unanimity on the route to salvation, transparency, enforceability. Barack Obama, it was hoped, would amply fill that role in Copenhagen as in Washington. But alas! Obama hasn’t transformed American politics, and no one human being could have created the extraordinary unity that the prospect of retarding global warming seems to require. Never in the evolution of the murderous human species has there been the sweetly cooperative “we” that’s needed now.
Nor has commonality been the theme du jour over these past decades. It’s been multi-culturalism. We must respect and preserve, unaltered, all human cultures in all aspects of their contrary contradictory glory. Yet now, suddenly, we’re expected to shed our sacrosanct cultural ego complexes in this great global push for the common good. We’re not so distinct, it seems. We’re all the same. Well, we all breathe oxygen and exhale CO2; we can’t drink salt water; we need food and a certain temperature range. So we've gotta save the planet—meaning, of course, those planetary conditions that support human life.
Not Scared Enough
Otherwise—what common good? Unfortunately, the residents of no country believe in a common good, even within national boundaries. That’s why universal health coverage and a public option are so hard to sell in the United States. That’s why bloc fought bloc in Copenhagen. If the message of dire harm had really penetrated, even the island nations would have been asking, "What can we do?" The developing nations would have been proposing doable economic and political reforms to maximize the impact of any reparations they might receive from the early-industrializers. And today’s major polluters would not have been sparring with one another to minimize painful internal changes. In fact, no one is scared enough—yet!—for serious universal cooperation on global warming—except for people in the Maldives, perhaps, where ten feet above sea level is as high as it gets.However, to buy time and save face in Copenhagen, vague promises were made and a declaration was cobbled together. And so Barack Obama came home and declared victory—as he will again at the end of the week. Health care reform! Hurrah!
Delivery Problems
In fact, the US government is paralyzed by the war between Republicans and Democrats who share only one thing, utter subservience to health industry (and other) lobbyists. Lobbyists for such entrenched interests keep the US from investing aggressively in the green industries that would allow the US to benefit and to profit mightily from meeting serious goals for sustainable energy production. Thus, we must be very happy that the Obama administration decided, in the end, to have the President arrive in Copenhagen only for the finale, along with other country executives. After all, the whole world knows that the Obama administration can't deliver Senate concurrence on ambitious global warming goals. Remember Kyoto? Do we really need the embarrassment of Kyoto redux?This impasse between the legislature and the executive is one reason why the US carried very little clout, in Copenhagen, vis-à-vis China, which can always deliver, should it chose to do so. In this case, the choice wasn’t necessary. The US wasn’t a serious player. Oh yes, the administration offered, vaguely, to assist other countries, which was nice, if unconvincing, because it’s show-not-tell time. To seize the initiative, the US must cease to be a virtual subsidiary of the oil and gas industries.