Please note this post should make more sense, if it is read after the previous post, and the next post. The next post was supposed to be before this, but it got lost in the system.
One of the problems the world faces is that if the developing world attains the same levels of prosperity as the developed, in the same way, with the same amount of extraction damage, pollution and emissions damage per head of population as the developed world then it is extremely likely we all will suffer.
This is deeply unfair for the developing world, or the global South.
Let me be clear. The developed world, in particular, Australia (because that is where I live), should be doing far more than they are to avoid climate change and ecological destruction. There is no excuse for Australian Governmental support of fossil fuels, fossil fuel exports, land clearing, pretending bushfires are ok, and so on. Australia has one of the worst set of figures for carbon emissions per head of population, and this is without counting the emissions in coal or gas exports, or the emissions from the devastating bushfires. We are reasonably wealthy, and have plenty of room to move. We are relatively resilient.
Given this resilience and the peril, Australia should declare: No more coal mines. No more gas wells. All fossil fuel burning and exports to be phased out by 2030.
This is possibly messy and costly, but so is the alternative. All Australians, who can, need to push for action at all levels, local, State, country, and international, to help ourselves and others. This is not a secondary call to anything else.
However, while some other parts of the developed world are doing ok, most of it is not. Most of it, seems to be refusing to change, whatever the peril. We cannot wait for them to act.
Partly this politics of destruction is coming from belief in economic models which insist on eternal growth, and partly because entrenched and previously successful economic organisations and corporations have political power. These people tend to see the peril not in eco-catastrophe, but in cutting back growth and their profits, so they resist change.
Politics is part of the economy, and always will be.
This also means there is nothing unchangeable about the organisation of the economy. However, it is true, that not all organisations of the economy will work – the current one does not.
However, this post, unlike most of my others, is not about the uselessness of the developed world but about the problems of further development in the developing world, and the lack of fairness which is present, because of the urgency of change, and because the limits of the planet are now different, to what they were.
Let us be clear. Developing nations quite possibly should give themselves some leeway with emissions if they choose. That may be necessary, but the levels of leeway need to be thought out carefully.
However, the argument, which is often made by Westerners, that the developing world should be able to do as much polluting and destruction as developing authorities like, because ‘the West’ already did so, is suicidal for everyone. There is no point developing, to find it all crashes down, or your water supplies decline, land mass shrinks and people flee. Something else needs to be done, and the developed world should probably help, without telling people what should be done.
I also have to say that a moral argument of the form:
- “Someone else did X (which is morally dubious, or physically harmful), therefore no one can protest about us doing X as well – even when it is not necessary – as we have never done it before,”
is not the most compelling moral argument I have ever heard. E.g:
- “You guys got wealthy plundering and starving India and Africa. Now its our turn.”
Really?
[In case it needs to be said, I’m not implying anyone is making that particular argument. It is supposed to illustrate the problems with this kind of argument]
No one needs to build coal energy, or gas energy and the huge infrastructure that it requires. There are other routes.
Again, I’m not denying ‘the West’, or ‘the North’ has greater responsibility for the problem (and indeed a whole load of problems), and should get on with taking responsibility and fixing those problems as best they can, but I’m also asking everyone: “Why don’t we all pursue a different path?” “Why stay on the path of destruction?”
If we know a path will lead to death, inequality, corporate domination, destruction of land and precariousness, as well as material prosperity, why is there such a hurry to take that path, rather than to find something better?
Again it probably comes down to economic power, and conceptual difficulty.
This is one reason for setting clear targets. Faced with known, non-shifting, targets, people tend to get ingenious.
Let’s hope the ingenuity which goes beyond rule bending works quicker.
Tags: climate change, development, ethics
Climate, technology and chaos Blog 
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