Worn down by hope. That's the predicament of those who have sought
to defend the earth's living systems. Every time governments meet to
discuss the environmental crisis, we are told that this is the "make or
break summit", on which the future of the world depends. The talks might
have failed before, but this time the light of reason will descend upon
the world.
'To
see Obama backtracking on the commitments made by Bush the elder 20
years ago is to see the extent to which a tiny group of plutocrats has
asserted its grip on policy.' Illustration by Daniel Pudles
We know it's rubbish, but we allow our hopes to be raised, only to
witness 190 nations arguing through the night over the use of the
subjunctive in paragraph 286. We know that at the end of this process
the UN secretary general, whose job obliges him to talk nonsense in an
impressive number of languages, will explain that the unresolved issues
(namely all of them) will be settled at next year's summit. Yet still we
hope for something better.
This week's earth summit in Rio de Janeiro
is a ghost of the glad, confident meeting 20 years ago. By now, the
leaders who gathered in the same city in 1992 told us, the world's
environmental problems were to have been solved. But all they have
generated is more meetings, which will continue until the delegates,
surrounded by rising waters, have eaten the last rare dove, exquisitely
presented with an olive leaf roulade. The biosphere that world leaders
promised to protect is in a far worse state than it was 20 years ago. Is
it not time to recognise that they have failed?
These summits have failed for the same reason that the banks have
failed. Political systems that were supposed to represent everyone now
return governments of millionaires, financed by and acting on behalf of
billionaires. The past 20 years have been a billionaires' banquet. At
the behest of corporations and the ultra-rich, governments have removed
the constraining decencies – the laws and regulations – which prevent
one person from destroying another. To expect governments funded and
appointed by this class to protect the biosphere and defend the poor is
like expecting a lion to live on
gazpacho.
You have only to see the way the
United States has savaged the Earth summit's draft declaration
to grasp the scale of this problem. The word "equitable", the US
insists, must be cleansed from the text. So must any mention of the
right to food, water, health, the rule of law, gender equality and
women's empowerment. So must a clear target of preventing two degrees of
global warming. So must a commitment to change "unsustainable
consumption and production patterns", and to decouple economic growth
from the use of natural resources.
Political systems that were supposed to
represent everyone now return governments of millionaires, financed by
and acting on behalf of billionaires. The past 20 years have been a
billionaires' banquet. At the behest of corporations and the ultra-rich,
governments have removed the constraining decencies – the laws and
regulations – which prevent one person from destroying another. To
expect governments funded and appointed by this class to protect the
biosphere and defend the poor is like expecting a lion to live on gazpacho.
Most significantly, the US delegation demands the removal of many of
the foundations agreed by a Republican president in Rio in 1992. In
particular, it has set out to purge all mention of the core principle of
that Earth summit: common but differentiated responsibilities. This
means that while all countries should strive to protect the world's
resources, those with the most money and who have done the most damage
should play a greater part.
This is the government, remember, not of George W Bush but of Barack
Obama. The paranoid, petty, unilateralist sabotage of international
agreements continues uninterrupted. To see Obama backtracking on the
commitments made by Bush the elder 20 years ago is to see the extent to which a tiny group of plutocrats has asserted its grip on policy.
While the destructive impact of the US in Rio is greater than that of
any other nation, this does not excuse our own failures. The British
government prepared for the Earth summit by
wrecking both our own Climate Change Act
and the European energy efficiency directive. David Cameron will not be
attending the Earth summit. Nor will Ed Davey, the energy and climate
change secretary (which is probably a blessing, as he's totally
useless).
Needless to say, Cameron, with other absentees such as Obama and Angela Merkel, are
attending the G20 summit in Mexico,
which takes place immediately before Rio. Another tenet of the 1992
summit – that economic and environmental issues should not be treated in
isolation – goes up in smoke.
The environmental crisis cannot be addressed by the emissaries of
billionaires. It is the system that needs to be challenged, not the
individual decisions it makes. In this respect the struggle to protect
the biosphere is the same as the struggle for redistribution, for the
protection of workers' rights, for an enabling state, for equality
before the law.
So this is the great question of our age: where is everyone? The
monster social movements of the 19th century and first 80 years of the
20th have gone, and nothing has replaced them. Those of us who still
contest unwarranted power find our footsteps echoing through cavernous
halls once thronged by multitudes. When a few hundred people do make a
stand – as the Occupy campers have done – the rest of the nation just
waits for them to achieve the kind of change that requires the sustained
work of millions.
Without mass movements, without the kind of confrontation required to
revitalise democracy, everything of value is deleted from the political
text. But we do not mobilise, perhaps because we are endlessly seduced
by hope. Hope is the rope from which we all hang.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited
George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books
The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and
Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. Visit his website at
www.monbiot.com
