Greenpeace starts offensive against USA

The ecological movement, Greenpeace, has started a campaign against the USA over the refusal of the Bush administration to adhere to the Kyoto protocol which laid down plans to limit emissions of GEG (Greenhouse Effect Gases). Greenpeace has written to the 100 largest US companies, threatening them with a boycott by customers if they do not take a firm position against the White House’s policy. Greenpeace is planning a to call for a worldwide boycott against US companies if the US policy on GEG does not change. The fact is that an overwhelming majority of the world’s top scientists agree that GEG seriously affect the world’s climate and leads to the process of global warming. This in turn leads to dramatic climate change and a rising of the levels of the world’s oceans, due to the melting of polar ice caps. The position assumed by the USA is that it should not only be the industrialised countries which have to affect their economies by reducing GEG but also the developing countries. The argument against this point is that the richer countries can afford to invest in alternative sources of energy, whereas the developing ones cannot. The population of the USA is 5% of the world total and this 5% produces a staggering 25% of the world’s Carbon DiOxide output. The richer countries in the world represent 20% of the total population but produce 60% of CO2. The climate changes wrought by an excess of GEG in the stratosphere normally affects the climate precisely where it is most dramatic – in the poorest countries. If the status quo stays as it is, they do not have a chance and it is inhuman for the world’s richer countries to do nothing, using the argument that their economies could be affected if they reduced their GEG output by 7% of 1990 emissions. The Bush administration, having stated previously that the scientific evidence linking GEG with the phenomenon of global warming, now admits that it recognises the seriousness of the matter. One comes to expect many U-turns from this administration. The world’s richest countries have to assume their responsibilities. It was they who created most of the problems experienced today by the countries of the developing world, which had their cultures devastated in intrusive and imperialist interventions. To state that they now have to pay the same bill as the countries which robbed them of their resources, divided their societies and left them destitute, corrupting a handful of well-placed officials to maintain control over the remaining mineral riches, is no less than sickening. TIMOTHY BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.RU LISBON