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From The Asian Reporter, V17, #37 (September 11, 2007), page 7.
Three strikes, then you hand over your bat
Later this month, many of our groaning planet’s economic powers will meet in Washington, D.C. They come on President Bush’s invitation to talk about global climate change.
Of course, a lot of big boys — Europeans, Asians, Arabs, Latin Americans among them — are a bit bothered by the White House getting into the discussion so late. So slow, while thousands of our poorest have lost precious family, while millions more have lost what little joy they owned to oceans suddenly angry, to rivers suddenly voracious. Poor families poorer still.
Strike 1
Of course someone arriving late at an emergency makes others mad. Of course it makes others doubt your sincerity. It’s always been so, for every family. Everywhere. Strike one.
The September 27 and 28 session, or "Climate Change Summit," as our President would have it, is supposed to produce long-term international goals and practical individual nation agreements. Environmental policy managers from all over will come. Sure they will. They’ll talk and talk and smile and shake hands for photos. Maybe next to Bono or Brad Pitt. Maybe even Salma Hayek.
But the thing is: Serious earth scientists and committed greenhouse policy activists have been working and working this problem for a long-long time. Careful consensus was constructed concerning atmospheric carbon management. Difficult mitigation policies each nation could commit to. Without the U.S.
Ten years ago, the Kyoto Protocols (under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) were sent out for signatures. Our White House called it junk science.
At the end of September, the President’s men say they will be ready to take the lead in thinking about rising oceans, monster storms, and all those families unable to get out of their way.
And, of course, all those contributors who have moved forward without American participation are not happy. Naturally, if you ignore sincere folks’ solid work product, they will spite you. Of course they will.
If you refuse to play ball, if you stay away while others do without what we could bring to the game — bats and gloves, turf and stadium lights that could’ve made the game much cooler, much quicker — those who played all along are not likely to welcome your late-late entry into their game.
If only this were a game, if only all those pretty children, all those toiling fathers and lovely grandmas, had not perished. Leaving so much sorrow in their absence, so much bitterness toward our government.
Strike 2
Of course, a neighborhood’s biggest boy finally agreeing to play ball, but only if everyone comes to his yard and plays by his rules — will get nice smiles. Players will come. People will be polite. But that big boy will be dismissed as a bully. Strike two.
What’s weirder than all that, what is even more un-understandable than all this bad behavior at a time requiring the kind of common sense and simple sympathy all of us own from kindergarten forward, is President Bush’s embarrassing position that more technology will make everything more better. Bigger is still better.
According to James Connaughton, the administration’s senior environmental adviser, "the solution to climate change is the advancement of technology." Not slimming down our American appetite for upscaled suburbs, for super-sized cars and Costco shopping carts.
"This is wonderful to see," Mr. Connaughton said recently. "America stands ready to assist on technology, to assist in innovative financing, and assist in standards and practices so that together we can grow our economies."
Not a lot of folks were moved. No one really believes, no one has believed for an awful long time, that American expansion is good for our aching earth.
Strike 3
Bigger is not better. Progress cannot save us. Technology cannot excuse us our excesses here, cannot spare us from the consequences of American carelessness at the receiving end of environmental degradation. America needs to get humble.
American exceptionalism — the belief that we are exceptions from ordinary rules of human co-existence, and the belief that our extraordinary nation can come up with new and better ways of working our exhausted little world — needs to stop. That’s strike three, time to give up the bat. Time to get small. To get simple.
Relief for our most vulnerable families can only come from love. From loving.
From no more betting our extraordinary technologies against the everyday heartbreak of parents looking for their broken and bloated babies, hoping to find them, hoping not to find them.
From no more wagering that progress will surely be stronger than the stench of withdrawing flood waters.
Gambling on our humanity — risking ugly losses in developing countries, risking losses of compassion as Americans — is cruel. Extraordinarily cruel.
Loving is simple. Direct. No technology necessary. We need not wait for science. Or for Mr. Bush. You do it now.
We love your homelands, we love our relatives living on the ledge of the South China Sea, or on the edge of River Mekong or Ganga Ma or Brahmaputra.
We love our folks more than we adore our Armadas or Sequoias, cars costing more than most family homes. The carbon guzzler’s got to go. We love them by thinking about them before buying lettuce or apples, knowing that it takes more carbon expenditure to grow and truck a load of Safeway tomatoes than an entire Lao village expends in a month. Then you go to your neighborhood farmers market instead.
We care for our people by asking American politicians what they know about our monster monsoons back home, and what policies they will write to manage those disasters — only then will they get our vote.
That’s the new game, the only game, in town.