The recent report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change should have caused a monumental response. But has come and gone with hardly a second thought. Little wonder.
It has long been known that these reports are tendered only after severe editing to gain government consensus.
Increasing evidence is now emerging that the recent statement on climate impacts and mitigation by the UN panel were significantly ‘diluted’ under political pressure from some of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, including Saudi Arabia, China, the U.S. and, of course, Canada.
According to David Wasdell, of the European Commission’s Global System Dynamics, “Every word and line of the text previously submitted by the scientific community was examined and amended until it could be endorsed unanimously by the political representatives.”
The greatest resistance to the truth came from countries exploiting fossil fuels. Additional pressure was applied to the political agents by those vested interests whose sustained profitability was based on the extraction, refining, marketing and use of fossil energy.
Some of the scientists called it “scientific vandalism.” A review of their scientific papers indicate a 97.1 per cent consensus.
The final report tended to indicate the world is still within safe distance of creating catastrophic environmental chaos. However, the scientists themselves say we are already overdrawn on this “safe distance” story.
The fact is, we are on track to achieve environmental suicide.
For policy makers, this is a document of appeasement crafted out of extreme fear and unpreparedness by the participating governments.
Stan Gauthier
Parksville