Exposing the Sham of the G8 Climate Debate

international | environment | news report Friday September 02, 2005 07:25 by Miriam Cotton

Media Failure to Tell the Truth

Media Lens have produced an excellent summary of the truth behind the G8 climate discussions and the way in which they are being used to represent the British Prime Minister and American President as new, improved and kinder versions of themselves:

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php

The link leads to an article that also looks the complicity of the corporate press and its failure to think critically about what the politicians are telling them. Thus, we have the spectacle of The Guardian and The Independent (UK) falling over themselves to praise environmental ‘initiatives’ which, in fact, are woefully inadequate in the face of the catastrophe we face within 10 years. The intention appears to be to make everyone feel reassured that ‘something is being done’ and that we can now carry on as usual.

Among other issues, it seems that a major threat is now envisaged to the world’s climate by the thawing of a Siberian peat bog which covers an area the size of Germany and France. The fear is that this will release billions of tons of methane into the atmosphere resulting in a devastating increase in a greenhouse gas – which in turn will likely cause irreversible global warming – and all the weather and other climactic destruction that goes with it. In the meantime, as the report says, not a squeak about this in the press. Instead we still have newspapers wittering on joyfully about anticipated increases in economic ‘growth’. What has to happen before politicians, economists and journalists finally get it through their heads that we cannot afford to continue ignoring the link between the notion of endless, unlimited economic growth and the destruction of the planet? We live in a finite world and have finite needs in order to survive happily. Unless or until our way of life is radically adjusted to take account of these stark facts, we are, literally, heading for disaster.