Re: Bush’s rejection of the Kyoto protocol - perhaps a blessing in disguise

Date: Mon, 02 April 2001

It is very unfair of Liberal Democrat MP, Malcolm Bruce, to brand President Bush a mass murderer for his rejection of the Kyoto protocol (Bush is branded a mass murderer over pollution, 2 April, 2001).

For the past 100 years or so we have been plundering the Earth at an ever increasing rate, intoxicated by the amazing wealth we have produced, full of self-praise, but largely blind to the negative consequences and to the limits imposed by a finite and vulnerable planet. 

But there is no time for pointing fingers and arguing about who is to blame, anymore than there was time in 1940 to argue about who was responsible for letting Hitler get to power. Now, as then, we have a huge, life-threatening problem, which we must face up to. Only this time the “enemy” is within: it is our non-sustainable economy and lifestyles and some of the deep-rooted values and attitudes on which they are based.

Hopefully, President Bush’s rejection of the Kyoto protocol will prove to be a blessing in disguise (Bush defies Europe over pollution, 30 March, 2001). Since if Al Gore had become President, agreement would have been assured – and most of us would have been reassured that our politicians had recognised the danger after all and were now taking the necessary counter measures. 

In fact, no politician I can think of has even begun to recognised the acute danger we are in, or the extent of the economic changes necessary to avert it. 

Representative for society as a whole they are behaving as an individual will sometimes behave when faced with the symptoms of a life-threatening disease: by choosing to ignore them completely (President Bush & Co) or by playing down their significance (Blair, Schröder, Al Gore etc.). 

However, our situation is no less threatening than that faced by the Apollo 13 astronauts. Only when their life-support systems were seriously damaged on the way to the Moon, all they had to do was hang on until they got back to Earth. 

When Spaceship Earth’s life-supporting ecosystems start to break down – as they will in the coming decades if we continue on our present course – there is nowhere for us to get back to. We have to sort the problems out - i.e. establish a sustainable economy and lifestyles for 8 – 10 billion people - on board ship, or perish.

We will do well to forget the Kyoto protocol, which barely scratched the surface of the problem,  the roots of which lie deep in our economic system (holy cow that it may be) and in some (not all) of the values and attitudes on which it is based. 

Because of the vast differences in scale, what took just seconds to become apparent on board Apollo 13, is taking years on board Spaceship Earth. But for those with eyes to see, the signs are quite clear.

James Lovell’s immortal understatement - “Houston, we have a problem”  applies equally well to Spaceship Earth.