The Nairobi Mess
This is the script for "Nairobi Mess" - a 13 minute (12 Megabyte) MP3 audio file. To hear the full report, click the TITLE above.
[Begins with short BBC clip and statement by UN's Kofi Anan]
This is Alex Smith, dis-reporting on news that affects the world.
It's a mess in Nairobi Kenya, as nations scramble to legitimize a policy of doing nothing. These are the climate talks trying to establish climate talks, in the future, to discuss the future. And no one can agree on that.
The arctic is melting. Scientists report increasing ice-quakes, shocking movements under the Greenland Ice Sheet, that body holding ten percent of the world's fresh water, and melting fast. Glaciers all over the world are disappearing like actors at the of the play. The rainforests may become grass lands, the grass lands deserts. Millions of the world's poorest are already suffering and dying from climate change.
Humans are dividing along economic lines, blaming each other for the carbon fall out. Americans, obese with energy eating, want people in China and India, those with the thinnest fossil fuel profiles per person, to go on an industrial diet.
Europe is playing some game of delay, perhaps waiting for America to change with the new political tide. The American Greenpeace representative, Steve Sawyer, a realist on the U.S. system, says "Don't Wait For Us".
By the time the American colossus turns at the top, an finally skids toward a detour, the number of living things, and the surface area still habitable for them, will have shrunk beyond recognition.
Climate refugees, and even those who stay behind flooded out, or without water, will need massive aid. Yet the few millions already promised never reaches them. We are at the edge of a genocide, not as witnesses, but as fossil addicts roaring with horsepower, while silencing responsibility and passion.
Reports on the process of world climate negotiators are so tedious even policy wonks can barely stand it. Everyone calls for action, no one agrees on when, who, or what.
Here are a few clips from one of the few radio investigators brave enough to wade into this swamp. Phil England is a producer and host for a program on Resonance FM, an alternative station in London, England. It's really THE alternative voice in London. The show is called "Two Degrees" - because that's the limit of average temperature rise the current eco-system can tolerate, before runaway climate change may begin. Phil has interviewed the scientists and the government men, now he's covering the Nairobi talks. It's all climate radio, archived at coinet.org.uk/climateradio.
[Excerpt from Two Degrees Show at www.coinet.org.uk/climateradio]
Here is the plot: everyone knows the previous agreement, called the Kyoto Protocol, was made in 1992, before we knew just how serious our contributions to greenhouse gases had become. Kyoto merely called on developed countries to revert to 1990 levels of pollution. Hardly anyone did, and recent reports seem to show that carbon dioxide is pouring into the atmosphere, completely out of control. So the diplomats and technocrats are supposed to review Kyoto, and set new standards capable of saving ourselves and the known climate, with an agreement by 2008, and a start date of 2012. That year, 2012, is when the Kyoto agreement runs out, and we will have nothing, no international effort.
American, the world's biggest polluter never ratified Kyoto. Australia says they don't want to play. The new Conservative government of Canada appears to be backing out.
The country with the largest single increase in direct human carbon is China - so far left out of emissions caps and wanting to stay that way. Indonesia may be emitting even more carbon than China, due to burning down their rainforests, we don't know for sure.
Europe, a great talker, but addicted and conflicted, is, Phil England tells us, "dithering"
[Excerpt from Two Degrees Show at www.coinet.org.uk/climateradio]
According to Steve Sawyer, the leader of the non-profit climate organizations, a man who knows America too well, it would be suicidal for the assembled nations to postpone talks for more years, waiting for a possible new regime in Washington. The transition will take too long; the world's ecosystem waits for no one. A failed process here could mean everyone is moving far North, or far South, to escape the storms, heat and dead zones in the middle.
Here is what the top bureaucrat for the talks is saying. From the press conferences, passed on by the Two Degrees show, this is Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat:
[Excerpt from Two Degrees Show at www.coinet.org.uk/climateradio - UN'S de Boer explains how no agreement or action is expected at this meeting, and informal talks will likely take "years"]
That's right. The time is not yet ripe for the talks that will determine the talks about preserving out future. The center cannot hold. International mechanisms are stunned, nationalism is triumphant, talk is the objective, not the cause of anything.
It is time to go to the streets, to devote your spare time to spare the planet, to convert everyone you know, and a lot of people you don't know.
[Phil "the clock is ticking, we are running out of time"]
This report is from Radio Ecoshock, free all environment radio, 24/7 at
www.ecoshock.org
[Begins with short BBC clip and statement by UN's Kofi Anan]
This is Alex Smith, dis-reporting on news that affects the world.
It's a mess in Nairobi Kenya, as nations scramble to legitimize a policy of doing nothing. These are the climate talks trying to establish climate talks, in the future, to discuss the future. And no one can agree on that.
The arctic is melting. Scientists report increasing ice-quakes, shocking movements under the Greenland Ice Sheet, that body holding ten percent of the world's fresh water, and melting fast. Glaciers all over the world are disappearing like actors at the of the play. The rainforests may become grass lands, the grass lands deserts. Millions of the world's poorest are already suffering and dying from climate change.
Humans are dividing along economic lines, blaming each other for the carbon fall out. Americans, obese with energy eating, want people in China and India, those with the thinnest fossil fuel profiles per person, to go on an industrial diet.
Europe is playing some game of delay, perhaps waiting for America to change with the new political tide. The American Greenpeace representative, Steve Sawyer, a realist on the U.S. system, says "Don't Wait For Us".
By the time the American colossus turns at the top, an finally skids toward a detour, the number of living things, and the surface area still habitable for them, will have shrunk beyond recognition.
Climate refugees, and even those who stay behind flooded out, or without water, will need massive aid. Yet the few millions already promised never reaches them. We are at the edge of a genocide, not as witnesses, but as fossil addicts roaring with horsepower, while silencing responsibility and passion.
Reports on the process of world climate negotiators are so tedious even policy wonks can barely stand it. Everyone calls for action, no one agrees on when, who, or what.
Here are a few clips from one of the few radio investigators brave enough to wade into this swamp. Phil England is a producer and host for a program on Resonance FM, an alternative station in London, England. It's really THE alternative voice in London. The show is called "Two Degrees" - because that's the limit of average temperature rise the current eco-system can tolerate, before runaway climate change may begin. Phil has interviewed the scientists and the government men, now he's covering the Nairobi talks. It's all climate radio, archived at coinet.org.uk/climateradio.
[Excerpt from Two Degrees Show at www.coinet.org.uk/climateradio]
Here is the plot: everyone knows the previous agreement, called the Kyoto Protocol, was made in 1992, before we knew just how serious our contributions to greenhouse gases had become. Kyoto merely called on developed countries to revert to 1990 levels of pollution. Hardly anyone did, and recent reports seem to show that carbon dioxide is pouring into the atmosphere, completely out of control. So the diplomats and technocrats are supposed to review Kyoto, and set new standards capable of saving ourselves and the known climate, with an agreement by 2008, and a start date of 2012. That year, 2012, is when the Kyoto agreement runs out, and we will have nothing, no international effort.
American, the world's biggest polluter never ratified Kyoto. Australia says they don't want to play. The new Conservative government of Canada appears to be backing out.
The country with the largest single increase in direct human carbon is China - so far left out of emissions caps and wanting to stay that way. Indonesia may be emitting even more carbon than China, due to burning down their rainforests, we don't know for sure.
Europe, a great talker, but addicted and conflicted, is, Phil England tells us, "dithering"
[Excerpt from Two Degrees Show at www.coinet.org.uk/climateradio]
According to Steve Sawyer, the leader of the non-profit climate organizations, a man who knows America too well, it would be suicidal for the assembled nations to postpone talks for more years, waiting for a possible new regime in Washington. The transition will take too long; the world's ecosystem waits for no one. A failed process here could mean everyone is moving far North, or far South, to escape the storms, heat and dead zones in the middle.
Here is what the top bureaucrat for the talks is saying. From the press conferences, passed on by the Two Degrees show, this is Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat:
[Excerpt from Two Degrees Show at www.coinet.org.uk/climateradio - UN'S de Boer explains how no agreement or action is expected at this meeting, and informal talks will likely take "years"]
That's right. The time is not yet ripe for the talks that will determine the talks about preserving out future. The center cannot hold. International mechanisms are stunned, nationalism is triumphant, talk is the objective, not the cause of anything.
It is time to go to the streets, to devote your spare time to spare the planet, to convert everyone you know, and a lot of people you don't know.
[Phil "the clock is ticking, we are running out of time"]
This report is from Radio Ecoshock, free all environment radio, 24/7 at
www.ecoshock.org
