Enlight 21

Thank god for the United Nations

Author: Gladwyn d'Souza | Category: Environment | Health | Date: 04-08-2022

What would the average person say if you asked them about the UN? According to the PEW Charitable trust, you'd hear mostly positive things around the world. Which is a good thing since problems like climate change are world changing and species altering events! The UN is the closest thing we have to a world government. Much of what we like such as clean air, safe streets, and democracy are a result of committed public participation from UN Agencies like the World Health Organization and the UN High Commission on Refugees. The pandemic remains an area where the UN has emerged as a capable and dependable source on policy especially in the face of the prior US administration's dependence on lies, propaganda, and anti-science deception.

The first leadership lesson for the average person is to have a competent policy committee.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Sixth Assessment Report about the state of the climate, invigorates the discussion around saving the planet from corporate caused destruction, in the name of kleptocracy. Part One was titled Code Red For Humanity. “The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk,” the Secretary-General said in a statement. Here is a brief aside on Secretary General Antonio Gutterz. For a few years now he has emerged as the best and most responsible word leader. If we had a world president it would have to be Gutterz. He has never sugar coated his statements, even when they have involved calling out corporations for engaging in kleptocracy, to degrade health and livabiltiy.

The second leadership lesson for the average person is to have a fearless leader for the committee.

Part II was titled Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability and it introduced the term maladaptation. Adaptation solutions are those that are effective, feasible, and conform to principles of distributive, procedural and recognition justice whose effectiveness reduces vulnerability and climate-related risk, and increases resilience. We must avoid maladaptions such as renewable biogas, blue hydrogen, carbon capture and storage which consume more energy, critical funds, and create more greenhouse gases in their lifecycle emissions and essentially delay real solutions- while allowing fossil fuel use to continue!

Part III released this week is titled Mitigation of Climate Change. It says that while a handful of countries have reduced emission, the majority have not. Surprise, surprise! It introduces the concept of demand versus services in Chapter 5. People want to see outcomes such as travel, rather than purchasing the means to make it possible, such as a car. They do the latter because the former is legislated out or prohibited. Changing to services, like bike share, can reduce emissions by a whopping 65%. This chapter both severs the link between demand and growth; and says the claim of the necessity of fossil fuels to alleviate poverty has no basis in reality! Everyone concerned about the climate and how to solve it, in their homes and cities, should read this report especially chapters 5, 8, 9, and 10.

If the UN is so great why don't we have results and stop the growth in emissions? The UN was designed as an advisory body to the big imperial powers after World War II. Consequently it is not capable of implementing or enforcing policy which remains the purview of imperial powers bent on resource and labor theft to the detriment of health such as the US blessed Chevron's consequence free destruction of indigenous lands in Ecuador. Look no further than the broken china in the tea shop that Secretary of State Colin Powell said we owned in Iraq.

The third leadership lesson for the average person to know who is in charge. Clearly Ali Baba and the four thieves are a whole different proposition than Mr Smith goes to Washington- as Ukraine is finding out.

So it's good news that the UN is popular worldwide. But the PEW report says that the UN is less popular with autocrats and Republicans. Autocrats are a dangerous trend, as the world trends toward a more muscular capitalism like China's seen most recently with the reelection of Orban in Hungary. Distrust of the UN among Republicans has been trending toward QAnon since 1998. What would Monica have to say about that? We have seen this QAnon trend in pandemic times with an increasing disbelief in science, a predilection for autocrats and conspiracy theories, and suppressing the vote. Anti UN nutcases in the US advocate for conspiracy under the moniker of Agenda 21. Thus while the UN is good news globally, we in the US needs to wake up and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Until then, we should give thanks for a policy advisory body like the UN, and please read Part III of the IPCC's Sixth Assessment report! Because only then will the average person know what to ask of their city council to fix climate change that they learned from the UN.