Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Best Warm Weather Cruises In December



Reclaiming the meaning
Gustavo Esteva


La Jornada


Monday December 13, 2010

Cancun was the last call ... and failed. We can still take advantage of the episode if we dare to derive relevant lessons from it: stop asking for the impossible and pretend that we are God.



environmentalists 20 years ago forced the UN to organize the Earth Summit. Gathered in Rio in 1992, 120 heads of state, eight thousand official delegates and a lot of environmentalists and journalists. Tried to capture an image the result: the function of theater went ahead while
the Titanic sank. The conference, as noted by The Ecologist
timely, consolidated the dominant ecological mythology, made visible the vested interests that prevent and alleviate the current woes put the Church in the hands of Luther. "After reaching the summit, every path is down," said Juan Jose Council then, one of the best known Mexican environmentalists. It was a warning and a recount. Environmentalists warned interested in more sensible patterns of life to continue using the emblem that united could bring water to a mill that was no longer hers. And it showed that many policies and measures aimed at caring for the ecology destroyed.

not learned enough. We continue upwards. Kyoto was a timid step in the right direction, but never fully achieved its purpose. There was in Cochabamba, in the People's Summit, very interesting proposals, but Cancun not taken into account and could not overcome the failure of Copenhagen. As pointed out by Via Campesina, would have been preferable to have no agreement whatsoever to get one so bad.


As usual, was done in parallel to the official conference another meeting: the International Forum for Climate Justice, called for hundreds of organizations. His
Cancun Declaration is a document more valuable than rhetorical stream of the conference, but its content is ambiguous. Their slogan, "Change the system, not the planet," puts the nail on the head. The statement lays bare the nature of the formal proposals, locked in the "market environmentalism" and shows how to produce the opposite of what they want. Makes sensible proposals: abandon the development, set limits, focusing on local areas, retrieve valid traditions. All this, however, remains trapped in the prevailing mentality: it still hangs the institutional apparatus and the intellectual and political trap of diagnosis, a carapace that functions as a tombstone of our dreams of transformation.


affirm or deny climate change implies that we know the planet, we know how to react and have the appropriate technical remedies. Pure nonsense.
Pride unbearable.


institutions continue to rely on means act against all experience and focus energy in the wrong place. There are battles to be fought, no doubt. Celebrate, for example, that led to the recently signed agreement Nagoya, in which 193 members of United Nations created a de facto moratorium against geo-engineering projects and adventures and condemned any attempt to manipulate the global thermostat. " But we do not surrender our will to government administrators of capital, which will dedicated to the protection of their privileges.

dominant formulations, epistemologically fragile, leading to paralysis. Although Evos Morales govern the entire planet, could not fix. Even the most majestic governments are in the hands of ordinary mortals, and all are trapped in bureaucratic intricacies and tissues of interest that tie their hands, heads and minds of even the most illustrious.

need to give social and political ground to our hypothesis, to find ourselves down and left into the reality of the necessary transformation. For example:

must not generate waste. More than recycling, we need from plastic packaging refuse to leave the toilet English, a habit harmful to consume 40 percent of available water for domestic use and produces a poisonous cocktail that contaminates everything in its path.

Instead of moving like crazy on polluting vehicles, we recover the car from the leg, foot or bicycle. That is to live differently, in another system, such as eating, drinking, dressing, living ... wisely.


The examples are endless. If formulated in those terms the urgent issues, confront is in our hands, not the global instance will never do what it takes ... and can not be God, even if they intend.

It's time to change the system, not the planet, as stated in Cancun. That depends on us, not him who derive dignity and income. Who out of Cancun, noted Leonardo Boff, were very unhappy with the result, but finally decided to take matters into their hands.

gustavoesteva@gmail.com

0 comments:

Post a Comment