Re: Climate Negotiators Hail ‘Historic’ Paris Draft Agreement - Bloomberg Business

[Ian Livingston]

In these times, "short term corporate profits" are measured $ / nanosecond;
"long term profits" are measured over a decade or so. There is little
motivation to look to sustainable approaches that might eventuate in the
obsolescence of trade as it is currently practiced, where "profit" is
measured in, say, degrees of homeostasis, or environmental integrity, or
some such, wherein all the living might thrive.

On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 3:19 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> So the the US must lead from behind?
>
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 6:17 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Does the business interest and short term corporate profit  drive
>> policy?  In the top ten, both in total CO2 emissions, and in emissions per
>> capita, there is a great deal of government control of business and the
>> economy, though, obviously, a shift to more market economies is underway.
>> China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Japan, not exactly "free market
>> economies", so governments can set policy, more so than in the US. In fact,
>> the governments in almost all of the top 25 emissions countries can,
>> without the messiness of either a democracy that has been bought out
>> through leverage and lobby, or the complex network of public international
>> conglomerates that are so vital to the US, drive policy.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 6:44 AM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> We are talking about governments here, i.e., massive business
>>> aggregates. They are not eager to drop immediate profits in the interest of
>>> long-term survival. Business is not conducted with the next generation in
>>> mind, only the profit margin, ergo governments act in kind. Pulled out The
>>> Sacred and the Profane again the other day and came across a passage that
>>> struck me as particularly applicable in these times, if only we acknowledge
>>> that our leaders today honor the gods, not of pre-history, but of recent
>>> history. The world they know was made by gods such as Pierce Inverarity,
>>> not those old gods of the Nile, of Beth-el, or of Olympus. Profit, i.e.,
>>> the stronger hand in trade, is the only environment that concerns them.
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 11:47 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> > On Dec 12, 2015, at 5:58 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > If all the pledges are actually fully met it will still lead to a
>>>> temperature rise between 3 and 4 degrees C global average( land temps will
>>>> be more extreme) That will produce massive global catastrophes.
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/10/climate-2c-global-warming-target-fail
>>>> >
>>>> >  Naomi Klein: We know, from doing the math and adding up the targets
>>>> that the major economies have brought to Paris, that those targets lead us
>>>> to a very dangerous future. They lead us to a future between 3 and 4
>>>> degrees Celsius warming. These are figures from the Tyndall Centre and
>>>> Kevin Anderson, who have analyzed those numbers. It does not lead us to 2
>>>> degrees Celsius, which is what many of our governments pledged to do in
>>>> Copenhagen in 2009.
>>>> >
>>>> > KEVIN ANDERSON: The message is that the voluntary submissions that
>>>> have been put forward by all of the countries, when you add all of these
>>>> up, they are far, far above the level of what we call dangerous climate
>>>> change, that all of our leaders have committed to, to avoid going above
>>>> this 2 degrees C rise, I think about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. But actually,
>>>> when you add up all of the commitments that the countries are making in
>>>> terms of their reductions in emissions, then actually it’s far, far above
>>>> that, nearer 3 or 4 degrees C temperature rise, which is a huge increase.
>>>> That’s a global average. Remember, that is a global average. And most of
>>>> the globe is covered in water, so on land that’s an average of, if we carry
>>>> on like we’re going now, 4, 5, possibly even as high as 6 degrees C
>>>> temperature rise.
>>>> >
>>>> > James Hansen also agreed with this estimate
>>>> >> On Dec 12, 2015, at 6:56 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-12/climate-envoys-prepare-for-broadest-deal-yet-limiting-pollution
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Sent from my iPad-
>>>> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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