The blame game

Subject: The blame game.

Whilst the climate change conference in Egypt rehearses the same old pledges a new one, that the original polluters must pay the nations which didn’t industrialise, reparation for the damage they caused. It’s the ultimate blame game this business of blaming your own inactivity and therefore potentially leaving your nation in the backwoods for sanitation, transport, hygiene and economic self sufficiency. Blame it on nations who developed and provided whilst your own leaders sat back and let their people stew in poverty. The blame game is everywhere the lack of future planning and placing your reliance on food and fuel in the hands of Russia and manufacturing, in the hands of China.

In better economic times if we had been more forward thinking then perhaps we could have provided the funds to what are often despotic nations seeking to swell the accounts of their executive (chiefs) in offshore banks, but if we are also broke can you imagine the howl from the granny who can’t afford to heat her home as we allocate our limited funds across the world. Of course you can hear the cry  of the bleeding heart brigade to protect others, whilst strangely quiet about protecting the good people of Oldham.

If we were given the foresight to see into the future during the 1800 Industrial Revolution we might have concluded that the ravages to our own population in the city’s should have been ameliorated and if science could have foreseen the effect of  greenhouse gasses on the atmosphere we might have been in a position to make better decisions but don’t hold your breath since the world in those days was seen as a divide between civilised and savage.

A much greater the crime today is of nations like China who know the damage being done but in their oriental passivity do nothing to halt the building of coal fired power stations. At least we are throttling back on pollution by banning coal and going green where ever we can.

None of it is going to be enough of course, we have literally passed the threshold where the increase in temperature will not ravage whole parts of the planet, particularly those places seeking reparation but ravaging our own financial stability won’t improve matters. Perhaps we should make it easier for the economic migrant to come here so long as they bring transferable skills with them to make them productive.

Self interest was always one of the least attractive human traits and whilst there was a period when collaboration and global awareness seemed to point towards a better future we are now closing boarders and running up our defences despite all the high flown pledges at gathering such as COP. A returning Disraeli would see a familiar world in which nations identify with others of similar capacity and cultural identity. The melting pot of cultural assimilation is coming into question soon to be replaced with a very different malting pot that of global warming.