Quick Reads

Over 160 civil society groups, including social movements and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), released a joint declaration on technology: “Let's Look Before We Leap!”. The declaration alerts governments to the absence of any precautionary environmental and social assessment mechanisms in the draft Copenhagen agreement on technology, and claims that the current approach poses grave threats to human health, human rights, rural livelihoods, diverse ecosystems and climate stability.

La red internacional de la sociedad civil Climate Justice Now! deplora la minimización en las expectativas de la Cumbre de Copenhague sobre el Clima, celebrada, en Barcelona, entre los gobiernos de los países industrializados, los funcionarios de la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático (CMNUCC) y el anfitrión de la Cumbre. En la víspera de esta Cumbre, todavía no hay un avance real en los objetivos, prevalece una confianza ingenua y peligrosa sobre los mecanismos de mercado, no hay compromiso con los derechos humanos, y existe un contexto escalofriante en el que algunos países están comenzando a hablar muy en serio acerca de peligrosas soluciones técnicas.

With the Royal Society’s President, Lord Martin Rees, presiding and James Lovelock, the father of the Gaia Hypothesis, commenting, the release of the Society’s report[1] outlining the possibilities for geoengineering the world out of the climate crisis could seem the very embodiment of the precautionary principle. In his 2004 book, Our Final Century, it was Lord Rees after all who warned us that technological hubris could obliterate a million lives through “bio error or bioterror” before 2020. He is a cautious man not disposed to put faith in technological silver bullets. Likewise, Dr. Lovelock has been outspoken in his alarm over the impending climate chaos – edging toward geoengineering, but equally perturbed by the “Kafkaesque” prospects of scientists and governments trying to rejig the planetary thermostat.