COP15, Xmas and Boxing Day

Another month has passed with a blink of an eye.

Work has been good, but not spectacular. We are embarking on a exciting journey with this project. But still, something is missing. Maybe it's a combination of the lack of government push and also consumer demand.

I've read nearly all media reports and expert opinions of the outcomes of COP15. It reminded me of the XXXXX project I worked on when I was at XXXXX. The project was so difficult, the tasks required by the deadline were impossible. I had no idea what to write for my advice, 5 hours before the deadline. The boss caned me for it and demanded that I come up with something within an hour, and I wrote and wrote like mad. We met exactly an hour later and it was damage control. He agreed with mostly what I had written and we sent off the advice. But deep down we all knew we would never have been able to solve the underlying issues. It was beyond our control and domain. Same with COP15. The countries there were faced with an impossible task and the solutions were beyond their control. The rushed 3 page Accord looked and sounded a lot like my advice in that case.

A lot of China bashing has happened but in the end, it didn't matter whether a good deal was signed or not. An ambitious deal would just lead to default anyway.

The one big beef developing countries have with the West is that they started this endless desire for consumption and growth. They created and started it. And now they want to say "hey, of course you can have everything we have, just have it cleanly! It's possible! let's all work together and get there together!" In reality they still live twice as dirty and are not really serious with fitting the bill of cleaning up. This argument is almost like an innocent kid living in fantasy land, detached from reality. The ugly truth is there is no other way to live but dirtily. And Christmas is no better example. For big corporations, the Christmas period can amount to nearly 40% of their annual sales. It's a period of do or die.

I checked it out today, walking around on Boxing Day in Oxford Street and seeing the sea of people. This is the type of consumption that is NEEDED for the companies to stay profitable, to compete, to grow and to continue employing the growing number of people that are born in to this world.

I know it's probably impossible for all of this to be clean, by that all the energy and products to be co2 free. Therefore since climate change will continue, we will probably all die together. But I don't really care anymore about the human race. I think the Earth would probably be better off without us. Even those that purport to care about fate their grandchildren and great grandchildren can be argued as selfish for trying to preserve the rights of their future generations to continue polluting and destroying the world.

I myself am a hypocrit. I consume products, I travel, I produce waste, I live. I claim to be greener because I bought nothing for xmas and boxing day, and I refrain from meat. But the end how different am I to those that live normally, and enjoy themselves to the max before the end comes? Probably not too much.