In search of a global ethic and political will, in freezing weather and the most dispiriting cavernous building under cold grey Copenhagen skies, this search by 34,000 people with 3500 press observing, is a most extraordinary moment in time for humanity. There is a mix of aspiration – hoping against hope – and a fair dose of despair. It makes for a volatile psychological mix.
After two years since making a commitment in Bali, where has it got to? Essentially, the nations of the world have split into three key groups, making transparent what have been faint fault lines until this week. The fractures are now apparent. The white-hot pressure of trying to do a political deal, if not a legally binding deal – which until four weeks ago this meeting at Copenhagen was promising – is taking its toll.
Discussions around land use today were suspended because of the charge that this is purely accounting “smokes and mirrors” to get some countries a competitive advantage without seriously reducing greenhouse gases. Some of the most vulnerable nations who travel together under the banner of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), and whose very future is threatened with submersion, threw the gauntlet down with a new proposed legal text. What we are witnessing is a fracturing of the globe into developed, major developing, and the poorest nations into three groups, which appear destined to collide as they seem unable to transcend their fundamentally different interests for the good of the whole global community.
This is the urgent search for a miracle, for a common vision and a global ethic.
Yet we, as a community, still have an amazing opportunity and hope. The European Union agreed to increase its offer of funding for developing nations in the next three years, which the UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said was an encouraging sign as we lead into the final week of negotiations. By next Thursday, there will be more than 100 political leaders in the same room, at the same time, hearing the unprecedented, urgent cry that this may be their best – if not last – chance to avert an ecological and humanitarian disaster.
Can a moral consensus – people of different ethnicities, religions and histories – be forged for the future of the next generations of children? A moral consensus that owns a new ethic rather than the Western belief that we are able to live as we like as long we are not hurting anyone. The reality has dawned that way we choose to live – our carbon footprint – is dramatically hurting those who are most vulnerable. But will a clear-cut moral case of inequity be sufficient to galvanize nations to act? This indeed is the search.
Why am I here? Because my faith frames this global ethic in the biblical injunction that: “to love God is to love my neighbour”.
Never before have we been confronted with such a stark choice of translating that ideal into action.
Watch a video version of Tim’s comments:
Tim Costello is the CEO of World Vision Australia.
