Monday 14 December 2009

Marching on Copenhagen



Saturday's peaceful march by people from all over the world was unfortunately over shadowed by a group of anarchists hoping to bring the "evil" world of capitalism down by smashing up a few shops in central Copenhagen. Nice one guys, you really achieved something.

However 50,000 plus people created peaceful, carnival atmosphere to show their eagerness for a fair, ambitious and binding deal in Copenhagen.

The end of the march featured speeches by Mary Robinson, Vandana Shiva, Helena Christiansen and many others. Apart from 40% reduction in emissions from developed countries from 1990 levels by 2020, Mary Robinson also put forward the need for developed nations to come up with 200 billion USD to help developing countries to respond to climate change. There is a very long way to go in the negotiations before get anywhere near that level.

Food for thought - the amount of money each developed nation spent to bail out the bankers last year -

The US spent $700 billion in their bank bail out. Banks bailed out - http://bailout.propublica.org/main/list/index

However the wider bailout of the US economy was a lot more, estimated here at 8.5 trillion USD.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2008/11/26/MNVN14C8QR.DTL&o=0

The EU's pledge of 7.2 billion Euro (over 10 billion USD) is a small step in the right direction but still woefully inadequate. What can the US come up with?





No comments:

Post a Comment