Global Warming: Hilary Benn’s World Without China
GLOBAL warming. According to Hilary Benn, it’s the “greatest challenge we have ever faced as human beings”.
Benn, the Environment Secretary, is seen by the Times addressing a green summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
The human beings he speaks of might be the ones flown in to sit around the big table and dispel hot air. But Benn is part of “humble” Gordon Brown’s Cabinet and though entitled to place himself at the centre of world events he needs to recognise humility.
So it’s not all about Benn. The human beings are us. This is the biggest challenge any of us have every faced. No small news to human beings who are fighting in Iraq, the human beings who fought dinosaurs (I’ve seen the footage) and the human beings who helped build the big boat to save all living things from drowning (New Labour: Noah Labour).
Says Benn: “That means all of us, including the largest economy in the world, the United States, taking on binding reduction targets.”
The Times says Benn’s decision to “single out…will be regarded in Washington as particularly provocative”.
Not that George Bush is listening that closely. Readers learn says he missed most of the summit and has called his own meeting of 15 major economies in Washington later in the week.
Bush’s chief environmental adviser says: “It’s out philosophy that each nation has the sovereign capacity to decide for itself what its own portfolio of policies should be.”
Says Hilary Benn: “China in the end will have to decide what they are going to contribute.”
A truly global approach, then…
Posted: 25th, September 2007 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
