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CounterPunch
August
28, 2002
Gorby in Johannesburg
Nature Can't
Wait
by Mikhail Gorbachev
The second Earth Summit has opened. The fact that
over 100 heads of state and government decided to come to Johannesburg
indicates that they are worried. But that is not enough. There
is an immense distance between worry and practical deeds. Worry
was already expressed a decade ago in Rio de Janeiro. But where
do we stand today?
Looking back at the events of the past
decade, I feel great anxiety and disappointment. It seemed to
many of us that the end of the Cold War, symbolized by the fall
of the Berlin Wall, would at last allow mankind to look into
the future with hope. It seemed that the world community, relieved
of the fear of a nuclear war, of ideological confrontation, would
start moving along the path of stable development, take urgent
actions to combat poverty and disastrous environmental pollution
and change the character of globalization by including in it
notions like solidarity, human rights and freedom of the individual.
Regretfully, this chance was used insufficiently, to say the
least.
Mankind lags behind the demands of the
time. Celebrations of the demise of communism have lasted a bit
too long and people lost sight of the complexity of the world,
of its problems and contradictions. Poverty and backwardness
were forgotten and outstanding environmental problems were pushed
to the backwoods of public consciousness.
The events of September 11, 2001, showed
that the idea of a mono-polar world is untenable. Even the most
powerful nation in the world appeared to be powerless before
the threat of international terrorism. It only remains to hope
that this monstrous event will mark the end of illusions, of
that false philosophy of a mono-polar world produced after the
end of the Cold War and the break-up of the USSR.
The Johannesburg summit should become
a turning point; it cannot be limited to admission that a danger
exists, but practical actions should be taken without delay to
bring about sustainable development. If the present leaders fail
to do that, if they fail to define the goals and provide required
resources, then, I am afraid, the very idea of convocating such
forums will be finally discredited.
When the world communist system fell
to pieces, the famous French oceanologist Jacques Ives Cousteau
said the greatest harm to nature had been caused not by communism
but by the market economy, for which every thing has its price
but nothing is of value.
I am not calling for a return to communism,
but I am inclined to agree with Cousteau. The impending environmental
crisis has shown that the use of purely economic criteria (profitability,
return of invested capital) does not allow us to meet the environmental
challenge. The market cannot assess what the greatest value will
be for people in one hundred years. How can one calculate the
market value of the beauty of a lake or of a snow-capped mountain?
Who will calculate the expediency of saving "useless"
wild animals or hundreds of species of insects?
I remember a talk I had with former U.S.
State Secretary George Schultz in 1992. We spoke all night. I
told him, "You Americans want to export your way of life
everywhere. But you consume 44 percent of the world's electric
power. If other countries start living by your standards, all
reserves on the globe will be exhausted within a few years."
Today, ten years later, the situation
has not improved. Nearly one billion people suffer from starvation,
while every fourth person in the U.S. suffers from obesity. Can't
people understand that it is a paradox?
Do we realize how abnormal it is that,
of the 36 million people having AIDS, 23 million live in Africa?
Or that the number of telephone lines in Tokyo is the same as
in the whole of Africa? Or that 130 million children do not go
even to elementary school? In Botswana today life expectancy
is 41 years. Meanwhile aid to the poor is decreasing.
In essence responsibility for this rests
with the present leaders. The first challenge that they will
be unable to evade is the need to preserve peace, to put an end
to so-called local conflicts, to prevent bleeding spots from
spreading on the globe. Among those involved in such conflicts
are also countries possessing nuclear or chemical arms.
The world community should be at one
in the struggle against terrorism which can never be justified.
The second challenge is combating poverty in the world. How can
the "golden billion" of the lucky ones be happy while
half of the world population suffers? The third challenge is
the environmental problem. It is obvious that climatic changes
are underway in the world today, that the number of natural disasters,
typhoons, floods and droughts is increasing. Hundreds of species
of plants and animals are disappearing, glaciers are melting
and the ocean is being exhausted.
The three challenges are closely inter-related.
Unless we are united in the struggle against war, we will not
be able to stick together for saving our planet. Life on Earth
can become merely an ephemeral episode in the history of the
Universe. That is why we should learn to think in a new way.
We need a new order based on justice and equality and not on
benefits alone. Nature is giving us distress signals. Time has
come to heed them. The Johannesburg summit cannot become a "Rio
+ 0". Nature cannot wait any longer.
Today's Features
Sam Bahour
The Violence
of Curfew
Wenonah Hauter
From Johannesburg:
Pacts with the Devil: Public-Private Partnerships and the Global
Environment
Jerre Skog
Wanted:
"Our Kind of Guy"
in Iraq!
Uri Avnery
Letter
to a Pilot
New Print
Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- War Talk As White Noise:
Anything to Get Harken and Halliburton
Out of the Headlines;
- First Hilliard, Then
McKinney: Jewish
Groups Target Blacks Brave Enough to Talk About Justice in the
Middle East; Intimidation
is the Name of the Game; Smearing
"Insane" McKinney As Muslims' Pawn;
- The Missing Terrorist?
Calling Scotland
Yard: "Where's Atif?"
- They Never Booed Dylan!:
Tape Transcript Shows
Famed Newport Folkfest Dissing of Electric Dylan Not True. The Catcalls were for Peter
Yarrow!
- New Shame from the Liffey
Shrike
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August 28,
2002
William Ring
War on Iraq:
The Brightest Scenario
August 27,
2002
Sam Bahour
The Violence
of Curfew
Wenonah Hauter
From Johannesburg:
Pacts with the Devil: Public-Private Partnerships and the Global
Environment
Jerre Skog
Wanted:
"Our Kind of Guy"
in Iraq!
Uri Avnery
Letter
to a Pilot
August 26,
2002
Sami Al-Arian
Fighting
for the Right of
Dissent and Due Process
Ruebner /
Turaani
What
is Israel Hiding?
Norman Madarasz
Brazil
and the IMF:
Democracy and Emerging Market Liberalism
Robert Fisk
War Crimes:
Reporters Aren't Prosecutors
Douglas Valentine
Phoenix,
CIA and Maj. Gen. Bruce Lawlor: From Vietnam
to Homeland Security
August 24
/ 25, 2002
Susan Davis
Proverbial
Wisdom:
Of Clogs and Enron
Falk / Krieger
No War
Against Iraq
Ceylon Mooney
Fasting
for Iraq
Jonathon
Wright
Police
Brutality in Atlanta
Ralph Nader
Congress's
Pay Raise Scam
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Chainsaw
George
Alexander
Cockburn
Alterman
Cheapens Holocaust
August 23,
2002
Dave Marsh
Selling
Out?
Anthony Gancarski
Super-Duper:
Oil, al-Qaeda and a West African Adventure
William Hughes
Lieberman's
Conflict
of Interest?
Kurt Nimmo
The Lapdog
Conversion of CNN:
They Didn't Want to "Criticize" a Popular War
Sean Donahue
Hardline
in Colombia
August 22,
2002
Sean Donahue
Hardline
in Colombia
Wayne Madsen
Crushing
Congressional Dissent: The Fall of Hilliard, Barr and McKinney
Gilad Atzmon
The Zionist
Lobby and
American Foreign Policy
Robert Johnson
Right
Wing Doves?
Alexander
Cockburn
Taking
Down McKinney
August 21,
2002
Gary Leupp
The Return
of Mani
Romi Mahajan
Bhopal
on $40 a Day
Jerre Skog
Bush and
Europe:
Fun, Profit & Betrayal
Tom Crumpacker
The
Politics of the Cuba Embargo
August 20,
2002
Kathleen
Christison
Israeli
Tilt: the NYT
and Palestine
August 14
/ 19, 2002
Susan Davis
Played
Out: a Journey to Central City, Colorado
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About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Days That
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Seattle and Beyond
By
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and Jeffrey St. Clair
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Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
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