Bolivia´s Climate Crusade

So you, like me, may have associated Aljazeera only with releasing the latest Taliban announcements. It appears they do some decent journalism as well, and in English! Here’s a great video on climate change´s impact on Bolivia, the role of the “Global South”, and some good thinking on how to move forward with solutions instead of just bickering about punitive damages.

Original link on Al Jazeera:
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/faultlines/2010/05/2010518121127315453.html

Youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWjHrVJPb-g


Here´s a photo of dad and I exploring some of the same terrain seen in the video. It is quite dramatic seeing up close how the landscape has changed.

A couple excerpts:
“Bolivia is on the receiving end of a crisis they did not create. It’s also a crisis they can’t solve, at least not on their own, and that’s where the climate debt movement comes in. As the U.S. confronts ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, its government is demanding that BP, the polluter, should pay. Bolivia is trying to apply that principal on a global scale.”


“In countries like Bolivia, the climate crisis is impossible to deny. In countries like the U.S., denial is everywhere. Not just the denial of climate skeptics, but the daily denial of millions of people who know the crisis is real, yet somehow can’t summon the urgency to act.”

“How do we find a way for impoverished people and impoverished countries to economically develop in a way that is not at the expense of the environment and that recognized their right to develop, just as the countries in the North had a right to develop?”

“Climate debt: the basic principle is polluter pays. There is finite space for atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, and the rich world has already used up more than its fair share. For poor countries to develop, they need help to leapfrog the dirty technologies that created our modern world and created the climate crisis.”