PROPOSITION: “This house believes the west has no right to impose environmental standards on developing countries” Motion defeated
On May 6 Dr Paul Oquist joined the Oxford Union Climate Change Debate and spoke on the proposition of “This house believes the West has no right to impose environmental Standards on developing countries.”
Dr Oquist spoke of historical responsibility, interventions of the West and the failings of the Paris Climate Agreement. His first conclusion was that neither the West, nor anyone else, has the right to imposition or domination; and interventions that the West does impose are generally disastrous for the countries involved as well as for humanity.
The world in 2016 is in an on-going environmental crisis that will lead to the catastrophic deterioration of the environment.
We are now at 1 degree centigrade above the pre-industrial level and above 400 parts per million of CO2e in the atmosphere. At one degree, all of the ice in the world is melting, Arctic, Antarctic, Greenland, as well as mountain glaciers.
We have just had one of the strongest El Niño experiences since 1950 and we are experiencing the hottest years on record three years in a row. Some areas are suffering four-year droughts, deserts are expanding, and biodiversity is increasingly threatened.
Dr Oquist went on to discuss the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, stating that it will increase water and food shortages, mortality and disease, and ecosystem decline; sabotaging the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as the Desertification and Biodiversity conventions.
Dr Oquist’s final conclusion was that the world’s largest emitters must increase their level of ambition and comply with a standard of quotas based on historical responsibility in order to avoid a world with temperatures 3°C higher than the pre-industrial level.
If Nicaragua, the second poorest in Latin America and the Caribbean, can make these advances certainly the West and the rest of the large emitters can begin increasing their levels of ambition now, in order to save us from a three degree world average temperature rise.
However to do so they must address the root cause of our environmental crisis: the endless, limitless, mindless accumulation and concentration of capital on a planet with limited resources.