• by Leonardo Padura Fuentes
• Thursday, July 30, 2009
• Inter Press Service

The world has deteriorated to the point that the images from Blade Runner amaze us less and frighten us more because we know how close we are to living on a planet similar to the one shown in the film, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

In this article, Padura writes that almost twenty years have passed since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero first raised the alarm: we must change or die. Twelve years have passed since the half-hearted Kyoto protocols were presented to the international community, and the richest and most powerful countries have failed to take the draconian steps that nature requires. The problem is well known, and so is the solution; the stupidity and laziness that keep it from being adopted is beyond measure.

Is the appetite for wealth stronger than the warnings of approaching disaster? What is the limit of this stupidity which keeps our species from acting to halt its own self-destruction?

The world conference on global warming, set for December in Copenhagen, will take place at what can only be called a point of no return. The answer to whether or not the ancient and modern predictions of catastrophe will come true lies in the concrete actions that governments take after the conference in both rich countries and the developing world, where hunger and poverty are growing exponentially, partly as a result of environmental degradation.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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