Posted by Edward Wilkinson
BBC 10’clock news, Thursday – 3 stories back to back.
First, the failure today of the G8 to come to an agreement with emerging nations about reducing future carbon emissions. Countries like China, India and Brazil said they were unable to match the targets of the existing super-economies because it might hinder their own growth.
Next a report from Ghana, where only a fifth of its rainforest is left standing after 50 years of deforestation. Innovative plans for the replanting of 24 million indigenous trees were shown, but there was criticism of the project, as some commentators felt it unfair for the West to impose the burden of ecological concern on the Third World.
And finally, can you believe it, a piece about the efforts of Jaguar – a firm which has been losing £1million a day for the last 10 months - to revive the brand by launching a new model.
Apparently some eminent academics place blame for the seemingly unbreakable distrust between the Islamic world and the West on the teaching of history. In this country we are happy to touch on something of the Roman presence in Britain, a dash of Anglo-Saxon times, a sprinkling of the Civil War, say, and a veritable wallowing in Victorian and early twentieth-Century “glory”, up to the Second World War. The Middle East takes, let us say, a different approach entirely. What is important is that there is a fundamental difference of outlook on the teaching of history in the respective regions. At best it does nothing to strengthen ties, at worst it serves to reinforce the feelings of distrust between the two sides for generations to come.
And despite this, we are potentially seeing the same thing happening in the environmental arena. If you were the Brazilian president, why would you take it on the chin when Barack Obama told you to cut your emissions, when the US has single-handedly made the largest contribution to the crisis? And why would a Ghanaian forester listen to Gordon Brown for even a second, if he knew that GB was responsible for giving the green (apologies!) light to a new, mainly coal-fired, power station that on its own would pump out 8,000,000 tonnes of carbon a year?
But all will be well, of course, because if he chops down enough trees, the forester might be able to afford a brand new Jaguar car.
