At the bar, I order another beer. Right behind me is a table where Kate Aronoff and Naomi Klein are seated. It is apparent to me that these two also have a “beef” with Rich and his conclusions.
“I don’t like it when Rich says that we are all to blame for the current climate condition. I mean who in the hell is the ‘we’that he is referring to? Aronoff asked. “The ‘we’ is definitely not the countries in the southern hemisphere; places like Fiji. But they are most certainty going to feel the ultimate effects.
“Well then in your opinion who is the ‘we’”? replied Klein
“The ‘we’ are about the 100 companies that are responsible for about 71% of the CO2 emissions. That’s who. And it’s also politics at large. Rich goes on in his article talking about the Montreal Protocol that band CFC’s and how it was such a global win. Rich was asking why this could not be used to band the production of CO2. The answer is that the global economy is not built on CFC’s, it’s built on fossil fuels. And you know damn well that those executives aren’t going to give up their money and power.”
Kline rolled her eyes, “Everything you’re saying is true, but you are missing the larger point. The ‘we’ does not matter. Rich was trying to paint a picture that everyone tried so hard to make a deal and that the environment was right, but everyone just got cold feet. The thing is, the environment was not there. Rich was forgetting that he was talking about the time period of the big 80’s. The time period where movies like Wall Street and American Phycho was made. It was a time of extreme excess and no one wanted the good times to end. But I do agree with you about how the global south really had nothing to do with CO2 emissions.”
At this point my mind was swimming. But what I got out of the Aronoff/Kline conversation was the following. Aronoffframed the conversation in terms of who was specifically responsible or who in-fact was the “we” that Rich was referingto. In general Aronoff blamed the northern hemisphere (mainly the U.S) for the problem that we all are now facing. Kline, on the other hand, was agreeing with Aronoff to a point; but she was primary pushing the idea that the social and economic times of the big 80’s was in direct contrast to agreeing to anything that was going to derail the good times of a free unregulated market.
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