And this image kept coming back to my mind:
"The sculpture ’Survival of the Fattest’ is a symbol of the rich world’s (i.e. the fat woman, Justitia) self-complacent ‘righteousness’. With a pair of scales in her hand she sits on the back of starved African man (i.e. the third world), while pretending to do what is best for him.
Climate changes are caused by the western world, but the consequences hit the third world hardest. Even so, we are not willing to give up our way of life or make real changes. The poor countries are willing to do, comparatively, far more to lower CO2 emission than the western world. Still, the west all too often argues that they will have admissions and promises of further CO2 reductions from China, India, Russia and other countries that emit (and always have emitted) far less than the western world.
The little Mermaid is a fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen and one of the most important symbols in Denmark. It is a part of the Danish idea of themselves as a small, cosy nation where the living is good, but where we are also doing our bit to help the world that surrounds us. This is, of course, only a fairytale.
The western world and the Danes sit like the mermaid on the rock or like the fat lady in a safe distance from the water level. Happy and assured that they have the capital it takes to prevent that the climate changes hit us. Meanwhile, island states around the world are being flushed away, while hurricanes, drought and hunger hit the rest of the world, especially Africa. But, we continue to sit on our rocks convinced that the 200 million climate refugees the UN foresee in 40 years will not affect us.
At the end, the major economies (US, China, India, Brazil etc) strike a deal among themselves and forced it on the other countries on the last day of COP15. The powerful wins again, for now.
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