13 September 2007

How much of a waste was the APEC summit?

The 2007 APEC summit has been and gone and the one thing that really amazed me is the monumental amount of hoo-ha that we embraced with the so-called "Sydney Declaration".

During the summit, we saw an unbelievably large police presence looking bored as protesters failed to materialise, excellent pranks played by The Chaser boys (with Chas Licciardello dressed as Osama Bin Laden) and the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard completely upstaged in an election year by the Australian Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd chatting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in fluent Mandarin.

The media has not bought the truly dazzling amounts of spin that APEC chose to issue with the declaration, and rightly so: the piece is staggeringly inept, and completely amateurish. Which is not what you expect when you have a room filled with eight heads of government, eleven heads of state (some of whom also double as heads of government) the chief executive of Hong Kong and a "special representative" from Taiwan, sorry, Chinese Taipei.

It was probably a good thing that we weren't expecting much - after all, with two "reformed" global warming denialists (George W Bush and Howard), one who couldn't give a rat's arse about global warming (Hu) and one who has indicated that his government will actually refuse to be bound by the rule of law with regards to his government's obligations (Stephen Harper), it was always going to be something very wrong.

But I don't think that we were ready for just how bad it actually was.

The document makes it clear that all participants are ready to discuss "aspirational" goals for reducing emissions by 2030.

Most nations of the world were "ready" for legally binding targets several years ago. The evidence for this is a series of meetings that commenced in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. This culminated in the Kyoto Protocol.

"Aspirational" goals are, quite simply, a waste of breath unless they're legally binding.

And 2030? This document is an INTERNATIONAL DISGRACE!!!

So in tribute to these masterminds, here is a presentation of what gets my vote as possibly the most sarcastic song ever written. There is truly a Devo song for every occasion.

It's titled, "Beautiful World" and it's off their fourth long-player, New Traditionalists. It is a particularly good music video. Enjoy.


KitKat said...

Complete, COMPLETE waste of time.

How many hundreds of millions of dollars spent rubber-stamping agreements negotiated beforehand. By a bunch of near-dead politicians who won't be alive to witness the repercussions of their short-sightedness. Hopefully history will condemn them.

Oh yeah, such a great way to spend money.

The Chaser's stunt highlighted the farce that it was, if you haven't seen it, check it out here http://www.abc.net.au/tv/chaser/war/vodcast/

Dikkii said...

Yes, Kitkat, that was excellent.

And the best thing is that most Australians appear to agree with the Chaser boys and not the authorities and have found them funny.

Excellent viewage.