COPENHAGEN FELL VICTIM TO A WORLD DIVIDED

UN CLIMATE SUMMIT IN COPENHAGEN
FAILED TO DELIVER A CLIMATE DEAL

BRUSSELS (BBC News) -The Copenhagen climate summit fell victim to a cumbersome negotiating process involving 193 countries with very different political agendas that just didn't allow for a visionary agreement. World leaders are simply too divided - by distrust and outright hostility, by economic competition and ideological fervour, by the dire need for development and recession-fuelled fears of economic decline - to have overcome their differences and concluded a firm deal. What emerged instead was a kind of agreement in principle among the developed world and leading developing countries to rein in their greenhouse-gas emissions and an aim to keep global temperatures from increasing by more than two degrees Celsius, the threshold beyond which scientists say the most devastating impacts of climate change will occur.

European Union leaders on Tuesday sought to deflect criticism that they had fumbled their strategy at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting, just as a feud between the British and the Chinese over whom to blame for the outcome worsened. Despite the warts and failures, the Copenhagen Accord should not be underestimated, especially since only a year ago, the major developing countries insisted that they had no responsibility for cutting emissions, and that demands for such action represented an effort by the developed world to stifle their economic growth. For the first time, leading developing countries such as China, India and Brazil have agreed to rein in emissions as part of an international treaty aimed at battling climate change. United Nations climate chief Ivo de Boer had set out a series of ambitious goals, including commitment from developed countries to meet mid-term and long-term targets that would result in global emissions peaking prior to 2020, and falling to half of 1990 levels by 2050. The developing world was demanding commitments for financing from the developed countries that would grow to several hundred billions of dollars by 2020, as well as the transfer of technology needed to cut emissions.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

As forecasted by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself, today, this movement is out to conquer the heart of every individual, throughout the world, by its unfailing message of love and compassion. ... Especially in the West, where reckless industrialization and consumerism have reduced human mind to a slave of greed and passion, where the body has become a ruthless machine rather than the Temple of God, the message of love and piety, as pronounced by Him, has met with warm reception and enthusiasm. In particular, the Indians residing abroad consider our organization as a boon, which has provided them an opportunity to serve people in distress, whether physical or moral, and to uphold the message of the transcendental incarnation of their motherland.

Śrīla Bhakti Bibudha Bodhayan Maharaja :
Lecture: “Śrī Gopinath Gaudiya Math”
‘Our Organization: Its Aims and Objectives (Activities)’
Bhaktivedanta Memorial Library - www.bvml.org/SBBBM/