Míriam, bom dia para você. Gostei do artigo. Acho que estamos no caminho certo, mas agindo com severa fiscalização para o cumprimento das Leis sobre o Meio Ambiente.
Mas acho um absurdo e sem nenhum propósito, o chamado crédito ou suquestro de carbono, sugerido pelo Brasil em Kioto. Endosssando essa iniciativa, o nosso governo estaria dando respaldo para mais um produto negociado nas bolsas de valores e de mercadorias e futuros, enriquecendo ainda mais a especulação financeira e possibilitando que os maiores poluidores mundiais não acelerassem providencias e investimentos contra o aquecimento global, da responsabilidade de cada país.
Acho que o Governo brasileiro não pode, de forma alguma dar vasão para mais um produto especulativo, em nome da defesa do Meio Ambiente.
O Brasil não pode servir de instrumento que possa direta ou indiretamente proteger ou avalizar as Nações Poluidoras.
O governo tem solução melhor para os nossos problemas, como outros países também podem buscar e não deve se envolver em negociatas que visam ganhos para uma ínfima minoria, em detrimento dos reais interesses da humanidade.

Her point about development and deforestation was something I'd never considered before, and it's made me think differently.

Admitting that we all could do more to protect our environment is a first important step and the Bali negotiators at least managed that step. Yet, global warming, though a truly international problem, becomes a very different local issue in Brazil or China or the United States. Interpreting local conditions within the overall framework of a new treaty will be the toughest challenge. Miriam Leito importantly reminds us of one local condition in Brazil that future treaty negotiators need to be sensitive to - deforestation.

Of course the United States and China have each very different perspectives on global warming but are strongly linked through trade. That is largely why the Bush administration team and Chinese negotiators were allied. Addressing that trade's contribution to global warming while protecting the flow of trade will be an important part of the tough challenge of negotiating the next treaty.
Blaming one side or the other for the negative fall-out from the trade will be self-defeating.

It is not with contributions like that of Miriam Leitao (“Emissions Don’t Equal Development”) that we are ever going to make any progress on the environment and on global warming. To instil guilt into the victims is not only despicable behaviour; it is not even a viable option.

It is true the unsubstantiated “danger” of one’s economy slowing down is constantly given as an excuse, by overdeveloped nations, to further overdevelop. Yet nobody among developing nations says “emissions equal development”; nobody “uses development as an excuse to do nothing”. After all, developing nations know all too well the dire consequences they have to put up with, now that overdeveloped countries have polluted this planet to such a catastrophic degree, for decades if not centuries, while caring only to dominate the world economy and to control world markets… at their expense.

It would seem that some (not much, just some) fairness towards developing countries are in order here, however painful it may be for the West to only attempt being a little fair. (I know, who cares about fairness, that old British…?)

Briefly (there would be much more to say), four points.

1. Even to save this planet, emerging countries of 1,300 million people (with cities the size of large countries) such as China, cannot be expected to give an “ecological” orientation to their economy within a short period of time. How could they, if developed and overdeveloped countries of 350 million (or less) themselves, with cities the size of Chinese villages, claim they cannot, without harming their own economies? This much at least could be admitted candidly, from the outset.

2. It is simply not true that developing countries such as China have “used the excuse of development to do nothing”. On the contrary, China, for instance, has taken extensive concrete measures to begin using alternate sources of energy: solar (for buildings), electric (for vehicles), magnetic (for trains: Shanghai’s MAG DEV), etc. In addition, China has been eager to legislate and to enforce standards, so as to reduce toxic emissions and pollution generally. There is much irony, whenever the overdeveloped criticize China: after all, Western firms too have been blacklisted as “giant” polluters, in China, and China is, after all, to a very large extent, producing on behalf, and for the West.

3. Facing squarely the current environmental challenge to humanity as a whole, China has insisted in Bali, like developing nations, on cooperation with overdeveloped nations toward developing, and/or transferring, and/or sharing clean technology… as well as on cost sharing, of course. This is not the attitude typical of someone bent on doing nothing, or on looking for an excuse for doing nothing. Resistance to this reasonable proposal has come, as always, from the overdeveloped. They, therefore, bear now the full responsibility for things remaining at a standstill.

4. Finally, China was praised, in Bali, for its green initiatives, its outstanding cooperation with the international community, and for the most positive role it played during those talks. In comparison, the performance of the United States was pathetic, as was that of meaningless Canada, trailing behind the non-leader at the party.

So essentially, as was to be expected and as was conclusively demonstrated in Bali, the problem lies exclusively with the West, with the overdeveloped, more particularly the United States.. Leitao’s is only one more manoeuvre to have us look away from that painful reality, a terrible waste of time on non-issues.

Whenever humanity’s survival is at stake, better be praised by the international community than be invited, like the US was (and in no uncertain terms!), to LEAVE, were they to persist in not joining in, and in refusing to cooperate with the community of nations.