Delegates from some 160 nations are in Bangkok to discuss a post-2012 climate treaty - but any plans to force "poor polluters" like India and China to cut back on emissions will increase poverty and deaths, according to the 45-member Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change.The EU has threatened to impose taxes on imports from countries that have not agreed to mandatory emissions cuts and Yvo de Boer, the UN official running the talks, has evoked the spectre of "food miles" at the meeting.
"This is just another protectionist racket that will do little to reduce carbon emissions. What it will do is push food prices even higher, make poor countries even poorer and undermine their capacity to import cleaner and better technologies from the West," said Coalition member Nonoy Oplas of the Filipino think-tank Minimal Government Thinkers.Bullying poor countries to stop industrial development or to use only "renewable" technologies misses the point:"Right now, what kills millions of poor people is poverty, not climate change: dirty water, malaria, malnutrition, air pollution in cities, indoor smoke from wood and dung - and these hideous afflictions can only be solved by economic growth," Oplas continued."Only with more entrepreneurship and less government intervention - not massive climate aid projects - will the world's poorest people be able to protect themselves from both the ills of today, and the threats of tomorrow."
