«Unless You Are Converted, All Will Perish»

Leonardo Boff

13/02/2010

Opinión

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Jesus says in the Gospels: «Unless You Are Converted, All Will Perish.» Put another way: «Unless you change the way you see and act, all will perish.» These words never seemed as true as when I saw Chronicles of Copenhagen, a French documentary released through a commercial TV channel in Brazil and, I suppose, all over the world. In the COP-15 celebrated in Copenhagen, last December, representatives of 192 nations gathered to decide reducing the growth rate of greenhouse gasses, that produce planetary warming.

Everyone went there desiring to do something. But the negotiations, after a week of very intense debate, came to a dead end, and nothing was decided. What caused this impasse, that provoked disappointment and rage throughout the world?

In the first place, I believe there was not enough collective consciousness of the threats that hang over the Earth-system and the destiny of life. It was as if the negotiators had been told that the Titanic was sinking, without realizing that it was the ship where everyone was, the Earth.

In the second place, there was no clarity that the main objective was to stop Earth's temperature from rising more than two degrees centigrade, because we will then experience the consequences of climatic despair. To avoid this tragedy it is urgent that we reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses, with strategies of adaptation, mitigation, concession of technologies to the most vulnerable countries, and generous financing, to stimulate such measures. The concern now is not to guarantee the continuity of the status quo but to give centrality to the Earth System, to life in general and to human life in particular.

In the third place, it lacked a collective vision. Many negotiators clearly said: we are here to represent the interests of our country. That was a mistake. At stake are the collective and planetary interests and not just those of individual countries. Defending the interests of the country is the job of the businessmen of the World Trade Organization, who are more interested in competition than in cooperation. When the business mentality predominates, as many well-intentioned persons declared in Copenhagen: there is no confidence, because everyone mistrusts everyone else, everyone is on the defensive, people don't put their cards on the table for fear of criticism and rejection, everyone reserves the right to decide only at the last moment, as in a poker game. Of the main players, China watched, the United Stated stayed mute, the European Union was isolated, and the Africans, the main victims, were not even considered. Brazil showed courage at the end with words of denunciation by President Lula.

Finally, the fiasco of Copenhagen —as Lord Stern, who was present, put it so well— was due to the lack of will to live together and to think collectively. Such things are heretical to the capitalist spirit, wrapped up in its individualism. Capitalism is absolutely not interested in living together, because society for capitalism is nothing more than a conglomerate of individuals furiously fighting for a bigger cut of the cake called Earth.

Jesus was right: if we do not convert, this is to say, if we do not change this type of thinking and of living, working towards a line of universal cooperation, we will never reach a saving consensus. And we will go towards the encounter of the two degrees Celsius of warming, with its dramatic consequences.

The valiant French negotiator Laurence Tubiana, making the final tally, said with resignation: «the big fish always eat the small ones, and the cynics always win the game, because that is the logic of history.» We cannot accept that defeatism. Human beings are resilient, this is, human beings can learn from their mistakes and, when it is urgent, can change. I choose to align myself with the chief of the negotiators, Michael Cutajar, who at the end of that failure said: «we will do better tomorrow.»

This time the only saving alternative is to think together, act together, dream together and to cultivate hope together, trusting that solidarity will be what it was in the past: the secret force of our best humanity.

- Leonardo Boff, Theologian, Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish: Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org. Refugio del Rio Grande, Texas, EE.UU.

https://www.alainet.org/pt/node/139441