Olympics 2012 & The Global Goodwill To Address The Serious Threat Of Climate Change

It’s day 11 of the summer olympics in London. While I have the utmost respect – indeed, awe – for the women and men who are willing to sacrifice countless hours to hone their bodies and their skills to compete internationally, I do have concerns about the whole olympic process. In the end, the olympics caters to the 1% much more than the 99%. It is immoral to spend $15 billion of taxpayer’s money for extravagant displays and performances during the olympic ceremonies and on all the new infrastructure required, for very little proven economic returns, especially at a time when people around the world are suffering terribly from government-imposed austerity measures after the mismanagement of the global economic system by Wall Street 1% (See “Do Olympics Cost Too Much For Host Cities?”)

Blogger Andy James weighed in on the irony of the media coverage of the Olympics at the same time of an ominous – and unprecedented – glacier melt in Greenland:

...We can muster global goodwill, monetary resources and media coverage for 2 weeks of sport (I like sport!), yet relatively nothing for the Reality of climate change\global warming, which is far more important than our present concerns about the recession and more remotely, terrorism. Remember how hyper we were about Terrorism under George W…but illogically not so now! The continued effects of global warming and climate change will inevitably lead to even more economic hard times and terrorism, as large numbers of people are displaced and food production devastated by floods, drought, storms, water shortage and rising sea levels…all of which are already happening. When people are displaced, they will head for “greener pastures”, as is already happening in Europe, the USA, Australia, Canada etc. Remember how many people fled to Italy when Libya fell!
George W, Bush and his neo-Cons successfully torpedoed the Environmental and Global warming movement by the crude but effective strategy of replacing US regulatory agency heads with corporate lobbyists (against regulation) and in the media, equating the anti-global warming opinion with the pro-global warming group as a 50\50 situation. In fact, the scientific community was 80-90% in favour of the reality of global warming and subsequent events, the latest of which is the July 2012 Greenland glacier melt … together with the USA’s present drought and probably corn harvest burn out, last year’s unprecedented extreme climate damage, the fact in the last 17 years of global temperatures, 16 were the highest on record…Read the full post on AndyJames.ca

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX2KyF0p-xU&feature=player_embedded]

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More links:

Society Can No Longer Afford To Ignore Climate Change

Climate, Evolution, and the Human Spirit

0 thoughts on “Olympics 2012 & The Global Goodwill To Address The Serious Threat Of Climate Change”

  1. Although I am really enjoying watching the Olympics, I do feel a bit sick when I think about the amount of money spent on it; and concerned by the unprecedented blanket TV coverage it is receiving. The BBC is basically broadcasting Olympics 24/7 on all its platfoms and even setup a special News Studio with glass walls overlooking the Stadium so that even when they “break for the News” you still feel you’re at the Games. I now notice (over a week later) that all the other channels have done the same thing (even though none of them is broadcasting any live sport). Of course, every news bulletin contains the obligatory update on the failure of the international community to prevent genocide in Syria; but I have not heard or seen any mainstream media reporting on anything to do with climate change let alone Greenland. The biggest genuine news item yesterday was the US Dept of Finance naming Standard Chartered Bank a “rogue institution” for trying to hide its dealings with Iran (shares lost 25% of their value in one day).

    Climate change is the largest “elephant in the room” in history. So, with my thanks to Robin Greenspan, it would seem that humanity is essentially in denial because it is cheaper than therapy.

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  2. Wonderful point. And it proves that WE CAN find the money to do this if we really want to. Just like we could find the money tomorrow to go to war if something terrible caused us to go to war.

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  3. Good points all, Martin and JP (and thanks, Martin, for providing a “local” view from the UK). I saw a picture recently saying “If we can put a rover on Mars, we can tackle climate change on Earth”. Where there is the will, there is a way.

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