Manifeste anti-Copenhague

Brendan O'Neill de la revue Spiked nous offre un très bon «manifeste» post-Copenhague:

Hands off the human footprint!

Voici les 10 points énoncés:

#1- Hands off human footprint:

We have not poisoned the planet; we have humanised it. And far from being shrunk, our ‘footprint’ – our 5,000-year project of taming and transforming this wild ball of gas and water – must be expanded further.

#2- Ditch the carbon calculator:

Stop carbon-calculating our lives, and let us celebrate people’s activities in human terms, recognising them as good, creative, explorative, industrious, or simply as making people happy.

#3- Demand more economic growth:

La croissance économique, l'abondance, c'est le bien pour l'humanité.

We should insist that ‘growth is good’ – in fact, it’s essential if we are to satisfy people’s needs, and liberate their time and their minds so that they can realise their desires.

#4- Don't sustain sustainable development:

The demand to do only That Which Can Be Sustained is really a warning against rethinking, reimagining and remaking our world. It’s an intellectual straitjacket for progress. We should wriggle free from it.

#5- No limits on population growth:

Population growth is not the problem – the lack of social imagination is.

#6- Stop demonizing «deniers»:

We should defend scepticism, not because climate sceptics always have something interesting to say, but because every breakthrough in history has sprung from at least a willingness to ask awkward, agitating questions about accepted truths.

#7- No to eco-protectionism:

This is the resurrection of protectionism in green language, and is causing people in the Third World to lose their jobs and homes. We need more, and more meaningful, links between the North and the South, not fewer.

#8- Make energy the solution, not the problem:

We should see the creation of energy not as the problem but as the solution, allowing us to power industry, light up whole cities, and improve human existence. All kinds of energy can be explored – even wind and waves – just so long as the principle of expanding energy to meet our needs is accepted first.

#9- Address the democratic deficit:
Today’s democratic deficit, the gulf between the rulers and the ruled, will not be fixed by the displacement activity of pseudo-historic international conferences – we need openness, honesty and debate.

#10- Humans before polar bears:

When it comes to political decision-making, progress and development, only one question should ever be asked: will it or will it not benefit humankind?