Earth

Wise Words: earth

A two-week meeting of nearly 200 world leaders started on 7 December. Top of the agenda of the Copenhagen Conference is the search for a plan to save the Earth. The leaders are supposed to come up with a new Kyoto protocol on climate change. Is it possible that so many leaders will be able to agree on a plan that will make a difference to the Earth?

I’m a down-to-earth type of person, so I’m going to say no.

Why? The leaders are meeting at a time when, very conveniently, hackers got hold of e-mails from the Climate Research Institute at the University of East Anglia in the UK. The e-mail exchanges between British and American scientists show that scientists have been manipulating their data for decades to secure millions of dollars, pounds and euros in government funding. There is clearly no man-made climate change if scientists need to play around with their results — or so the right-wing conspiracy theory goes. The theory even has a catchy name: Climategate. Anything that ends in “-gate” reminds people of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s that ended with the resignation of US President Richard Nixon. The conspiracists know this. 

Mohammad Al-Sabban, Saudi Arabia’s lead climate negotiator, expects Climategate to derail the Copenhagen summit. He jumped at the opportunity to cast doubt on  the whole climate-change debate. "It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change," he told BBC Online. Did he make up his mind only after reading the e-mails? Or had he been waiting in the wings for the right moment to say that?