Unacceptable
After all, despite the injustice, the problems our leaders failed to resolve did not threaten to affect our lives. Aside from eliciting pangs of guilt as we saw Africans dying by the thousands on our TV screens, most of us did not connect as the crisis was out there, easily forgotten once we switched channels.
But this is changing. Nowadays, only the wealthiest do not feel the pain. In due time and as global warming and pollution continue to intensify, no one — not even the ultra-rich —will be spared. Is that the point we want to reach before we tell our leaders that the distance they have created between themselves and the rest of us is unacceptable?
Are we so selfish and hypnotized by our own comforts that the world needs to go up in flames, sparing no one, before we use our rights as citizens to tell our leaders to act, to cease dining like gastronomes and really do something about the scythes that are gathering above our heads?
Given up
Or have we just all given up, let down by the repeated failures of the Kyoto Protocol and the many commitments made and invariably missed by the world leaders while they continue to enrich the rich, plunder the Earth and destroy the environment?
If they really cared, the G8 leaders and their spouses would ask for a bowl of rice for their last meal. Not caviar and shark fin.
J. Michael Cole is a writer based in Taipei and the author of Smokescreen: Canadian Security Intelligence after September 11, 2001.
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