While the modern, industrialized, northern world focuses its attention, its might, its hopes and concerns for the future on Denmark this week (and the UN Summit on Client Change for those who don’t know), I’ve been keeping my eye on the local Argentine media to see how coverage of the event plays out here.

I’m looking and waiting and watching and reading and listening….. and barely a peep.

The fact that Copenhagen in specific, and climate change in general, is not even on the radar here gives you a good sense of where things are at environmentally in Argentina, and I believe it shows some just how complicated the problem is around the planet.

In some countries - like Canada, for example - people are highly concientious about the environmental impacts of just about every thing they do. They see climate change as the great problem of our time.

Here, people are frankly trying to deal with more immediate problems. Insecurity, corruption, drought, a roof with a giant hole or a hungry belly. Folks are cynical about recycling.

They are unwilling or unable to address any big-picture issues when the issue of today are so pressing.

I can’t even find who is representing Argentina at Copenhagen.

Occasionally I’ve brought the issue up during random conversations with intelligent Argentine friends or colleagues over the past few weeks, and people seem to be a)ignorant and b)uninterested.

Oh dear.

And what we’re facing here is similar to the scene around the world. The massive droughts that have left most of Central Argentina high and dry this spring isn’t being connected with climate change. People are gazing at the gorgeous Patagonian glaciers and icefields without linking what they’re seeing to any impacts of climate change. The recent floods in Corrientes and Chaco were a problem, but no one took the time to figure out just what the problem was.

So while I hear on the international radio that ‘developing’ countries want ‘developed’ countries to do more, I have to wonder just what these so-called ‘developing’ countries are prepared to do themselves, and - although I know this is a loaded question - just what it is that is keeping these countries in the have-not side of the bargain anyway?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 6:12 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.