“Climate Changes, Business as Usual”

A personal reflective observation about ecological justice

By Michael Yudha


BEAUTIFUL little Julia was very serious. She is eight years old daughter of a Dutch father and Balinese mother. In her attractive hand, a small cute puzzle of “Nemo Fish” was being constructed. Ten minutes left and she still could not finish the puzzle. “I am giving up papa,” she put the “Nemo Fish” back on the table while her father just smiled. Accompanied by her father, she visited the other neighborhood booths during cultural festival organized by Karina (Indonesian Caritas) in the compound of parish Franciscus Xaverius, Kuta. This is another parallel event supported by Caritas Germany during two weeks International Climate Change Conference in Bali, the island of paradise.

Julia did not know what kind of event it was when I asked her about climate change conference. She also could not understand what global warming mean is. “I do not know. Papa… what is global warming?” she forwarded my question on her to her papa.[1] Then we all just laughed. Yes, Julia is just a child and what a child knows is just a game like the Nemo Fish puzzle. This global warming issue is out of children’s mind but it will absolutely influence their future life; the food stock, availability of clean water, loss of biodiversity, mosquito-borne diseases like malaria spread more widely, huge increase in flooding and severe droughts across wide area of earth, social justice and the world climate.

Moral Issue Needs Political Action
Global warming is no longer natural disaster, it is really man-made disaster. In May 2007, IPCC’s[2] new five year report stated a scientific consensus based on tens of thousands of studies; there is virtually no possibility that the heating we’re seeing can be explained by anything other than human causes. The only possible cause for most of it was the carbon we were pouring into the atmosphere. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, when northern countries began to burn fossil fuels in large quantities, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) has been increasing. There’s more of it in the atmosphere now than there has been for millions of years.

Through the Al Gore’s famous PowerPoint lecture about consequences of global warming and the myths and misconceptions that surround the science in his “An Inconvenient Truth” film which I saw in the cultural event last night (Friday, 12/14/07), his international students; from Europe to China, from family to person, men or women, they are all started to realized the earth is much more important than the prosperity. Nobody will choose gold if at the same time the earth is gone. Al Gore stressed global warming as moral issue.

But nothing will change if there is none political decision. Since religion is the only survive moral institution in this turbulence world, many of their representatives showed its moral movement. At that same night, I saw Muslim Ulamas, Catholic Priests, Buddhist Monks, Protestant Reverent, and the Hindu gathered together hand in hand showered a small globe with holy water followed by short continuous interfaith prayers. They were all surrounded by traditional dancers from several ethnic groups such as Bali, Papua, Dayak, Lamaholot, Donggo and Manggarai. This cultural performance reminded me about God the Creator. He gave human being His Love and beautiful Mother Nature, the earth, to be managed as best as they can do for everybody and for human generations. But since modern life highlights “time is money”, “fast food” and “instant way”, we already forgot about the flow of a river, falling leaves gone with the wind, voices of birds in the broken fresh morning, jumping frogs in beautiful paddy’s field, smooth green grass… so quite, so peaceful. People already forgot that Indonesia is also being known as Jamrud Khatulistiwa, the Emerald of the Equator.

Can those missing links be found again? Will high industrialized countries say enough to their “new life style invention”? Will people living in the North share their prosperity with their families in the South? The real honest answer is still lying under the sea. Yes, there are many “good will” given through international aid, technical assistance, capacity building, oil for food and REDD[3]. The latest one is to be expected become one of among real progress can be achieved before end of the UNFCCC[4]. Global warming is the biggest trouble humans have ever made for themselves, and its momentum has been snowballing without a response for a long time. Enough will not be enough without a global policy, a political action.

Global Carbon Trading
Julia’s generation, as well as my son’s generation will harvest bitter fruit of many social problems. Any form of social injustice and structural violence will rise as speed as deforestation happened in Indonesia. Their future is so fragile. Yes, we may talk about the future and its complex problem. But please don’t forget about today’s poverty which still can’t be solved. The missions of Millennium Development Goals are not accomplished yet and everybody should be aware of climate change now.

Let’s come back to climate change. Recently an idea about carbon market is risen up already. It’s expected that “forest countries” would raise billions of dollars from this market mechanism. For example, if Indonesia can decrease the amount of felled trees to about 6 million m3/ per year, then the compensation is 6 million m3 times IDR 1 million is almost IDR 6 trillion, who are going to pay? And that is just timbers, excluding the oxygen and CO2 absorption. Who will pay for that? And so, this scheme has to be agreed during the conference.

In the world there are only three areas that have tropical rain forest; Brazil, Indonesia and Congo. Tropical rain forest have as stronger ability to absorb CO2 than forest in the US, Europe or Japan. Forest in those countries drop their leaves in winter and start to grow when spring come again. In a year, there are two seasons. Meanwhile in Indonesia all the year forest can absorb carbon. But carbon trading is another illusion because carbon market was designed to allow big fossil fuel users to delay investment in a change in industry, to find the cheapest way out. So the loser is the climate itself. The market has been doing nothing to deal with the climate problem; it’s actually slowing down constructive actions, creating delay in tackling the problem.[5]

Observing this international climate change conference directly by presenting me myself in the first week of the event on the ground, accompanied by tight security surveillances and a good Germany writer, three simple theses are hanging on my mind still. First, after decades, nothing is really changed in the whole archipelago so-called as Indonesia. Everything have already been exported since pre-colonialism to present day; spices, sugar cane, tobacco, tea, coffee, oil, gas, coal, timber, rubber and CPO but the poverty is still reminds and even increase. Second, the local wisdoms and its unique cultures already become the giant magnet for tourism industry but its way of thinking, the habits of people can’t be good fertilizer for the invention of any kind of “good technology”. Third, the desire to absorb, to use and to experience anything related with and referred to “Western” or “Modern” is getting higher and higher.

Then today’s life reminds us that climate is changing. But actually life in Indonesia is stagnant; it is just like business as usual.* * *

[1] According to IPCC, global warming is the rise of the earth’s surface temperature caused by the greenhouse effect which is responsible for the disruption of global climate patterns.
[2] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
[3] Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation.
[4] United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its COP 13th held in Bali, December 3rd – 14th 2007.
[5] See an interview titled “Companies are telling a lot of lies, UN sanctioning them,” Jakarta Post, December 4th 2007, page 22.