Updated on Jul 18, 2008 – SCMP
Legend tells us that the Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
It seems very little has changed if we judge by the verbiage emitted by the G8 summit in Hokkaido. The globe is facing a major ecological catastrophe, yet the little emperors who attended the meeting kept fiddling as usual.
Competent scientists warn us that we must quickly reduce carbon emissions, that is, reduce the burning of coal and oil and end the conversion of rainforests to commercial agriculture, especially to produce damaging biofuels.
The obvious conclusion is that an immediate cap must be placed on the extraction and consumption of coal and oil. Was this decided by the Hokkaido meeting?
President George W. Bush (a neo-Nero) supports the oil industry and is afraid to offend American gas-guzzlers indulged by the automobile and road-building industries.
The G8 countries maintain excessive military installations that burn huge amounts of fuel in warplanes, warships, tanks and war games every day. Was any effort made to reduce their wastefulness and ecological destruction?
Anyone who still believes that the world needs armies and navies to maintain peace is either stupid or has a vested interest. These outmoded institutions waste lives, pollute the earth and waste energy. If political leaders are really serious about the health of the planet, they will order immediate cuts in military expenditure and a curb on the waste of fuels by their armed forces.
In primitive times, military men were considered patriotic. With our globe approaching ecological collapse, it is now more patriotic to condemn the damage and wastefulness of militarism and to demand that politicians stop their fiddling while our world heats up.
If environmentally-conscious American and Chinese mothers told their children to look down on military men as big polluters and ecological Frankensteins, there would be some hope for our overheated globe.
Loving one’s country now means protecting it from the ecological damage caused by the ignorant and careless Neros of our age.
J. Garner, Sham Shui Po