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2024-05-14 12:00:23

Bread and Circuses on Nostr: David Boyd, who served as UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment ...

David Boyd, who served as UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment from 2018 to April 2024, is not happy...
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In his final interview before handing over the special rapporteur mandate, Boyd said he struggles to makes sense of the world’s collective indifference to the suffering being caused by preventable environmental harms.

"I can’t get people to bat an eyelash. It’s like there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand just how grave this situation is," he said. "I think the right to a healthy environment is actually the foundation that we require to enjoy all other human rights. If we don’t have a living, healthy planet Earth, then all the other rights are just words on paper."

Last year, fossil fuel subsidies hit $7 trillion – a rise of $2 trillion since the Cop 26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, when governments agreed to phase out fossil-fuel subsidies to help fight global heating.

"I started out six years ago talking about the right to a healthy environment having the capacity to bring about systemic and transformative changes," said Boyd. "But this powerful human right is up against an even more powerful force in the global economy, a system that is absolutely based on the exploitation of people and nature."

It’s not just taxpayer subsidies propping up polluting industries and delaying climate action. The same multinationals are involved in negotiating – or at least influencing – climate policy, with a record number of fossil-fuel lobbyists given access to the UN Cop28 climate talks last year.

"There’s no place in the climate negotiations for fossil-fuel companies," said Boyd. "There is no place in the plastic negotiations for plastic manufacturers. It just absolutely boggles my mind that anybody thinks they have a legitimate seat at the table."

"It has driven me crazy in the past six years that governments are just oblivious to history. We know that the tobacco industry lied through their teeth for decades. The lead industry did the same. The asbestos industry did the same. The plastics industry has done the same. The pesticide industry has done the same."
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Yep, that's what they do.

Capitalists lie, cheat, and steal. They will do *anything* to make a profit, even if it means destroying our planet's ecosystem, killing innocent people, or sending thousands of plant and animal species to extinction.

FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/07/un-expert-human-rights-climate-crisis-economy

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism
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