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Obama's flawed Waxman-Markey Bill permits a US 2020 per capita GHG pollution value over 4 times greater than the BAU value for the Developing World – climate racism and climate terrorism leading to climate genocide.
I have illustrated this article with my huge (1.3 x 2.9 metre) painting "Scheherazade" (for enlarged image and detailed discussion see "War on Women & Womens' Rights. Scheherazade" Painting. Heroines" : http://mwcnews.net/content/view/16294/42/ .
Racism is the pejorative treatment of others on the basis of their race. Its unfairness lies in the reality of the birthday song words: "Why was he born so beautiful, Why was he born at all? Because he had no say in it, No say in it at all". However "big trees from small acorns grow" and the evil of racism can grow like a cancer and eventually consume millions or even billions of people (as in the 1.8 billion victim Indian Holocaust in British India, 1757-1947).
All decent folk believe those great words of the American Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
All decent Americans hope for fulfilment of the words of Martin Luther King: "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal ."
However the United States of America, founded on Slavery and Genocide, is still involved in the violent invasion , devastation, occupation and ethnic cleansing of foreign lands.
The US story began with the decimation of West Africa by Slavery (15 million slaves taken to the Americas, with about 6 million dying in transit) and the decimation the Indigenous Indian population of North America (12 million killed).
According to Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a "vast genocide . . . , the most sustained on record." (see Guenter Lewy, University of Massachusetts,"Were American Indians the victims of genocide?", History News Network, : http://www.hnn.us/articles/7302.html ).
The US thence extended its genocidal activities to Central America, South America, the Caribbean and the Philippines in the 19th and 20th centuries, killing 1 million in the Philippines alone in the period 1899-1913.
However the US escalated mass murder to an extraordinary degree in the post-1945 era. Using UN Population Division data it can be estimated that Indigenous Asian excess deaths (violent and non-violent excess deaths) in post-1950 US Asian wars totalled up to about 25 million, the breakdown being 1 million (Korea), 13 million (Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam), 4 million (Iraq) and 3-7 million (Afghanistan).
Human beings are probably hard-wired genetically for altruism towards family and close community but this altruism falls off markedly the further you get away from immediate family. One result of this is that there is high avoidable mortality (excess mortality, excess death, avoidable death, deaths that did not have to happen) associated with Occupation of other countries.
Thus 1950-2005 excess deaths in countries occupied by the US in the post-1945 era total 82 million, the breakdown (expressed as 1950-2005 excess deaths/2005 population; m= millions; * = other major occupiers) being: US [8.455m/300.038m = 2.8%] - Afghanistan* [16.609m/25.971m = 64.0%], Cambodia* [5.852m/14.825m = 39.5%], Dominican Republic [0.806m/8.998m = 9.0%], Federated States of Micronesia [0.016m/0.111m = 14.4%], Greece* [0.027m/10.978m = 0.2%], Grenada* [0.018m/0.121m = 14.9%], Guam [0.005m/0.168m = 3.0%], Haiti* [4.089m/8.549m = 47.9%], Iraq* [5.283m/26.555m = 19.9%], Korea* [7.958m/71.058m = 11.2%], Laos* [2.653m/5.918m = 44.8%], Panama [0.172m/3.235m = 5.3%], Philippines [9.080m/82.809m = 11.0%], Puerto Rico [0.039m/3.915m = 1.0%], Somalia* [5.568m/10.742m = 51.8%], US Virgin Islands [0.003m/0.113m = 2.4%], Vietnam* [24.015m/83.585m = 28.7%], total = 82.193m/357.651m = 23.0% (see "Global avoidable mortality": http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/2008/08/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality.html ).
The ratio of 1950-2005 excess deaths/2005 population expressed as a percentage is 2.8% for the US but ranges up to 64% for Afghanistan, this providing a quantitative measure of racism.
The US (2.8%) treated Puerto Rico (1.0%) better than itself but had a devastating impact on Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti. Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Somalia. For succinct histories of these American atrocities see William Blum's best-selling book "Rogue State" and my book "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950", G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ).
The carnage continued after 2005 and has continued after Obama's accession in 2009. Thus in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories post-invasion non-violent excess deaths total 0.3 million, 1.0 million and 3.2 million, respectively; post-invasion violent deaths total about 10,000, 1.3 million and up to about 4 million, respectively; post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million, 0.6 million and 2.3 million, respectively; and refugees total 7 million, 5-6 million and 3-4 million, respectively, plus a further 2.5 million Pashtun refugees generated under Obama in NW Pakistan – this constituting a Palestinian Holocaust, an Iraqi Holocaust and an Afghan Holocaust and a Palestinian Genocide, Iraqi Genocide and Afghan Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention and egregious war crimes due in part to Occupier war criminal non-supply of life-sustaining food and medical requisites demanded unequivocally by Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (for detailed documentation of sources see "Iraq invasion 6th anniversary. 2.3 million excess deaths", MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/29360/42/ ).
Indeed the violent and non-violent excess deaths associated with Bush (now Obama) wars total 9-11 million (see: "9-11 excuse for US global genocide: millions dead [9-11 million] in Bush wars [1990-2009]", MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/25184/42/ ).
However it gets worse. The world is facing a worsening climate genocide that is expected to kill 10 billion people this century due to unaddressed man-made climate change. This carnage (deriving from mortality estimates of top UK climate scientist Dr James Lovelock FRS) is predicted to kill 10 billion people, this carnage including 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims (a Muslim Holocaust 500 times greater than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust or the "forgotten" WW2 Bengali Holocaust), 2 billion Indians, 1.4 billion non-Arab Africans, 0.6 billion Arabs, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis (see "Letter to the World re Climate Racism, Climate Terrorism & Climate Genocide by Apartheid Australia": http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19228 ) .
Top scientists, including the prestigious UK Royal Society, are telling the World that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) must be urgently reduced from the present 390 parts per million (ppm) (corresponding to 475 ppm CO2-equivalent; CO2 currently increasing at 2.5 ppm annually) to a safe and sustainable level of about 300 ppm for a safe planet for all peoples and all species (see 300.org: http://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/300-org ).
Unfortunately, led by the US and by climate criminal Apartheid Australia (the world's worst per capita GHG polluter), the World is heading in the wrong direction – it is continuing to pollute at a record rate.
Obama's Waxman-Markey Climate Change Bill "would mandate a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 from 2005 levels" (see Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/25/AR2009062503469.html ).
This means that the US "annual per capita GHG pollution" in "tonnes CO2-e per person per year" which was 23.5 in 2005 will be 5904.2 Mt CO2-e/ 346.2 million persons = 17.1 in 2020 and 1209.3 Mt CO2-e/ 403.9 million persons = 3.0 in 2050.
By way of comparison, the Developing World "annual per capita GHG pollution" in "tonnes CO2-e per person per year" was 3.0 in 2005 and is predicted on a Business-As –Usual (BAU) basis to be 3.8 by 2020 (see Climate justice and climate injustice: Australia wants a 2020 per capita GHG pollution 15 times Developing World's": http://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/climate-justice ).
Further, Indian PM Manmohan Singh has pledged that Indian's very low annual per capita GHG pollution will never exceed that of the Developing World.
Thus Waxman-Markey allows the US 40 years to gets its annual per capita GHG pollution down to the current average of the Developing World and permits a 2020 value that would be over 4 times greater than the BAU value for the Developing World.
"Annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution" in units of "tonnes CO2-equivalent per person per year" is presently 0.9 (Bangladesh), 0.9 (Pakistan), 2.2 (India), 3.1 (Developing World), 5.5 (China), 6.7 (the World), 11 (Europe), 16 (Developed World), 23 (Canada), 27 (the US) and 30 (Australia; or 54 if Australia's huge Exported CO2 pollution is included).
Obama's Waxman-Markey Bill departs substantially from the "all men are created equal" of the 1776 American Declaration of Independence by essentially adding as a qualification that "by 2020 4 Third Worlders still won't equal 1 American" – egregious climate racism that is the more obnoxious coming from America's first African-American president..
Obama is involved in horrendous and expanding Asians wars that are associated with 1,000 non-violent child deaths every day (see "Hey, hey, USA, how many kids did you kill today? Answer: 1,000", Bellaciao: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article18750 .
However Obama has now committed to longstanding policy of climate racism and climate terrorism culminating in the predicted climate genocide of 10 billion non-Europeans this century. Unfortunately, Obama's Racist, Religious Right Republican (R4) opponents are even worse.
I talk to fellow scientists (mathematicians, physicists, chemists, biologists, molecular biologists) who despair at the appalling lack of timely action over the worsening climate emergency.
Obama's climate racism (currently 9 non-Europeans don't equal 1 American), climate terrorism (might is right BAU regardless of the consequences to others living on the brink) and climate genocide (policies inexorably leading to the untimely deaths of 10 billion non-Europeans this century) means that Martin Luther King's dream is unlikely to be realized before it is inescapably too late.
