"... from insecurity, to interdependence."
So ends the brief but eloquent "Declaration of Interdependence," written by Dr. David Suzuki and colleagues for the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.
In the lead up to the 2009 Copenhagen summit, scientists, political leaders, and pundits are feverishly trying to set the stage, respectively issuing dire warnings of climactic disaster, or "managing expectations," shorthand for lowering hopes for definitive action. Exhibit One: this weekend's APEC Summit.
Like the United States' own "Founding Fathers" seminal document, the Declaration of Independence, Suzuki's declaration tries to distill self-evident truths into language that Everyman and Everywoman can grasp - "This We Know" ("we are interconnected -- using, cleansing, sharing and replenishing the fundamental elements of life"). Or, looking at the glass half full, abusing, polluting, expropriating, and wasting the fundamental elements of life.
Thankfully, the eminent Canadian scientist labors from the optimistic premise of "a new politics of hope." Remember, he wrote the Declaration of Interdependence in 1992, when even a President like George H.W. Bush could utter these words when signing the Framework Convention on Climate Change: " to sustain development, we must protect the environment; and to protect the environment, we must sustain development."
A decade after father Bush worried about leaving a legacy for his children, son George W. was castigated by environmental groups for not only ignoring Rio's 10th anniversary, but for actively siding with the polluters. Bush Jr. is back in Texas, where his air conditioner is presumably turned down to an Arctic low, shutting out all evidence of rapidly rising temperatures. Once in a bubble, always in a bubble. Until it bursts.
Independence and Interdependence need not be mutually exclusive options. When I see a country like Denmark, in the wake of the '70s oil crises, make a concerted effort toward energy independence through use of wind, solar, and other alternative resources, I see it as helping the rest of us. One less EU country that has to face a cold sweat as Russia threatens another natural gas valve malfunction and plunges parts of Europe into a winter deep freeze.
And if countries as different as Nigeria and Vietnam can adopt sound agricultural practices that lead to greater food security, then the rest of the world also reaps the benefit.
The US Declaration of Independence referred to "the Laws of Nature" in its preamble, though we had to wait more than two centuries before Dr. David Suzuki enumerated how those same Laws militated for our global Interdependence. The bubble that we live in, that little crust surrounded by a vulnerable atmosphere, is our shared environment. If you live by zero sum arithmetic, then you might look at the drought-stricken starving East Africans and say "there but for the grace of God...".
But today's starving nomads are tomorrow's boat people refugees, or next year's terrorists. Interdependence is not idealistic gibberish: at its very root is self-interest, where the self-interest is mutual. John Dunne said it best:
No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
If that was a self-evident truth in the 17th century, when most people never traveled beyond their village, how much truer is that in our interconnected world of today?