When I was a
teenager, the biggest focus in the USA’s foreign policy arena was the Cold War,
and trying to reach “détente” with the Soviet Union, to reduce the numbers
of ICBMs (which, as a 13-ish year old made me laugh every time I heard some
adult very seriously use the expression…kind of along the lines of when someone
says Uranus. And thank goodness I have a 14-year old son (for many reasons) so
I can still laugh whenever someone refers to Uranus, so it isn’t weird that a
57 year old does. But I digress.) Now where was I…let’s see…your anus…I see BMs…oh,
right, nuclear annihilation. And around
the same time, there were talks of secret meetings between Henry Kissinger and
the Vietnamese to end the Vietnam War.
Today there was a news bulletin from the NY Times: |
China
and the United States made common cause on Wednesday against the threat of
climate change, staking out an ambitious joint plan to curb carbon emissions
as a way to spur nations around the world to make their own cuts in
greenhouse gases.
|
|
The
landmark agreement, jointly announced in Beijing by President Obama and
President Xi Jinping, includes new targets for carbon emissions reductions by
the United States and a first-ever commitment by China to stop its emissions
from growing by 2030.
|
|
Administration
officials said the agreement, which was worked out secretly between the
United States and China over nine months and included a letter from Mr. Obama
to Mr. Xi proposing a joint approach, could galvanize efforts to negotiate a
new global climate agreement by 2015.
|
Interesting
how the focus of these top-level secret negotiations have changed and yet,
remain the same, addressing threats that can end the world as we know it,
whether by nuclear bombs or melting ice caps. Is it progress that one way we
can kill off all of humanity in a matter of minutes and one will take decades?
Maybe, but one can also be cured in a matter of months and one will take
decades to turn-around.
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