I am grateful that this article makes me aware of and uncomfortable about ethnocentric thinking of a kind that I've indulged in too often myself. It's too easy to overlook small third world countries when discussing environmental and climate issues. It hadn't occured to me the extent to which we fail to see how we damage the climate and environment of other countries who are systematically under heard in larger world bodies. Worse, countries like Bolivia are not participating in the damage of their climate and nothing they can do themselves can mitigate the damage being done to them from outside.

Isn't it time that first world countries come to realize that third world countries have the same, identical right to survive? That this right is not porportionally greater for us simply because we are bigger? Isn't it the responsibility of larger, more powerful nations, to seek to vigorously protect the smaller from the excesses of the larger?

It's unfortunate, but Evo Morales of Bolivia & Hugo Chavez of Venezuela are living on borrowed time. The evil brains in Washington never ever sleep. 24/7 our wonderful leaders & thinkers in Washington are working to overthrow countries that have our oil & natural gas resources as well as our critical minerals that are unfortunately underneath their ground. Venezuela has huge reserves of oil & natural gas that we want under our conditions, & Bolivia also has oil & natural gas as well as, unfortunately, one of the largest Lithium deposits in the world, an element that is critical to the making of new & high efficient batteries needed to power our new hybrid & electric cars, & our computers & iphones & ipads. It's easy for the U.S. to overthrow countries in Latin America. We bribe people that are close to power to instigate a coup, or we assassinate the leaders & put someone into power that's our puppet. Honduras was the beginning.

We've heard before that the global south is and will suffer the earliest and worst effects of global warming. (Tuvalu is an island country in the Pacific Ocean), but you and I will feel the pinch a lot sooner than we think. This article is up to Naomi's intriguing standard, but if we're trying to convince our friends and neighbours to pressure government,(Can ada's is particularly unwilling) we might do better to focus more on the self-interest of human beings in the Global North; who won't be spared the pangs of climate change, versus Corporations, who will make money either way. Of course the Global South should not get all the sh*t of climate change while the North gets the oil and coal--but that's the way it's worked for hundreds of years. The Bolivian process is something really worth watching, and maybe a tool of change for more than climate.

Howard M, I would call you a cynic but to be honest you are a realist and most thinking people will value this highly. I do. I admire your advice to Canada. It reveals a light of idealism in you I find admirable. As for the US, your views are painfully valid. Idealists like me recoil at words you've used because we want to believe that in America there is at least a nascent desire to strive for greatness, for decency and for brotherhood. We want to believe that beneith the veneer of viscious greed and moral corruption there is still a national spirit yearning for something better. We like the image of being the shining city on the hill but you reveal the fantasy of this which is shattered by the very fact of our national deeds as opposed to our words.
How do YOU cope with the truth, namely that as a country we're a pariah to everything decent and good as though a psychopath on steroids? That we are so blinded by self interest that depravity in the service of our wants is a virtue?

Harold Mencher and Howard, I appreciate your elegant replies. Harold, your scathing indictment on the US is profoundly correct. I agree yet I retain an innocence that makes me feel a tad disoriented at times, though a vet like you. The more I grasp of our unrealized potential, the more elated...and despairing I become. Howard, you correctly perceive the chasm between who we would like to be, and on an individual level we come across pretty well (per you & Canadian friends), but on a national level we are monstrous and our only collective salvation lies in the fact that our country does NOT represent us, or so I would hope. Thus, the failure of our Democracy is that it has not reined in the violent impulses of empire that our powerful possess. Harold, we share common history. How are we to express our love of country without defying it vigorously? How do we resolve the difference between who we are based on our collective acts, and who we aspire to be? Harold & Howard: You seem to care. Thanks.

The truth to the matter is, the USA has stolen every thing at the point of a gun.

The nation is in a state of immorality, confusion, terrified and self denial. A good example is the newly created police fascist state of Arizona where madness has taken over.

Mexico has already stated that it will boycott everything coming from Arizona. My belief is, they should stop all good and materials and especially the oil coming from Mexico.

Compare to Great Britain or Canada, both nation have great people, highly educated, well supported with health care while the USA basks in ignorance, arrogance, bigotry, racism and self denial.

Alright Harold. We really are past the point of no return, at least in as much that a national about face is not going to happen as doing so would require that a full and open disclosure of all wrongs be made, and this would not be tolerated. I concede your points as I know perfectly well that the death of American democracy began with corporations achieving the status of personhood in the late 19th century and given the current composition of the courts and the power of the corporations our republic has ceased being a government of, by and for the people.

My rose colored lenses are coming off. I know that my love of Jeffersonian democracy will not find expression in this culture. I'd say that it's up to our children to fight the battles ahead but as you know, mine left the country in utter disgust with America.

If the best I can do is to rant and rave against the darkness as I plunge into it, then, mad poet that I am, my destiny is defined already. I cannot go quietly. Don't you.