Se­cur­ing the fi­nances nec­es­sary to as­sist de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to cope with the high tide of cli­mat­ic dis­as­ter and to make the in­dus­tri­al world shift to green pro­duc­tion can on­ly be achieved if the 500-year-old mind­set of the dom­i­nant Eu­ro-Amer­i­can so­ci­ety is trans­formed.

Bar­ba­dos’ Prime Min­is­ter, Mia Mot­t­ley, in her lat­est sal­vo to curb the al­ready ev­i­dent dire con­se­quences to the world, quotes two ma­jor econ­o­mists who cal­cu­late that US$350 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly is need­ed in low-cost fi­nanc­ing to as­sist ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent of the world pop­u­la­tion.

The core of that pop­u­la­tion lives be­tween the Trop­ics of Can­cer and Capri­corn, ie, where most of the de­vel­op­ing world and large chunks of the in­dus­tri­al world are sit­u­at­ed.

The fund­ing is re­quired to as­sist with the “mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion” of coun­tries to the cli­mate change im­pacts. In the in­stance of mit­i­ga­tion, it is about pro­tect­ing na­ture from the rav­ages of so­ci­ety and its pro­duc­tion meth­ods. In re­la­tion to adap­ta­tion, the ob­jec­tive is to in­su­late so­ci­ety from the con­se­quences of man’s in­ter­fer­ence with na­ture, En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence and pol­i­cy pa­pers.

Sim­ply put, man, in his quest to har­ness the re­sources of the world and con­vert them in­to us­able prod­ucts, has turned na­ture in­to a rag­ing tide of flood­ing and in some in­stances ig­nit­ed tens of mil­lions of hectares in­to fur­naces with the con­se­quent loss of life to hun­dreds of thou­sands.

Those are the fac­tors that are dri­ving the con­cern and fear of the Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter and many oth­er world lead­ers.

The re­quire­ment in the in­dus­tri­al world is for a men­tal and phys­i­cal shift away from crass ex­ploita­tion of the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment. Con­tem­pla­tion of a life and lifestyle with­out tech­nol­o­gy which has been em­ployed since the In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion of the 18th cen­tu­ry, and the po­ten­tial neg­a­tive im­pact on wealth ac­cu­mu­la­tion is un­bear­able to the lead­ers of wealthy na­tions.

For the de­vel­op­ing world, the con­cern must be, why should it not adopt the same meth­ods which brought wealth and pros­per­i­ty to the in­dus­tri­al world? It’s a prob­lem that con­fronts Trinidad and To­ba­go, Guyana, and Suri­name: should they leave valu­able oil and gas re­sources in the ground; more­over, when they are with­out al­ter­na­tive wealth-pro­duc­ing meth­ods?

What Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley and lead­ers who are as com­mit­ted as she is to achiev­ing change have to do is im­pact the minds of the in­dus­tri­al world with the sci­en­tif­ic find­ings of the UN sci­en­tists. Of even greater po­ten­tial im­pact is to point to the in­creas­ing re­al­i­ty of the en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter that is hap­pen­ing in de­vel­oped and un­de­vel­oped parts of the world.

The case must al­so be made by lead­ers such as the Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter for the yet-to-be-de­vel­oped pos­si­bil­i­ty of green pro­duc­tion, ie, meth­ods to cre­ate prod­ucts, ser­vices, jobs, and wealth with­out the de­spo­li­a­tion of the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment of the on­ly world we have to live in.

What has the po­ten­tial for a mind trans­for­ma­tion is that the wealth which has come from over and un­car­ing ex­ploita­tion of the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment has not on­ly been dis­trib­uted un­equal­ly be­tween the worlds but amongst pop­u­la­tions with­in the in­dus­tri­al world.