Marla Parker's Weblog

Question about Kyoto

A popular guest pastor preached a great sermon at LGUMC this morning. He went over five points, which I've mostly forgotten but one of them stuck: it was about taking care of the good earth. He went off on a bit of a tangent and got so worked up I thought of fire and brimstone, except the subject was Kyoto and Global Warming.

I've just finished reading The Success of Open Source, by Stephen Weber. The last chapter is called: The Code That Changed the World? As the question mark indicates, it is an interesting question, not a claim. But the sermon reminded me of that chapter, where Weber writes on p. 264,

"...The war against terrorism, the relationship between open source and proprietary models of software production, and the politics among transnational NGO networks and international organizations share characteristics that make them diverse cases of a similarly structured political space. I am certain that some of the most interesting processes in international politics and economics over the next decade are going to take place in this space, at the interface between hierarchies and networks (rather than solely within either one)."

So I wonder: is there an international organization that is tracking, or actively seeking, corporate commitments to Kyoto by multinationals that span multiple countries? Is there a website somewhere with the stories of the battles to sign up different companies, wins and losses, success stories of unexpected savings and nightmares of lost opportunities? (Well, here is a November 2004 report that might be close.)

It seems that if you could get enough corporations in the US to sign up, for example, it would not matter that the government refuses to do so. That is purportedly what the Bush administration has called for: industry should take steps to address global warming, but voluntarily.

And that reminds me of the children's moment back in church this morning, delivered by our regular pastor, not the visitor. He explained that volunteering is doing something that you want to do. Serving is doing something that simply needs to be done.