Bolivia's defiant leader sets radical tone at Cancún climate talks | Environment | The Observer

"We came to Cancún to save nature, forests, planet Earth. We are not here to convert nature into a commodity." So speaks Evo Morales of Bolivia at the recent summit in Cancún.

There was criticism of the Bolivian point of view. Okay, there are a wide variety of thoughts on such a complicated subject. But we would ask "where were the other voices?" "What did the great Greenpeace say? anything like this? How is it that one of the countries with the furthest to go in development said this and not others?
I have some ideas...
1) Evo grew up herding animals. He has seen the climate change in Bolivia from the ground up, literally. And as he says in the article "....and with barely 1 degree change we are suffering; what do you think is going to happen if the change is another degree or two?" (paraphrased).
2) Evo is contentious. That is how he got to be president. He didn't get to this point by compromising at every turn....
3) Evo has gained points with his power base by verbally taking on "the powers that be". That is, he is a populist president and that is what populists do.

I am a systems engineer. Systems work with data looking at the "output" that is being controlled for. In this case, the temperature rise of the planet. What I see in simple terms is a general consensus (yes, there are exceptions) that the temperature of the planet is increasing due to greenhouse gases. Input: greenhouse gases. Output: temperature rise on a planetary scale. Yes, we know that there are other variables, some of which we can not completely understand. But it appears that we are poisoning the planet with a non-toxic gas: carbon dioxide. And it is slow enough and there are enough other variables that we can argue about. And unless we take a stand like Bolivia did in Cancún, one day regret that we didn't do something more forceful.

Bolivia's defiant leader sets radical tone at Cancún climate talks | Environment | The Observer: "We came to Cancún to save nature, forests, planet Earth."