Opinion Sur Joven

Over the last weeks, a piece of news passed almost unnoticed on the most important media of Argentina: Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, vetoed a law that had been unanimously passed at the Congress, which granted special protection to the country’s glaciers by restricting mining and oil excavations near them. The presidential veto explains that the prohibition was “excessive”, since those economic activities can still be carried out “taking perfect care of the environment”.

However, critics of this new legislation assured that the categorical “No” by the president was due to pressure from governors of the Patagonian provinces, who didn’t agree with the impossibility to materialize some potential businesses. It’d also be due to the strong mining lobby, headed by the largest gold mining firm in the world, Barrick Gold Corp., which plans to construct a 2.4-billion-dollar mine on snowy mountains between Argentina and Chile.

On this issue of Opinión Sur Joven, an article at the Environment section analyzes the relationship between the serious financial crisis and the fight against global warming, based on the -worrisome- request by some countries to postpone the environmental battle in order to reactivate economy.

Perhaps Cristina Fernández’s veto is an example. And perhaps it reminds us that the Wall Street tornado has turned on a yellow light in terms of the fight to stop global warming and the attention public opinion and governments pay to it.

Climate change is, along with poverty, one of the most important issues in the political agenda of the 21st century. The media war is won and the cards are on the table. Governments all over the world were gradually though persistently starting to pay more and more attention and spend more energy on creating policies to that end.

We must all prevent the financial crisis from stopping those efforts. We can’t let the yellow light go red.