THE Republicans in the U.S. do not recognise and understand facts when they see them; they still see genuine facts wrongfully as ideas. This was the theme in Bill Maher’s current episode of Real Time on HBO. For instance, he noted that Republicans refuse to accept the scientific facts of climate change, even when those facts are facts, not ideas.
Locally, we see the Bill Maher theme playing out among some people, where they belligerently and disingenuously refuse to accept facts. And where something is a fact and is good for the country, there should be acceptance of this fact.

Inadequacies of accountability and transparency in implementing any fact should not camouflage its truth and goodness, especially when that fact promotes national development. We should, nonetheless, remove any pathology, such as, accountability and transparency problems from the fact, so as to sustain its true nature. And a surge in patriotism should accompany any fact that makes Guyana a better place.
Nevertheless, that surge in patriotism seems to be on the missing list in this country. For on the local scene in a specific sense, we seem to want to extinguish the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), a fact with significant revenue-bearing potential for Guyana.
One of Jagdeo’s signal achievements is the LCDS, which is both a historical triumph and a political albatross. For, since the November 11 national and regional elections last year, there has been a really concerted effort to demonize an effort that has graduated to international proportions, catapulting Guyana on to the global stage, permanently symbolizing Guyana as  a major contributor to mitigating climate change.
da Fonseca, Rodriguez, Midgley, Busch, Hannah, and Mittermeier in ‘No Forest Left Behind’ in PLoS Biology (2007) reported on studies (Stephens et al., 2007; Bala et al., 2007) that showed that reduced tropical deforestation may mitigate climate change. Subsequently, the western world some five to six years ago started to see the wisdom of tropical rain forests as a massive player in toning down climate change. For this reason, reduced destruction of tropical forests became a new ‘money’ phenomenon, whereby countries with low deforestation rates could generate revenues.
Nonetheless, in those early years, the high forest cover and low deforestation rate (HFLD) countries were not part of the scheme of things in the trading of saved carbon through decreased deforestation. And da Fonseca et al. (2007) noted that it would be a mistake to exclude these countries, as they store about 18% of tropical forest carbon, and without carbon credit incentives, HFLD countries may have little motivation to protect their rainforests. These HFLD countries are Panama, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Peru, Belize, Gabon, Guyana, Suriname, Bhutan, Zambia, and French Guiana.
At 2005, Guyana, with 77% forest cover and a 0.0% average deforestation rate per year, was expected to earn US$57 million per year (da Fonseca et al., 2007). That is the fundamental idea in bringing to the fore the LCDS concept, to earn money for Guyana’s development. The fact is that Guyana’s forest cover can generate revenues. There is, nevertheless, an opposing view that Guyana’s forest cover is less than what the LCDS suggests. But that view is largely irrelevant. The important point is the fact that Guyana’s rainforest is a revenue generator.
In fact, Guyana is the first HFLD country to spearhead the LCDS concept. And to further fortify its status in the HFLD countries, Guyana needed a protected area network, which became a reality in October 2011 – the Kanuku Mountains Protected Area (611,000 hectares) and the Shell Beach Protected Area (125,000 hectares).
Notwithstanding all these efforts, the Norway-Guyana US$250 million relationship vis-à-vis the LCDS continues to take a beating, without ‘beaters’ taking a long, hard look at the bigger picture of how tropical rain forests mitigate global climate change, and the fact of LCDS as a revenue earner. If there are problems with accountability and transparency in that relationship, then the thing to do is to address this pathology, but not simultaneously to demonize the fact of what the LCDS is.
Demonizing the Beal Deal of the 1990s was another example of a fact not seen as a fact. Dr. Frank Beckles, Sherwood Kendall, Jonathan Adams, Ashton Simon, and Kathleen Rajkumar challenged the agreement between the Government of Guyana and the Texas-based Beal Aerospace Corp. in the High Court. In addition, the People’s National Congress resisted the agreement, claiming poor financial return from the land transaction. In the end, there was no deal.
Facts are facts. The LCDS can be a huge revenue earner. Norway is just a start, as other countries could follow, producing a multiplier effect on revenues for Guyana. The Beal Deal had the potential of attracting other high-tech companies to Guyana, but people discarded that fact, and several other nation-building facts.
Where pathology (accountability, transparency, other management diseases) exists in the implementation of a fact (as LCDS, etc.), we must eliminate such pathology without eliminating the true fact itself. A similar thing is with the human body; we rid the body of the disease (pathology), but not the body (fact) itself.
On the local scene, there are people whose pastime is to reject the fact when that fact works in the country’s interests. Under such circumstances, we may require a surge in patriotism to stop the rejection of facts. After all, a fact is a fact, not an idea anymore. But people continue to battle genuine facts which they wrongfully see as ideas. Perhaps, a surge of patriotism may end this battle.