Posts Tagged ‘civil disobedience’
Climate Justice Activists confront Carbon Trade Summit with demonstration, direct action
January 13th, 2010
1/13/2009 – New York, NY – In the wake of a controversial outcome at the Copenhagen climate talks, a diverse crowd of scientists, Faith congregations, activists, students, and concerned citizens converged in confrontation and protest at the 2nd Annual IGlobalForum Carbon Trading Summit today. The summit is the largest annual meeting place of corporations, banks, and lobby groups to further the agenda of a carbon trading scheme to address climate change. Activists rallied to oppose market-based trading of greenhouse gas emissions credits and call for real solutions to the climate crisis. Dr. Maggie Zhou, from Secure Green Future and Climate SOS, was among the demonstrators who engaged in a nonviolent direct action and risked arrest in an attempt to blockade the venue’s revolving doors, and display a banner decrying carbon trading as a false solution.
Other outraged environmentalists and faith-community activists entered the hotel and disrupted the Carbon Summit luncheon, challenging attendees to consider the future of the planet above their own short-term financial interests and denouncing them as climate profiteers. The private gathering, separated from the central hotel atrium by a tall curtain, was suddenly exposed to activists and other members of the general public when the curtain was torn down.
“The same Wall Street bankers who gave us the global climate crisis are trying to own the sky,” stated Brian Tokar, director of the Institute for Social Ecology and an organizer of this week’s protest events. “Carbon trading is unjust, it will not work, and it is a false solution. It is a dangerous distraction from the urgent measures needed to prevent an ever-worsening destabilization of the climate.”
Speakers at the rally included Dea Goblirsch, organizer with Climate Ground Zero in southern W. VA., Reverend Billy of the Church of Life After Shopping, who delivered a critique with the fire and brimstone of a televangelist; Chaia Heller, Professor of Gender Studies at Mount Holyoke College, and Father Paul Mayer, co-founder of the Climate Crisis Coalition and religious community leader.
Participants inside the Carbon Trading Summit included executives from JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Duke Energy and more, as well as polluter-friendly environmental groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and World Wildlife Fund.
“I don’t trust these people to make decisions about the future of humanity,” said one young participant, who wished not to give her name because she will be risking arrest today. “If we follow through with market-based solutions like carbon trading, everyone will regret it. We need to stop believing the corporations’ false solutions and put all our collective energy into getting this conversation onto a track that’s useful.”
Dr. James Hansen, renowned climate scientist, was present outside the Carbon Trading Summit on Tuesday to voice his opposition to carbon trading schemes.
“Cap-and-trade is not a smart approach,” wrote Hansen his book Storms of My Grandchildren. Hansen has stated that current US climate legislation is “worse than nothing” because it relies on risky and ineffective cap-and-trade. He also declared that the failure to reach an agreement in Copenhagen was a better outcome than adopting the carbon-trade-based approach that was being negotiated.
“Carbon trade, which includes cap and trade and offsets, are a dangerous distraction, economically risky, and prone to gaming and speculation,” stated Maggie Zhou. “Offsets allow polluters to simply pay someone else somewhere else to reduce their emissions on your behalf, which in the end does nothing to actually reduce emissions. The climate crisis simply can’t wait!
“Carbon trade is an insidious threat to human rights,” stated Dr. Rachel Smolker from Biofuelwatch and Climate SOS. “It turns rights to pollute the atmosphere, as well as forests, soils and agriculture practices that store carbon into commodities to be bought and sold as excuses for polluters. This is the greatest corporate grab on the “global commons” ever! It is disastrous for most of humanity.
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Climate SOS, Rising Tide North America, Beyond Talk (Climate Pledge of Resistance), Rainforest Action Network, Institute for Social Ecology, The Change You Want to See Gallery and others are behind this effort. To learn more and take a stand for climate justice, for real solutions, and for the future of our planet, please visit above websites, or visit us on Facebook. contact@climatesos.org
Counter Carbon Trading! NYC – January 9-13
January 7th, 2010
CALL TO ACTION!
NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE TO CARBON TRADING
NEW YORK CITY, JAN. 9-13
CONFRONTING THE SOURCE OF COPENHAGEN’S “FAILURE” Read the rest of this entry »
Statement from those still imprisoned in Denmark
January 1st, 2010
Something is rotten (but not just) in Denmark. As a matter of fact, thousands of people have been considered, without any evidence, a threat to the society. Hundreds have been arrested and some are still under detention, waiting for judgement or under investigation. Among them, us, the undersigned. We want to tell the story from the peculiar viewpoint of those that still see the sky from behind the bars. Read the rest of this entry »
Rising Tide Mops up the COP – Copenhagen Climate Summit Archive Project
December 24th, 2009
Rising Tide North America is pleased to announce www.WhatIsCop15.net – an instant archive project compiling some of the incredible work of the global climate movement at and in the lead up to the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen (the 15th Conference of the Parties or COP15).
Much has been said about the failure and collapse of the climate of COP15 last weekend to reach a binding agreement, and you’ll find lots of analysis at www.WhatIsCop15.net.
But the real story from the climate summit — which at best was expected expand the carbon market and entrench corporate control of climate policy — is a happy one.
It’s the massive organizing success and coming of age of the climate justice movement. 100,000 in the streets, tens of thousands in attendance at the climate justice oriented Klimaforum, and countless actions against the root causes of climate change.
Moreover, the sham of polluter-dominated climate policy political sausage making – which expelled groups like Friends of the Earth and Via Campesina from its proceedings – was revealed to millions of onlookers, as was Obama’s complicity in the whole affair.
Depressing as the state of things is, the understanding that there will be no just climate solutions without massive social change has crystallized for score of people in the past weeks: the movement of people demanding a radical shift in the existing order is growing by leaps and bounds, and we must celebrate this awakening!
www.WhatIsCop15.net compiles images, reports, videos, reflections and education resources from COP 15, to thank those who organized for climate justice in Copenhagen and to inspire those of us who weren’t there to equally monumental actions.
Whether you’ve been struggling to keep up with the news or were there in Copenhagen, we invite you to learn, enjoy, and spread the word about the online archive! We’d love it if you contributed content as well!
Tags: big business, biofuels, Canada, cap-and-trade, civil disobedience, climate justice, COP15, Copenhagen, direct action, documentation, environmental justice, government, images, indigenous issues, media, protest, REDD, Rising Tide, south america, trees and forests, UN, UNFCCC, what is cop15? | 
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Rising Tide protest stops coal trains near Sandgate
December 21st, 2009
Australia Risingtide:
9am, Sunday 20th December 2009, Newcastle Australia:
Forty climate activists have closed down the rail line into the world’s biggest coal port this morning, protesting the failure of the UN climate talks in Copenhagen to produce a just, effective, and legally binding treaty.
Twenty five of the diverse group – aged from 19 to 86 years and including a Buddhist priest, and an elected local councillor – are occupying a rail bridge in Newcastle, Australia, and refusing to leave. They have hung large banners reading “Greed wrecked Copenhagen: Now it’s up to us all”, and “You could have done something great.”
Tags: action, Australia, blockade, civil disobedience, climate, coal, COP15, Copenhagen, direct action, politics, protest, Rising Tide, Rudd, train |
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Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Streets! (or, How I stopped lobbying and put up my dukes!)
December 20th, 2009
Which direction do you fancy?
(at risk of offense to those that worked stalwartly at ends that haven’t borne fruit-where-expected, as revealed by Copenhagen)
Climate Camp occupies corporately sponsored “Hopenhagen”
December 18th, 2009
UK activist group Climate Camp demands real solutions to climate change
while occupying corporately sponsored "Hopenhagen" at the Cop15 starting at 8pm on a sub-freezing Thursday night in the heart of downtown Copenhagen. Climate Camp exposed the corporate "green-washing" that is being advertised and sold to the world by green-capitalists as solutions to the global climate crisis. This action was help in solidarity with Climate Camp activists who were simultaneously occupying Trafalgar Square in London.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-2y3E1DIvQ <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-2y3E1DIvQ&feature=player_embedded> &feature=player_embedded
Boston Climate Activists Hang 30-Foot Banner Off Harvard Bridge During U.N. Climate Conference
December 17th, 2009
Boston, MA – Activists with climate group Rising Tide hung a 30-foot banner reading, “System Change, Not Climate Change” on the Harvard Bridge (Massachusetts Ave.) spanning Boston and Cambridge this afternoon. The action comes in the final days of the United Nations Climate Talks in Copenhagen, as 115 world leaders arrive while negotiations have deadlocked. In the past week, over one thousand activists have been arrested in protests.
“The United Nations process has systematically failed the world’s marginalized countries and consistently excludes those that would dare support and fight on behalf of those countries,” said David Bukett of Rising Tide. “We need system change to create a world which is truly just and sustainable to solve the climate crisis.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: action, civil disobedience, climate, climate justice, COP15, Copenhagen, protest, US |
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UK Guardian: High-profile activist’s arrest fuels fears of police crackdown in Copenhagen
December 15th, 2009
Climate Justice Action spokesman to face charges, as Danish police prepare for mass protests at Copenhagen’s Bella centre
Tadzio Mueller, a spokesman for the umbrella group Climate Justice Action (CJA), was arrested today by plainclothes police as he left the Bella centre, where the official climate talks are taking place. The police are holding him at the Retorvej detention centre, and he will be charged in court tomorrow morning. The police refused to say what charges will be brought.
Kevin Smith, an organiser for activist group Climate Camp, said: “It’s unbelievable that in a supposed democracy, undercover police are silencing spokespeople that are criticising the climate talks. How far are the Danish authorities prepared to go to stop tomorrow’s protest from going ahead?”
Mueller’s arrest comes on the eve of a Reclaim Power action that aims to “disrupt the sessions and open a space inside the UN area to hold a people’s assembly” from 10am tomorrow. Read the rest of this entry »
Copenhagen Spoof Shames Canada; Climate Debt No Joke
December 15th, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Press conference: 1pm CET, Frederiksholms Kanal 4, Copenhagen
Contact: Margaret Matembe, margaret.matembe@enviro-canada.ca, +45-23960186
Coverage: Click here, or click throughout press release for specific links
Videos:
Canadian announcement (hi-res download)
Ugandan response (hi-res download)
Canadian retraction (hi-res download)
Climate debt agents take responsibility (hi-res download)
More dream announcements coming soon! Come make your own or stay tuned at good-cop15.org.
Copenhagen Spoof Shames Canada; Climate Debt No Joke
African, Danish and Canadian youth join the Yes Men to demand climate justice and skewer Canadian climate policy
COPENHAGEN, Denmark – “Canada is ‘red-faced’!” (Globe and Mail) “Copenhagen spoof shames Canada!” (Guardian)
“Hoax slices through Canadian spin on warming!” (The Toronto Star) “A childish prank!” (Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada)
What at first looked like the flip-flop of the century has been revealed as a sophisticated ruse by a coalition of African, North American, and European activists. The purpose: to highlight the most powerful nations’ obstruction of meaningful progress in Copenhagen, to push for just climate debt reparations, and to call out Canada in particular for its terrible climate policy.
The elaborate intercontinental operation was spearheaded by a group of concerned Canadian citizens, the “Climate Debt Agents” fromActionAid, and The Yes Men. It involved the creation of a best-case scenario in which Canadian government representatives unleashed a bold new initiative to curb emissions and spearhead a “Climate Debt Mechanism” for the developing world.
The ruse started at 2:00 PM Monday, when journalists around the world were surprised to receive a press release from “Environment Canada” (enviro-canada.com, a copy of ec.gc.ca) that claimed Canada wasreversing its position on climate change.
In the release, Canada’s Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, waxed lyrical. “Canada is taking the long view on the world economy,” said Prentice. “Nobody benefits from a world in peril. Contributing to the development of other nations and taking full responsibilities for our emissions is simple Canadian good sense.” Read the rest of this entry »
Global Alliances Announce Mass Non-Violent Civil Disobedience
December 15th, 2009
Civil Society Groups Inside and Outside The COP Process Issue Call to Unite in “Peoples’ Assembly” to Demand Real Solutions to the Climate Crisis
Copenhagen, Denmark As broad frustration grows with rich country and corporate influence over the content and direction of the climate negotiations, two international networks of people’s movements, civil society groups, Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations and grassroots activists united to announce a mass non-violent civil disobedience to expose the failure of the COP process.
Representatives of the networks, Climate Justice Action and Climate Justice Now!, have declared that given the urgency of the climate crisis it is time for dramatic action to expose the COP process as undemocratic, unjust and inadequate to deal with the scale of the problem. The action called for Wednesday December 16th will involve groups of activists simultaneously descending on the Conference centre from different starting points. At noon, they will join up with the mass of people walking out of the climate talks, to hold the ‘Peoples’ Assembly’, a participatory platform of marginalized voices and real solutions to climate change.
“Over the last 15 years, the COP process has been corrupted by corporate money and the refusal of the rich countries of the world to take responsibility for the problems they have created. At a very fundamental level, we need to talk about how we leave fossil fuels in the ground, but no one is talking about that inside the talks in Copenhagen,” said Ivonne Yanez of Accion Ecologica, which is a part of Climate Justice Now! Read the Call to Action
Call to Action – Reclaim Power!
On the 16th of December, at the start of the high-level “ministerial” phase of the two-week summit, we, the movements for global justice, will take over the conference for one day and transform it into a Peoples Assembly.
Our goal is to disrupt the sessions and open a space inside the UN area to hold the Assembly. The assembly will give a voice to those who are not being heard, it will be an opportunity to change the agenda, to discuss the real solutions, to send a clear message to the world calling for climate justice. Read the rest of this entry »
Activists target carbon traders’ gathering in city center Copenhagen
December 14th, 2009
December 14, COP15 – Activists staged a protest against the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), who today had their Annual General Meeting in the Copenhagen city center.
Monks selling carbon credits
60 Activists from around Europe and abroad brought the message to IETA members: “CO2-traders = Climate criminals”. Three ‘monks’ offered carbon credits as absolution for carbon sins to IETA members going in, and to the public. An IETA businessmen invited one person to go inside and have a ‘dialogue’ with IETA members, which the action group refused.
IETA is the biggest industry lobby group present at the COP15 negotiations, bringing in 486 lobbyists. Their aim is the creation of a global market for greenhouse gas emissions, including the use of highly controversial offsetting projects through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). However, current carbon trading schemes like the ETS have proven not to reduce emissions, but largely generate profits for these companies. Offsetting and the CDM have been severely criticised because it allows rich countries to avoid making emissions cuts at home. There is strong evidence that many CDM projects are creating serious social and environmental problems in developing countries. Read the rest of this entry »
Hit the Production March (Video) Unprovoked Police Aggression/Arrests
December 13th, 2009
13.12.2009 On Dec. 13, 2009 a few hundred people marched from Triangle in Copenhagen towards the harbour. They were carrying a front-banner saying “Hit the Production” and were shouting “Our Climate – not your business”. From the start police with helmets accompanied the march, lots of policecars followed it. After about half an hour of walking the police suddenly blocked the road. They attacked the music truck and the people on it. After getting them off the truck they took the truck away.
The demonstrators were forced to sit down on the pavement, cuffed up with cable-straps and brought away with busses.
Tags: action, action alert, civil disobedience, climate, COP15, Copenhagen, direct action, europe, police, protest, UNFCCC, Video |
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Copenhagen police accused of violating human rights at UN climate summit
December 12th, 2009
Posted on 12th December 2009 by CJA:
Danish police have indiscriminately arrested hundreds of climate justice activists during a climate change protest made up of 100,000 people that took place today in Copenhagen. Questions have been raised about the fact that the arrests occurred in a different time and place to where some trouble had momentarily flared earlier in the day. Journalists have been restricted from reporting at the site of the arrests since 1800hrs.
It’s estimated that 100 people are still being held on the road in extremely cold weather, cuffed and forced into seated positions in lines (1). They have expressed severe physical discomfort and have no access to water, medical attention or toilet facilities since 1530hrs. Many activists are reported to have urinated themselves while detained on the ground.
An estimated 200 have been removed from the site and taken away in coaches. Several people are reported to have fainted around 1945hrs.
Helga Matthiassen, who was detained for an hour before being released due to an injury she had recently sustained, said, “Of course we’re angry – people all over the world are angry about being lied to by governments who are making a corporate deal at the climate talks, and now when we try to protest against this on the streets we are randomly held by police.
“Not only have we been denied the right to protest, but our basic human rights have also been ignored in this ludicrous, staged police exercise. It seems Danish Police have a new motto: why just criminalise protesters, when you can dehumanise them too?” (2)
- http://twitpic.com/t7dts
- See Helga interviewed on TV2 News, 2015 broadcast
http://news.tv2.dk/?channel
100,000 Protest at COP15, Police Make Mass Arrests (video)
December 12th, 2009
[the below is from Indymedia Denmark: http://indymedia.dk/ ]
Saturday 12th began with the NOAH Flood for Climate Justice Demonstration which started at 10am and marched, danced and waved to Højbro Plads [photo report]. The 12dec Demo started at Christiansborg Slotsplads / Parliament Square [google route map], including a CJA group, and it was soon clear that it was massive, with estimates quickly reaching 100,000 protestors. This was also part of a Global Day of Action on climate change. People were also meeting at Hojbro Plads in the same area for another action in the city.
Police Make Indiscriminate Mass Arrests
At around 3.15pm the police charged into the march near to where the CJA System Change not Climate Change group had joined the march, as well as people from the Ntac called demonstration. They cut off hundreds of people including many who were marching as part of Libertarian Socialist bloc [Pics 1> 2 | report | video]. By 5pm several hundred had been handcuffed and made to sit on the floor, where they remain in the cold for hours. The police’s press office reports that those arrested today are between 700-900 people – See AerialTwitpic.
