Posts Tagged ‘Copenhagen’
Bolivia Climate Conference
April 21st, 2010
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From Thirty Thousand Feet Above Mother Earth
April 17th, 2010
cross-posted from Global Justice Ecology Project Climate Voices:
From Thirty Thousand Feet Above Mother Earth
by Jeff Conant
En route to Bolivia – that is, somewhere 30,000 feet above Mother Earth – I crossed paths with Alberto Saldamando, the legal council for the International Indian Treaty Council, and a member of the Indigenous Environmental Network delegation to the Cochabamba climate summit. As we stood in the aisle of the airplane, raising the hackles of the flight crew, I asked him his vision of the week ahead. Alberto is a friend, someone I’ve worked with in the past, so he may have been more candid with me than he might be in public; when I asked his opinion on the state of the climate negotiations and his hopes for Cochabamba, he said, “I’m pessimistic. You know, greed has no bounds.”
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Tags: abya yala, Alberto Saldamando, Bolivia, carbon trading, climate, climate justice, climate summit, climate voices, CO2lonialism, Cochabamba, Copenhagen, Copenhagen Accord, El Buen Vivir, Evo Morales, gjep, Global Justice Ecology Project, IEN, Indigenous Environmental Network, indigenous issues, Jeff Conant, Living Well, Mother Earth, Pablo Solon, The Good Life | 
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The Nation: The Wrong Kind of Green
March 5th, 2010
Why did America’s leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests–and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as “unworkable” and “unrealistic,” as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal?
At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups like Conservation International are among the most trusted “brands” in America, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters–and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.
I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, “Do you see that chimney sticking up? That’s where my house was… I had to [abandon it] six months ago.” I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and watched glaciers that have existed for millenniums crash into the sea. I have stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, “The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left.”
While I witnessed these early stages of ecocide, I imagined that American green groups were on these people’s side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path–one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation.
Environmental groups used to be funded largely by their members and wealthy individual supporters. They had only one goal: to prevent environmental destruction. Their funds were small, but they played a crucial role in saving vast tracts of wilderness and in pushing into law strict rules forbidding air and water pollution. But Jay Hair–president of the National Wildlife Federation from 1981 to 1995–was dissatisfied. He identified a huge new source of revenue: the worst polluters. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: big business, big greens, cap-and-trade, coal, congress, COP15, Copenhagen, denial, disaster, environmental justice, EPA, greenwash, media, politics |
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The Climate Movement is Dead… Long Live the Climate Movement!
March 2nd, 2010
Rising Tide North America is pleased to announce the release of our latest publication:
The Climate Movement is Dead… Long Live the Climate Movement!
In the aftermath of the COP15 talks in Copenhagen, the inability of the Big Greens, governments, and market approaches to find genuine and sustainable solutions to climate change is undeniable. As author Naomi Klein so aptly observed at the end of COP15 talks, “A particular model of dealing with climate change is dying.”
DOWNLOAD HERE [PDF]
In the same uncompromising spirit as Rising Tide publications such as Deal or No Deal, and Hoodwinked in the Hothouse, CMID:LLCM delivers a timely critique of the failures of this “particular model” as exemplified by the mainstream NGOs who have grown all too cozy with corporations and the political establishment. It explores the ways in which “green” capitalism,electoral politics, and market mechanisms, far from solving the climate crisis, are some of the climate movement’s biggest obstacles.
Not content with mere polemic, CMID:LLCM charts a course that diverges from the dominant discourse of the mainstream climate movement. The essay lays out a strategy of supporting and escalating frontline struggles againstdirty energy while building a new global climate movement from the ground up, based around core principles of climate justice, grassroots power, solidarity, and direct action.
The Climate Movement Is Dead: Long Live the Climate Movement is a must-read for anyone left disenchanted by the mainstream climate movement, and all who are ready to step it up and fight for climate justice.
You can download a digital copy to view online or print yourself.
Or send us an email to contact (at) risingtidenorthamerica (dot) org with your name, address, and how many copies you would like to receive. We are happy to provide this publication for free but as an all volunteer collective we greatly appreciate donations. Also consider joining in our print run collaboration:
Rising Tide North America is excited to announce a “Print-Run Collaboration” project for CMID:LLCM. Local groups and allies can help us raise the funds necessary for an initial print-run of several thousand copies, and in return, receive a big stack “hot-off-the-presses” at approximately the cost of printing (cheaper than photocopies!).
Click HERE to join in
What Really Happened in Copenhagen?
February 13th, 2010
The iron fist of the market versus iron in the soul of the social movements
By Anne Petermann and Orin Langelle
in Z Magazine
When the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) “negotiations” ended in Copenhagen, a colleague from ATTAC France remarked that we might have just witnessed the tipping point of the end of capitalism and the New World Order.
On one hand, there was the official conference representing a corporate- and market-driven system being propped up by governments responsible for this crisis. On the other, there were the thousands that gathered from across the globe to protest false solutions and promote real ones. The road to Copenhagen for many activists began on September 18, 2008 when over 100 people from 21 countries came together to discuss mobilizing for Copenhagen. Over the next year, meetings were held in Poznan, Poland (2008 UN Climate Conference), in Belém, Brazil during the 2009 World Social Forum, and in Copenhagen. Somewhere in the midst of those meetings, Climate Justice Action was formed and became the major network for organizing the demonstrations in Copenhagen. Other Danish organizations pulled together the alternative Peoples’ Summit Klimaforum09, which featured workshops, debates, art, and serious discussions that a new world was not only possible, but necessary. An estimated 10,000 people took part each day in Klimaforum09 activities.
Tags: big business, climate, climate justice, COP15, Copenhagen, government, protest |
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Green is the New Spectacle
January 17th, 2010
From The Nor’easter – by Jason Slade
The Spectacle —- Environmental issues can oftentimes be very complex. Some issues directly relate to climate change, and some do not. However, it is very important to connect the dots between issues because almost all environmental problems are caused, at their base, by capitalist expansion, commodification and privatization. Corporations have used the climate crisis and growing public concern about environmental issues to their advantage. They have learned to use the rhetoric of environmentalism to justify extremely oppressive projects whose sole purpose is to increase their power and to continue the cycle of production and consumption. Incredibly destructive projects, such as hydrofracture natural gas extraction in Upstate New York, are marketed as clean. This absurd spectacle must be stopped.
In Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, he writes, “The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as all of society, as part of society, and as instrument of unification … The spectacle grasped in its totality is both the result and the project of the existing mode of production.
It is not a supplement to the real world, an additional decoration. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society. In all its specific forms, as information or propaganda, as advertisement or direct entertainment consumption, the spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life … It is the sun which never sets over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the world and bathes endlessly in its own glory.” And now the light of that sun is green. The green spectacle is confronting the climate crisis with hollow solutions presented to us in a pleasant, prefabricated package that can be bought if we can afford them and allow us to pollute in good conscience. In an absurd twist, these corporate false solutions cause the poor, and those who resist these schemes, to be blamed for destroying the planet. Read the rest of this entry »
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
Towards a Coordinated and Powerful Climate Justice Movement in the US!
January 10th, 2010
by Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan,
December 18, 2009 (updated 12/21)
The Copenhagen round of the UNFCCC 15th Conference of Parties has ended in failure It is essential for the future of life on this planet that we achieve a global pact based on sound science and equity soon. But given that the U.S. and its key allies were not willing to consider a fair and binding agreement, it is highly encouraging to see that social movements and many third world nations successfully united behind the slogan, “No deal is better than a catastrophic deal.”
Sadly, the US has been unwilling to put forth real solutions with the speed and scale needed. Instead, Hilary Clinton arrived on Thursday trying to extort an unfair deal by offering a vague package of $100 billion that would amount to a new climate colonialism. At the same time, a UNFCC analysis was leaked showing that the combined offerings of the US and other countries would amount to at least a 3 degree Celsius rise. This would mean the eradication of whole island nations, dire drought for Africa, and massive displacement from increasing storms and flooding in South Asia.
The Obama Administration has offered cuts amounting to 4% from 1990 levels by 2020. To survive, the Island Nations, African Union, and other third world governments such as Bolivia joined with Indigenous People and others to call for industrialized nations to cut emissions by 49% from 1990 levels by 2020. They are demanding real solutions to the dire mitigation and adaptation issues they face.
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 »
Climate Justice Now! Statement on Copenhagen
December 30th, 2009
www.climate-justice-now.org
Press conference
The following statement was released by the Climate Justice Now! network on Wednesday, December 23, 2009. It represents the view of a broad coalition of environmental justice and social justice groups from the Global South and Global North, working in partnership for climate justice.
Call for “system change not climate change” unites global movement
Corrupt Copenhagen ‘accord’ exposes gulf between peoples demands and elite interests
The highly anticipated UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen ended with a fraudulent agreement, engineered by the United States and dropped into the conference at the last moment. The “agreement” was not adopted. Instead, it was “noted” in an absurd parliamentary invention designed to accommodate the United States and permit Ban Ki-moon to utter the ridiculous pronouncement “We have a deal.”
The UN conference was unable to deliver solutions to the climate crisis, or even minimal progress toward them. Instead, the talks were a complete betrayal of impoverished nations and island states, producing embarrassment for the United Nations and the Danish government. In a conference designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions there was very little talk of emission reductions. Rich, developed countries continued to delay any talk of deep and binding cuts, instead shifting the burden to less developed countries and showing no willingness to make reparations for the damage they have caused.
Curing Post-Copenhagen Hangover
December 24th, 2009
video directed by Sara Taigher. Medley of songs from DJ Rupture & Matt Shadetek
December, 23 2009
By Bond, Patrick
In Copenhagen, the world’s richest leaders continued their fiery fossil fuel party last Friday night, ignoring requests of global village neighbors to please chill out.
Instead of halting the hedonism, Barack Obama and the Euro elites cracked open the mansion door to add a few nouveau riche guests: South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, China’s Jiabao Wen (reportedly the most obnoxious of the lot), Brazil’s Lula Inacio da Silva and India’s Manmohan Singh. By Saturday morning, still punch-drunk with power over the planet, these wild and crazy party animals had stumbled back onto their jets and headed home.
The rest of us now have a killer hangover, because on behalf mainly of white capitalists (who are having the most fun of all), the world’s rulers stuck the poor and future generations with vast clean-up charges – and worse: certain death for millions.
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Tags: 770 ppm, accord, action, Barack Obama, carbon markets, climate debt, Climate Ground Zero, climate justice, COP15, Copenhagen, direct action, disaster, environmental justice, fossil fuel, government, green capitalism, greenwash, hang over, Jacob Zuma, loopholes, Lula de Silva, media, mtr, party, protest, sea level, tar sands, UN, UNFCCC, Video, Wen Jiabao |
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AN INVITATION: FROM COPENHAGEN TO TORONTO
December 24th, 2009
The Group of 8 Leaders and the Group of 20 Leaders are meeting in Ontario,
from the 25th to the 27th of June, 2010.
Following the collapse of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, they will be
discussing the global economy, development and climate change.
These gatherings are about trying to fix capitalism, a system that cannot
be fixed; about creating unsustainable market responses to ecological
catastrophe that reinforce systems of oppressions; about ensuring the
continued exploitation of people of color and the South and about
celebrating war as a means to create puppet allies to maintain imperialist
power. The so-called leaders at these gatherings do not represent us.
In opposition and with a will to transform, people across Turtle Island
are organizing community-based days of action in Toronto, Canada. The
days of action will be led by Toronto-based organizations of people of
color, indigenous peoples, women, the poor, the working class, queer and
trans people and disabled people.
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What was really decided in Copenhagen? or, “50,000 people went to Denmark and all they got was a lousy 3-page political agreement”
December 24th, 2009
http://counterpunch.org/tokar12232009.html
– Brian Tokar
Detailed accounts from participants in the recent Copenhagen climate summit are still coming in, but a few things are already quite clear, even as countries step up the blame game in response to the summit’s disappointing conclusion.
First, the 2 1/2 pages of diplomatic blather that the participating countries ultimately consented to “take note” of are completely self-contradictory, and commit no one to any specific actions to address the global climate crisis. There isn’t even a plan for moving UN-level negotiations forward. Friends of the Earth correctly described it as a “sham agreement,” British columnist George Monbiot called it an exercise in “saving face,” and former neoliberal shock doctor-turned-environmentalist Jeffrey Sachs termed it a farce. Long-time UN observer Martin Khor has pointed out that for a UN body to “take note” of a document means that not only was it not formally adopted, but it was not even “welcomed,” a common UN practice.
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Tags: analysis, BASIC, climate justice, climate summit, COP15, Copenhagen, environmental justice, europe, farce, glaciers, government, greenwash, politics, protest, sham, Toker, UN, UNFCCC |
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Call for “system change not climate change” unites global movement
December 24th, 2009
Statement of Climate Justice Now! on the outcomes of the COP15
Call for “system change not climate change” unites global movement
Corrupt Copenhagen ‘accord’ exposes gulf between peoples demands and elite interests
The highly anticipated UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen ended with a fraudulent agreement, engineered by the United States and dropped into the conference at the last moment. The “agreement” was not adopted. Instead, it was “noted” in an absurd parliamentary invention designed to accommodate the United States and permit Ban Ki-moon to utter the ridiculous pronouncement “We have a deal.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Bolivia Calls World Conference of Social Movements
December 24th, 2009
December 21, 2009
April 22, 2010: International Day of Mother Earth
CHUQUISACA, Bolivia, December 20 — Bolivian President Evo Morales announced today that a world conference of social movements is to take place in Bolivia, as a response to the failure of the 15th Summit on Climate Change, recently held in Copenhagen.
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