George Monbiot despairs at the chaotic, disastrous denouement of a chaotic and disastrous climate summit.

First they put the planet in square brackets, now they have deleted it from the text. This is no longer about saving the biosphere: now it’s just a matter of saving face. As the talks melt down, everything that might have made a new treaty worthwhile is being scratched out. Any deal will do, as long as the negotiators can pretend they have achieved something. A clearer and less destructive treaty than the texts currently being discussed would be a sheaf of blank paper, which every negotiating party solemnly sits down to sign.

[A journalist reads the latest draft of the Copenhagen Accord at the climate summit. (Photograph: Anja Niedringhaus/AP)]A journalist reads the latest draft of the Copenhagen Accord at the climate summit. (Photograph: Anja Niedringhaus/AP)

This is the chaotic, disastrous denouement of a chaotic and disastrous summit. The event has been attended by historic levels of incompetence. Delegates arriving from the tropics spent 10 hours queueing in sub-zero temperatures without shelter, food or drink, let alone any explanation or announcement, before being turned away. Some people fainted from exposure; it’s surprising that no one died. The process of negotiation is just as obtuse: there’s no evidence here of the innovative methods of dispute resolution developed recently by mediators and coaches, just the same old pig-headed wrestling.

Watching this stupid summit via webcam (I wasn’t allowed in either), it strikes me that the treaty-making system has scarcely changed in 130 years. There’s a wider range of faces, fewer handlebar moustaches, frock coats or pickelhaubes, but otherwise, as the world’s governments try to decide how to carve up the atmosphere, they might have been attending the conference of Berlin in 1884. It’s as if democratisation and the flowering of civil society, advocacy and self-determination had never happened. Governments, whether elected or not, without reference to their own citizens let alone those of other nations, assert their right to draw lines across the global commons and decide who gets what. This is a scramble for the atmosphere comparable in style and intent to the scramble for Africa.

At no point has the injustice at the heart of multilateralism been addressed or even acknowledged: the interests of states and the interests of the world’s people are not the same. Often they are diametrically opposed. In this case, most rich and rapidly developing states have sought through these talks to seize as great a chunk of the atmosphere for themselves as they can – to grab bigger rights to pollute than their competitors. The process couldn’t have been better designed to produce the wrong results.

I have spent most of my time at the Klimaforum [1], the alternative conference set up by just four paid staff, which 50,000 people attended without a hitch. (I know which team I would put in charge of saving the planet.) There the barrister Polly Higgins laid out a different approach. Her declaration of planetary rights invests ecosystems with similar legal safeguards to those won by humans after the second world war. It changes the legal relationship between humans, the atmosphere and the biosphere from ownership to stewardship. It creates a global framework for negotiation which gives nation states less discretion to dispose of ecosystems and the people who depend on them.

Even before this new farce began it was beginning to look as if it might be too late to prevent two or more degrees of global warming. The nation states, pursuing their own interests, have each been passing the parcel of responsibility since they decided to take action in 1992. We have now lost 17 precious years, possibly the only years in which climate breakdown could have been prevented. This has not happened by accident: it is the result of a systematic campaign of sabotage by certain states, driven and promoted by the energy industries. This idiocy has been aided and abetted by the nations characterised, until now, as the good guys: those that have made firm commitments, only to invalidate them with loopholes, false accounting and outsourcing. In all cases immediate self-interest has trumped the long-term welfare of humankind. Corporate profits and political expediency have proved more urgent considerations than either the natural world or human civilisation. Our political systems are incapable of discharging the main function of government: to protect us from each other.

Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest. It was nice knowing you. Not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.

by George Monbiot

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.), the largest bridge spanning the Charles River 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.

Continue Reading »

http://climatevoices.wordpress.com/

Photo essay of the 12 December March in Copenhagen continues after this blog post:

Copenhagen Day of Action on Climate Change:

Energy in the Streets; Disappointment in the Negotiations

Late last night a draft text on the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) scheme was released.  It was strongly condemned by NGOs from around the world.  The text of this agreement gave mere lip service to Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and to safeguards against conversion of native forests to timber plantations, not including them in the legally binding body, but rather referring to them in a preamble. Continue Reading »

http://www.tni.org/briefing/newspaper-climate-chronicle

* Copenhagen COP15

* Climate Justice

* Climate Talks

* Environmental Justice

Climate Chronicle is a climate justice newspaper produced every two days of the Copenhagen climate talks. The newspaper aims to report and decode what is going on inside the climate negotiations, to report on actions and outside events in Copenhagen, and to reflect climate justice struggles that are happening in the world beyond the Copenhagen talks bubble.

Click the map for regional information

MOBILIZE! – NOVEMBER 30, 2009

As the world’s biggest companies and their friends in government continue to fight a transition to more just and sustainable ways of living, climate change threatens to turn our world upside down with water shortages, crop failures, sea level rise and ecosystem collapse.  A million species face extinction by the end of the century, and the people who have contributed least to the problem will continue to be the hardest hit.  What can be done at this critical juncture, with our future at stake?

Throughout history, social change has come about when regular people get fed up with business as usual, get organized, and take to the streets. If we leave climate solutions up to politicians and corporations, then we will lose – not just a political battle, but the life-support systems of the planet.  Time is running out to avert the worst impacts of climate change: the time to act is now.

A broad coalition of organizations working for social, ecological, racial and economic justice has come together under the banner of the Mobilization for Climate Justice. Join us as we organize mass action on climate change on November 30, 2009!  November 30 (N30) is significant both because it immediately precedes the upcoming UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen and is the ten-year anniversary of the protests that shut down of the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle, demonstrating the incredible power of collective action.

Every indication is that any agreement that emerges from Copenhagen will be nothing more than business as usual—sacrificing real emissions reductions in favor of market-based approaches that enhance corporate profits while delaying a transition away from fossil fuels. The current approach to climate change in the UN, and in the US Congress, is based on the creation of a new market in carbon emissions.  Carbon trading (aka “cap and trade”) and carbon offsets do not address the root causes of global warming, nor do they reduce emissions.  They are designed by and for corporations, and are a dangerous distraction that should be abandoned.

We urgently need to implement real solutions like ending excessive consumption, keeping fossil fuels in the ground, re-localizing production and consumption, and drastically reducing greenhouse emissions.  We must also protect the rights of workers, displaced peoples, and others affected by the transition.

In recent months, people of the world have taken valiant action for climate solutions. On Oct. 24th, people in 181 countries staged over 5,200 actions calling for global action on climate change. And on November 4, African delegates walked out of pre-Copenhagen negotiations in Barcelona – demanding that rich countries commit to deeper and faster emissions cuts – while European activists used civil disobedience to disrupt the talks.

And now, we’re asking you to join us in taking the next step – a global day of action for climate justice on Monday, November 30, 2009. Take the day off, get together with friends, and take a stand for real, just and effective solutions to the climate crisis!

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WHAT YOU CAN DO ON N30:

Several actions are already being planned for November 30 – and many more will be coming soon – so if there’s an action happening in your city or region, we urge you to join it!  See the MCJ site for a map of N30 actions across the country and across the world.

If there isn’t an action being organized in your town, organize one! If you’re already involved in a campaign against a company that’s contributing to climate injustice, organize an action on against them November 30.  You can submit actions by clicking HERE.

If you’re organizing an action from scratch, we’d suggest you go after one of the following companies: Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Chevron, BP, or American Electric Power. We picked these six companies because they’re all, through their investments, lobbying, and day to day business, going out of their way to obstruct real solutions to the climate crisis.  For more info about them, see our Corporate Criminals page.

Corporations like these will keep trying to distract us with false solutions, but we will send them a loud, clear message: Our climate is not your business!

Help us spread the word – we’ll see you in the streets!

If you can’t make it out, please consider helping others take action by making a donation.

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The Mobilization for Climate Justice is: Alliance of Community Trainers, Art in Action, Asian-Pacific Environmental Network, Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace and Justice, Bay Localize, Beehive Design Collective, Burmese American Democratic Alliance, Communities for a Better Environment, Community Coalition for Environmental Justice, Direct Action to Stop the War, Earth First!, Eco-Cycle, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Environment and Social Development Organization, Environmental Justice &

Climate Change Initiative, Enviro Show, Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity, Forest Ethics, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Global Exchange, Global Justice Ecology Project, Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, Headrush, Indigenous Environmental Network, Institute for Social Ecology, International Forum on Globalization, International Rivers, Justice in Nigeria Now!, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Movement Generation, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Pacific Environment, Poor Magazine, PR for People & the Planet, Rainforest Action Network, Richmond Mayor’s Taskforce on Environmental Justice and Health, Richmond Progressive Alliance, Rising Tide North America, Ruckus Society, SmartMeme, Solidarity, Uganda Network on Toxic Free Malaria Control, West County Toxics Coalition, Women of Color United, Youth In Focus, Zero Waste Vancouver, and 350.org

Rising Tide is proud to announce the release of Deal or No Deal, a 16 page newspaper exploring issues surrounding the upcoming UN climate talks in Copenhagen from an anti-capitalist, climate justice perspective. Deal or no Deal is an in-depth and highly accessible read that covers the history of international climate negotiations and what’s going on with them in the present. Deal or No Deal delivers a scathing critique of carbon trading, the corporate takeover of the UN climate talks, and the obstructionist role that rich nations play in the talks; while providing insight and inspiration for what we can do to fight back. And of course, it comes complete with pithy cartoons and a slick design.

Download a copy here: http://alturl.com/yvpm

(A re-sized printable version is here)

Or better yet get the real thing by emailing distro-AT-RisingTideNorthAmerica-DOT-org!

Please include how many copies you want and an address to send them to. We are happy to provide Deal or No Deal free of charge.

As an all volunteer, and rather poor collective we would greatly appreciate donations large and small to help cover printing and shipping costs, especially for larger requests!

-Rising Tide North America

By Rising Tide

“Oceans turn increasingly acidic, wiping out calcareous plankton and further hitting surviving coral reefs-much of the marine food chain endangered. One summer in every two has heat waves as strong as the 2003 disaster in Europe, when 30,000 died. Drought, fire and searing heat strikes the Mediterranean basin. Greenland tips into irreversible ice melt, accelerating sea-level rise and threatening coastal cities around the world. Hundreds of millions live in peril of the rising seas. Polar bears, walrus and other ice-dependent marine mammals extinct in the Arctic. Glaciers in Peru disappear, threatening the water supplies to Lima. Declining snowfields also threaten water supplies. A third of species worldwide face extinction as the climate changes-the worst mass extinction since the end of the dinosaurs.”

This rather rosy scenario painted by author Mark Lynas is the reality we can expect to inhabit if the planet heats another 3.6 F degrees. Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it? Well unfortunately for us, 3.6 F also happens to be the degree to which our benevolent leaders at the G8 decided is ok to allow our world to heat up.  Last month with much fanfare and backslapping the world’s 7 richest nations (plus Russia), who not coincidentally are responsible for the lion’s share of global emissions, set the bar for the collateral damage they are willing to accept in order to preserve their economic stranglehold on our planet.

On Sept 24 and 25^th the G20, an outgrowth of the G8, will be meeting in Pittsburgh in an attempt to salvage this global economic order. The G20 includes all the G8 countries plus the next twelve largest economies and “emerging economies.” The G20 countries account for 80% of the world’s global gross national product. Many of the G8 leaders remarked at this year’s summit that it is becoming irrelevant, and that the G20 is where the real decisions will be made. Before this year’s G8 summit German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated, “I think the G20 should be the format that, like an overarching roof, makes decisions about the future.” While the G20 summit in Pittsburgh is largely focused on pumping some blood back into global capitalism, we cannot afford to overlook how the abstract world of global finance has very real world affects when it comes to climate and justice. Continue Reading »

Call to Action:Protest Chevron – Join the Mobilization for Climate Justice!;Richmond Ca, August 15

The Mobilization for Climate Justice-West (a coalition of over a dozen groups) are calling for a rally and mass civil disobedience in at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California on August 15.

Kicking off a season of direct action in the lead up to the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, MCJ-West wants people from all over the west to come to the Bay Area and support impacted communities in Richmond and beyond.

Call to Action:

Protest Chevron – Join the Mobilization for Climate Justice!

August 15th, 2009

Richmond BART (16th St & MacDonald Avenue) 11:30am Festival/Rally, followed by 1pm March on Chevron oil refinery Continue Reading »

Reportback from the June 2009 Climate Justice Action meetings in Copenhagen, Denmark

At the end of June, two of us representing Rising Tide North America and the North American Mobilization for Climate Justice attended the international Climate Justice Action (hereafter: CJA) meetings held in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The network convened in an old textile factory turned meeting hall/theatre in world-renowned Freetown Christiania, a 90 acre squat (formerly a military base) that is comprised of many smaller collectives and which has maintained an inspiring and victorious 37 years of autonomous operation. From a slow start with introductions, the meetings quickly crescendoed into a space of tangible possibilities; the atmosphere held a contagious enthusiasm. Continue Reading »

Protesters clashed with police in Copenhagen this weekend while attempting to disrupt the World Business Summit on Climate Change, a gathering of the worlds largest corporations and, not coincidentally, biggest polluters. Organized by the Danish government, the Business Summit gave corporate interests unprecedented access to the ongoing UN climate talks, including face time with UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon and so called climate “hero” Al Gore.

The group of protestors, lead by a banner reading “Our Climate is not Your Business” attempted to breach police lines in order to disrupt the meeting. The lively group of activists wanted hightlight the damaging and disruptive role that corporations play in the international climate talks. The list of corporations attending included #1 carbon emitter in the world Shell Oil, Duke Energy (#12 at last count), and BP among other climate criminals.

“The Danish government appears to be under the impression that some of the world’s most polluting companies are going to put forward tough measures to tackle climate change,” said Kenneth Haar, a researcher with Corporate Europe Observatory. “But unfortunately this doesn’t seem likely to be the case. The majority of the corporations attending the World Business Summit on Climate Change seem more intent on pursuing business as usual – with the promise that future technologies will resolve the problem at a later date.

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WE STAND AT A CROSSROADS.

Confront Copenhagen at Home

www.ACTFORCLIMATEJUSTICE.org

read and pass on the Mobilization’s
Open Letter to the Grassroots

The facts are clear. Global climate change, caused by human activities, is happening, threatening the lives and livelihoods of billions of people and the existence of millions of species. Social movements, environmental groups, and scientists from all over the world are calling for urgent and radical action on climate change.

On the 6 December, 2009 the governments of the world will come to Copenhagen for the fifteenth UN Climate Conference (COP-15). This will be the biggest summit on climate change ever to have taken place. Yet, previous meetings have produced nothing more than business as usual.

There are alternatives to the current course that is emphasizing false solutions such as market-based approaches and agrofuels. If we put humanity before profit and solidarity above competition we can live amazing lives without destroying our planet.

For a just transition to a low carbon future we must invest in community-controlled renewable energy and leave fossil fuels in the ground. We must stop over-production for over-consumption. All should have equal access to the global commons through community control and local sovereignty over energy, forests, land and water. We must acknowledge the historical responsibility of the global elite and rich Global North for causing this crisis. Equity between all peoples in the North and South through reparations of this ecological debt is essential to climate justice.

Climate change is already impacting people, particularly, indigenous and forest-dependent peoples, women, small farmers, workers, marginalized communities and impoverished neighbourhoods who are all calling for action on climate- and social-justice.

We call on all peoples around the planet to mobilize and take action against the root causes of climate change and the key agents responsible, both in Copenhagen and around the world.

This mobilization has already begun but is still in the planning stages. We have time to collectively decide what these mobilizations will look like, and to begin to visualize what our future can be. It is now time to take the power back!

We encourage everyone to start mobilizing today in your own neighbourhoods and communities.

Please get involved and take action for climate justice.

Hope is not just a feeling, it is also about taking action.

To read the Mobilization’s Open Letter to the Grassroots Continue Reading »

Greetings,

We are writing to express our solidarity with your efforts to organize against the UN Climate Conference next year in Copenhagen. As you may know November 30th 1999 was a historic day in the US, and indeed the world. On that day thousands took to the streets of Seattle and shut down the World Trade Organizations ministerial, while hundreds of thousands went on strike, marched, and took direct action around the world. On that day we came together to say no to corporate control of the Earth and our lives and yes to life and freedom for all. Continue Reading »

First International Climate Gathering
13 September, 2008 to 14 September, 2008

Towards climate action in Copenhagen 2009
First international planning meeting Continue Reading »