This September activists from 21 countries came together in Copenhagen to plan for direct action during the 2009 UN Climate talks that will be held in that city. This is the call to action that came out of that meeting. Activists in North America are beginning to organize for what will be a historic day. More coming soon!

click here for translations in several languages

A Call to Climate Action:

We stand at a crossroads. 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 30th of November, 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. We need to leave fossil
fuels in the ground. Instead we must invest in community-controlled
renewable energy. We must stop over-production for over-consumption. All
should have equal access to the global commons through community control
and peoples’ sovereignty over energy, forests, land and water. And of
course we must acknowledge the historical responsibility of the global
elite and rich Global North for causing this crisis. Equity between
North and South is essential.

Climate change is already impacting people, particularly women,
indigenous and forest-dependent peoples, small farmers, marginalized
communities and impoverished neighbourhoods who are also calling for
action on climate- and social justice. This call was taken up by
activists and organizations from 21 countries that came together in
Copenhagen over the weekend of 13-14 September, 2008 to begin
discussions for a mobilization in Copenhagen during the UN’s 2009
climate conference.

The 30th of November, 2009 is also the tenth anniversary of the World
Trade Organization (WTO) shutdown in Seattle, which shows the power of
globally coordinated social movements.

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
begins now, until the COP-15 summit, and beyond. The mobilizations in
Copenhagen and around the world are 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. Get involved!

We encourage everyone to start mobilizing today in your own
neighbourhoods and communities. It is time to take the power back. The
power is in our hands. Hope is not just a feeling, it is also about
taking action.

To get involved in this ongoing and open process, sign up to this email

list: climateaction@klimax2009.org

US Contact: infoclimate09-NA@riseup.net

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.

The Negotiations

Outrage, confusion, and disgust were the reactions around the Bella Center when Barack Obama waltzed into the main plenary of the UN climate talks on December 18 to announce that the U.S. had struck an accord with the governments of China, Brazil, South Africa, and India. Accord? What happened to the official process?

In typical U.S. fashion, after years of global negotiations to bring all of the countries of the world into a consensus on how to combat climate change as part of the second round of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, the imperial U.S. bypassed the Kyoto Protocol and its legally-binding commitments to reduce emissions. In his speech, Obama stated, “Here is the bottom line: We can embrace this accord, take a substantial step forward, and continue to refine it and build upon its foundation…. Or we can choose delay, falling back into the same divisions that have stood in the way of action for years….”

Fidel Castro criticized the undemocratic process of Obama et al., stating, “[This] was an antidemocratic and practically clandestine initiative that disregarded the thousands of representatives of social movements, scientific and religious institutions and other participants in the Summit.”

After the Copenhagen Accord was announced—the result of the private meetings of 26 unnamed countries—the push was on to get the rest of the countries to agree to it so that they could claim success. There was outrage among the excluded countries. “After keeping us waiting for hours, after several leaders from developed countries have told the media an agreement has been reached when we haven’t even been given a text, you throw the paper on the table and try to leave the room,” stated Venezuelan delegate Claudia Caldera.

Hugo Chavez explained what was at stake: “In Copenhagen, from the beginning, the cards were on the table for all to see. On the one hand, the cards of brutal meanness and stupidity of capitalism, which did not budge in defense of its logic: the logic of capital, which leaves only death and destruction in its wake at an increasingly rapid pace. On the other hand, the cards of the peoples demanding human dignity, the salvation of the planet, and for a radical change, not of the climate, but of a world system that has brought us to the brink of unprecedented ecological and social catastrophe.”

It required significant arm-twisting and blackmail of developing countries to try to get them in line. The government of Lesotho, head of the Least Developed Countries, was told that decisions on extending $7 million in aid would be decided depending on its cooperation with the Accord. Likewise, Palau was told negotiations on a funding package with the U.S. would be decided soon, so it should support the U.S.’s emissions reduction target. Meanwhile, the UK told Bolivia its eligibility for funding could be determined by its cooperation, and it told Bangladesh that money for adaptation was dependent on its agreement to financing going through the World Bank.

Media crowds around television in the Bella Center to watch President Obama address the high level plenary session. Only a small pool of the 3,500 accredited media present was allowed in.

Accredited UN observers blocked by police while on their way to the Peoples Assembly during the Reclaim Power protest

An accredited UN observer is shoved off the bridge during the Reclaim Power action after he and others marched out of the Bella Center

An estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people took to the streets in Copenhagen on December 12, an international day of action for the climate. There were over 900 arrests.

African groups march through the conference chanting, “Two Degrees is Suicide,” “One Africa, One Degree,” and “No to Climate Colonialism,” in response to a leaked secret proposal between rich countries

Clayton Thomas-Muller, from the Indigenous Environmental Network, chants and drums while attempting to leave the Bella Center for the Reclaim Power action

Despite these strong-arm tactics, the U.S., UK, and EU did not get the outcome they wanted. The exact text of the final agreement was as follows: “The Conference of the Parties takes note [emphasis added] of the Copenhagen Accord of December 18, 2009.” With the refusal of Venezuela and Sudan to knuckle under to U.S. pressure, the COP was unable to “adopt” the flawed Accord—and was relegated to “taking note” of it. In other words, there was no agreement in Copenhagen.

Earlier in the week, some text leaked from secret meetings held by the Danish government, initially dubbed the Copenhagen Agreement, led to a spontaneous protest by the African delegations. They marched through the Bella Center on December 8 chanting, “Two degrees is suicide. One Africa, one degree.” This referred to a section of the leaked text that would allow for a global temperature rise of two degrees Celsius. The Copenhagen Accord cabal responded, and on December 15, French President Sarkozy organized a meeting with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles. After this meeting and a phone call from President Obama, Meles announced that he was speaking for all of Africa when he agreed to the U.S./EU position.

Mithika Mwenda, of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), responded, “The IPCC science is clear—2 degrees globally means 3.5 degrees in Africa. This is death to millions of Africans. If Prime Minister Meles wants to sell out the lives and hopes of Africans for a pittance, he is welcome to, but that is not Africa’s position. Every other African country has committed to policy based on the science. That means at least 45 percent cuts by rich countries by 2020 and it means $400 billion fast-track finance, not $10 billion.”

The language in the Copenhagen Accord guarantees continued runaway climate change. It contains no legally binding targets for emissions reductions, which are selected by each country independently. In the U.S., for example, the target being bandied about in the Senate is for 17 percent emission cuts below 2005 levels by 2020. This translates to less than 4 percent emissions cuts below 1990 levels by 2020. (By comparison, even the grossly inadequate Kyoto Protocol called for 5.2 percent reductions below 1990 levels by 2012.) On top of that, there are many provisions for allowing use of forests and soils as carbon offsets and the introduction of new market mechanisms to create the appearance of emissions cuts. The UNFCCC Secretariat has calculated that the Accord’s provisions will lead to a 3-degree rise in temperatures and CO2 levels of 550 ppm. In addition, the Accord calls for a pathetically small $10 billion per year for 3 years for adaptation and mitigation actions in developing countries. There are no references to Indigenous Peoples’ Rights or the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The media made a lot of the announcement by Hillary Clinton at the COP on December 15 of a plan for the U.S. to contribute $100 billion toward adaptation and mitigation for developing countries. As usual, they didn’t listen very well. What Clinton actually said was that the U.S. would participate in raising $100 billion per year by 2020 from a variety of sources—including the carbon market and even World Bank loans. Developing countries, meanwhile are calling for $400 billion in public funding (outside of the World Bank) to begin immediately.

The inclusion of forests in the carbon market under the Accord will greatly intensify forest carbon projects and speculation, which critics charge will undoubtedly lead to land grabs, increased violations of Indigenous Peoples’ rights and human rights in general, including forced displacements. It will also result in the rapid expansion of monoculture tree plantations (including genetically-engineered trees) as so-called carbon sinks.

In a bitter irony, on December 11 in the midst of the climate conference, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the Obama administration had approved Royal Dutch Shell’s plan to drill for oil off Alaska’s northwest coast as early as next summer, endorsing drilling for fossil fuels in the climate-effected ecosystems of the Arctic, where global warming already impacts Alaska natives and entire villages are in danger of losing their lands and ways of life.

The Anti-Empire Strikes Back

While it is doubtful anyone predicted the Obama administration would so blatantly throw out the UN process, Climate Justice Action had wisely mobilized around the understanding that the talks would not, and could not, come up with any real, effective, or just solutions to the climate crisis. They mobilized to expose COP15 for the profit-driven, trade-focused sham that it had become. For Climate Justice Action, “no deal is better than a bad deal,” a sentiment echoed by climate scientist James Hansen.

Even prior to the Copenhagen Accord, after the first week of the talks, disgust over the behavior of rich countries spilled over into the streets. On Saturday, December 12, an estimated 100,000 people marched the 6 kilometers in the bitter cold to the Bella Center in support of effective action on climate change. Climate Justice activists formed a bloc called “Change the System, Not the Climate.” The only incident of the day occurred when police vans swooped in suddenly to surround several hundred black bloc marchers. They were corralled on the frozen street for several hours before being taken to jail. This was not the first pre-emptive arrest, however. Police had already raided several of the meeting and sleeping spaces of Climate Justice Action. By the end of the two weeks, approximately 2,000 people had been arrested—nearly all of them having committed no crime.

Four days later, thousands of people again marched through the streets of Copenhagen to the Bella Center, this time as part of the “Reclaim Power” protest organized by Climate Justice Action and Climate Justice Now! (networks that encompass organizations, social movements, farmers, and Indigenous Peoples from both the global North and the global South). Also, between 200 and 300 COP15 delegates marched out of the Bella Center to join the protests outside. The objective was not to close down the summit, but rather, for one day, to open a space for a People’s Assembly where real solutions to the climate crisis and ways to expand the global climate justice movement could be discussed. When the group from inside attempted to cross a footbridge to meet their thousands of compatriots on the outside, however, they were met by police swinging truncheons. Accredited UN observers were beaten while chanting, “We’re non-violent, why aren’t you?”

Stine Gry Jonassen, a spokesperson for Climate Justice Action, explained, “We have no more time to waste. If governments won’t solve the problem, then it’s time for our diverse people’s movements to unite and reclaim the power to shape our future. We are beginning this process with the people’s assembly. We will join together all the voices that have been excluded—both within the process and outside of it.” Stine and Tannie Nyboe, another Reclaim Power organizer, were brutally attacked by police while speaking from a sound truck. They were thrown off the truck and arrested.

Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP) accredited Stine for the UN climate talks. She and another organizer, Dr. Tadzio Mueller, participated in a GJEP press conference the day before the action took place. Upon leaving the UN building, Mueller was grabbed by three plainclothes police, arrested pre-emptively, and taken back into the Bella Center to await transport to jail. He was released four days later.

Indigenous Environmental Network Director Tom Goldtooth explained why Indigenous Peoples led the march out of the Bella Center: “It’s a sad situation that world leaders representing industrialized society have lost their understanding of the sacredness of Mother Earth. Before we can achieve global action, there needs to be international awareness of why we are really here. We marched out in support of our brother, President Evo Morales of Bolivia, and his demand that the rights of Mother Earth be recognized in the negotiating text here in Copenhagen.”

Hundreds of UNFCCC-accredited observers were denied access to the Bella Center on the day of the Reclaim Power action, including the entire Friends of the Earth International and Via Campesina delegations. Anyone who participated in the Reclaim Power action was also banned from the Bella Center. In the days following the action, the exhibition and side event space where many of the NGOs had congregated was eerily quiet and empty. Many of the NGO booths were stripped of their materials and had simple white print outs posted that read “Civil Society Has Been Excluded From The Negotiations.”

Climate Justice Now! issued a statement after Copenhagen which reads in part: “The only discussions of real solutions in Copenhagen took place in social movements. Climate Justice Now!, Climate Justice Action and Klimaforum09 articulated many creative ideas and attempted to deliver those ideas to the UN Climate Change Conference through the Klimaforum09 People’s Declaration and the Reclaim Power People’s Assembly. While Copenhagen has been a disaster for just and equitable climate solutions, it has been an inspiring watershed moment in the battle for climate justice. The governments of the elite have no solutions to offer, but the climate justice movement has provided strong vision and clear alternatives. Copenhagen will be remembered as an historic event for global social movements. It will be remembered, along with Seattle and Cancun, as a critical moment when the diverse agendas of many social movements coalesced and became stronger, asking in one voice for system change, not climate change.”

What Are The Next Steps?

In response to the Copenhagen fiasco, Bolivian President Evo Morales announced that a world conference of social movements would take place in Bolivia on April 22, 2010—the International Day of Mother Earth. In Detroit, Michigan this summer, climate justice and other activists will come together for the U.S. Social Forum. Many hope that social movements in the U.S. will unite as an alternative to the farcical “democracy” in this country and work together to find real and just solutions to the climate crisis.

Despite the heavy handed and violent repression of the Reclaim Power action, participants considered it a tremendous success. “The solidarity we experienced today in the face of police intimidation and repression shows that people across the world are standing together to expose the failure of the COP to address the real causes of the climate crisis, and our determination to work together to bring about the changes needed to tackle climate change. The people feel strong together and we will go back home to build the movement for climate justice and for real solutions,” said Kingkorn Narintarakul of the Thai Working Group for Climate Justice.

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Anne Petermann is executive director of Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP). Orin Langelle is the co-director/strategist of GJEP. They took the photos in this article. GJEP co-founded Climate Justice Now! in 2007 in Bali, Indonesia and Climate Justice Action in 2008 in Copenhagen. GJEP has its main office in Hinesburg, Vermont with desks in Berkeley, California and Porto Alegre, Brazil. GJEP is the North American Focal Point for the Global Forest Coalition.

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.

“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.”

Political tensions have risen inside and outside the Bella Center, site of the negotiations, as the United Nations talks that were supposed to galvanize global cooperation against climate change are on the brink of failure. Developing countries have accused the developed countries of refusing to significantly reduce climate pollution and to pay their ecological debt to the climate-impacted developing world.

President Obama has offered to cut U.S. emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2020. The proposal has been widely criticized because it amounts to just a four percent cut when adopting the 1990 emissions standard used by the rest of the world. Additionally, developed countries have offered $10 billion to help poor countries adapt to unavoidable climate change, while the World Bank and United Nations both agree that $100 billion a year is a fair amount.

“I will not die in silence. Ten billion! Ten billion is not enough to buy the coffins you will bury us with. So we are saying, a political deal is a bad deal,” Augustine Njamnshi of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance told a crowd outside the talks earlier this week.

Protesters outside the Copenhagen talks clashed with police on Wednesday, as police used pepper spray, tear gas and batons. Vowing to stage a ‘people’s assembly’ inside the Bella Center, 240 people were arrested in addition to over 1,000 arrested in the past week. When protesters were refused entry, over 100 delegates, led by two members of the Bolivian government delegation, marched out of the talks to join the protest.

“First they shut the public out of climate negotiations, then they shut out 80% of NGOs who have been accredited to attend, and now they are jailing people who challenge the undemocratic nature of the climate negotiations, while the future of life on earth literally hangs in the balance,” said Dorothy Guerro of the Climate Justice Now Network.

On Friday, concerned Boston citizens will be caroling with climate-themed songs at 5:30PM in Downtown Crossing. Protests are being held in cities across the United States tomorrow, including San Francisco and Washington D.C., in response to obstruction by developed countries.

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.

This was no surprise to those of us who have been following REDD since it was formally announced at the UN Climate Conference in Bali, Indonesia in 2007.  It was clear then that this was a bunch of greenwash aimed at enriching the world’s most notorious deforesters, while providing the impetus for a massive global land grab directed at the world’s remaining forested lands—most of which are in the territories of Indigenous Peoples.

Thus we were not shocked when, at the Climate Conference last year in Poznan, all references to Indigenous Rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples were struck from the text by the gang of four: the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand—who always seem to be the bad guys in these UN negotiations.

Nonetheless, for those of us who have been fighting to stop the rampant destruction of native forests for so many years, the total corruption of an agreement to ostensibly curb deforestation is a major kick in the gut.

So it was with REDD in mind that we joined the massive show of people rallying for real and effective action on climate change at Parliament Square in Copenhagen earlier this afternoon.

March organizers estimated the swarming crowd at 100,000.  The police said 50,000.  The reality being somewhere in the middle, it was certainly the largest protest against climate change ever to have taken place.  And when coupled with the marches and protests in more than 100 other countries around the world, it was massive indeed.

Orin and I can attest to the impressive crowd as we crossed through it en route to find our allies in the “system change not climate change” bloc, on the exact opposite side of the square.  After 15 or so minutes of squeezing through the crush of the crowd, we managed to find our way to the coffee cart where several of our friends were waiting in an impossible queue for something warm to drink.  After waiting for what seemed like forever, with coffees finally in hand, we and our friends made our way in the direction of the “system change not climate change” sound trucks, which were to lead the bloc, but not before one of our German comrades warmed everyone’s coffee with a dollop of whiskey.  “To help warm you up on the inside,” he explained.

Another U.S.-based colleague and I remarked that we had certainly never experienced THAT before at a U.S. protest!

We found the Climate Justice Now! bloc with our allies, and ran into Melissa, a woman we had met fifteen years before during the struggle to save the ancient redwoods in California.  She had worked with Judi Bari, our friend and colleague who had been blown up by a pipe bomb in 1990 for trying to stop the rampant logging of some of the oldest and most majestic trees on the planet—the 100 meter tall, 2,000 year old redwoods, being felled for hot tubs and outdoor furniture.  Melissa was passing out stickers that elicited naughty giggles in nearly everyone who read them. They read “fck, fck, fck the system,”—a direct response to the very mainstream “tck, tck tck” campaign initiated by some of the larger NGOs.

The march consisted of numerous blocs, spread out over several kilometers.  Orin and I made our way to the very beginning of the march, where the Indigenous Peoples’ delegation was leading the way.  Orin photographed their delegation and we then gravitated to the side where we documented each bloc as it passed, waiting for our allies with the System Change bloc.  The images he captured during the hour or more that the march flowed by are captured in the photo essay included here.

After an interminably long time, toward the end of the march we finally spied the sound trucks with the green banners that signified the beginning of the System Change bloc.  We connected with some of our allies and photographed them moving by.  After they had passed we walked toward the back of the bloc to see what else we could find, and just as we did, a mass of police vans moved in and blocked the street, cutting off a section of the march.  Another cluster of police vans cut them off from the back.  We tried to move in to take photos of the situation and document the preemptive roundup, but were roughly shoved back by police who quickly taped off the area. We watched the stand off for 40 minutes or so, alerting some of our allies to the alarming situation.

Hundreds of march participants flooded back to the scene of the round up, and we could here pounding drums along with the chant, “Let them go! Let them go!” echoing through the corridor of tall brick Danish buildings.  They were not let go, and at last report, an estimated 700 had been arrested.

We unfortunately had to leave before the conclusion of the standoff because Orin had lost his official UN press credentials somewhere in the crush of people.  Without them he would be unable to participate in the protests and other events planned inside the Bella Centre in the coming week.  So we needed to get them replaced before the registration desk closed for the night.  We found a running metro that delivered us to the Bella Centre.  We managed to avoid the incredibly long line of unaccredited people shivering in the frigid Danish air through some evasive action that took us inside to the press accreditation line and resulted in Orin procuring a new badge in record time.

In the security line for the metal detectors, we bumped into another colleague who recounted to us her experience with nearly getting nabbed in the roundup.  She told us she sensed something was up and literally ran ahead, just missing the advance of the police vans.  She continued with the march, she told us, to the very end at the Bella Centre, but was prevented from entering the UN premises, even with her accreditation badge, because she was with the march.  “So I climbed the fence,” she told us.  “I was just too cold to wait any longer.”

So much for their security…

The metro ride back toward the hotel was hellish.  The metro arrived at the Bella Center stop already crowded.  We and about four others managed to smash ourselves on, thinking not one more person could possibly fit.  We were proved wrong about 2 stops down where another half dozen people forced their way into our end of the car.  By the time we got to the Christianshavn stop, we couldn’t stand it anymore and retreated to the street to find a bus.  This stop was only a few blocks from where we had stood when the black bloc had been surrounded, and the police lights were still blazing.  Realizing quickly that this meant no buses were to come, we waved down a cab and zoomed back to the hotel to sit down, finally, warm up and to complete our computer work for the day.

This is not the last, but the first big action this week.  Tomorrow there is an action planned which intends to shut down the Copenhagen port, to call attention to the massive greenhouse gas emissions caused by the shipping industry.  Nearly every day next week some action is planned and will reach a crescendo with the “Reclaim Power” action on Wednesday—the day that the high level ministers arrive—which is intended to occur both on the inside of the Bella Centre, as well as on the outside, with both sides to meet for a “Peoples’ Assembly” to discuss real and just solutions to the climate crisis.

The big challenge of that day is the fact that the UN Climate Secretariat has announced that they are severely restricting the access of NGOs to the Bella Centre—only allowing access to a privileged handful of “observers.”

Some of us believe that this signals the end of the UN Climate process.  It has truly become the World Carbon Trade Organization and is behaving as such through meetings behind closed doors and absolute restriction of participation to only those chosen few, and their complicit, bleating, sheep-like media.

Now it is time for the people of the world who want to stop the oncoming train of climate catastrophe to stand up and “Reclaim Power.”  We will be reporting from the Reclaim Power protests in Copenhagen this coming Wednesday.

Wish us luck.

Reporting from the streets of Copenhagen,

Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project

* 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.

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

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

“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.

CLIMATE CHANGE THE BIGGEST LOSER OF G20 SUMMIT. That was what one headline read in the Guardian newspaper after this spring’s G20 summit in London. As part of the G20’s plan to revive the global economy, member nations have pledged over 1 trillion dollars. The question of course is where does this money go to? There’s not much info out there, but we know that car manufacturers, not exactly a low carbon industry, are getting a piece of the pie. In addition a good chunk of the money is earmarked for the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and assorted regional development banks, none of which have a very clean record when it comes to energy policies. From 1994 to 2003 the World Bank spent over $24.8 billion on fossil fuel projects. Meanwhile the IMF is well known for lending money to countries on the condition that they pay off the loans by upping resource extraction, including fossil fuels, and industrial scale logging. While the final communiqué from the London summit made vague references to sustainable development and green economies, there were no concrete commitments that the money was going to anything other than business as usual.

If you liked sub-prime, then you’ll love carbon trading

When it really comes down to it though, the numbers and figures don’t matter as much as the big picture. The G20 stands for free market capitalism and it is clear that any policies they develop will be designed by the “free hand” of the market. When it comes to climate policy this translates to carbon trading.

At the heart of carbon trading is the idea that “the market” is the best and most efficient means by which to solve the climate crisis. To do this, carbon is turned into a commodity to be bought and sold on the international market. Companies are allotted a certain amount of carbon credits which translates into the amount of carbon they can emit into the atmosphere. If they emit more carbon than they are allotted, no problem. Just buy some credits off another company that didn’t use all theirs, or better yet, “offset” the emissions by funding a Clean Development Country in some poor southern country.

Under the carbon trading regime companies like Duke Energy could get away with building a carbon intensive plant such as Cliffside by paying for thousands of homes in South Africa to install compact fluorescent light bulbs. Or to use a real world example, a European company was allowed to offset its emissions by funding a wind project in Colombia. The only problem was that an entire indigenous community was evicted from their land, resulting in up to 200 being killed. And to add insult to injury, the electricity from the windmills primarily powers one of the largest coal mines in the world! Somehow the math just doesn’t add up.

Carbon trading regimes have so many loopholes for companies to get around actually reducing their emissions that they have yet to do anything to slow warming. Both the Kyoto Protocol and the EU Emissions Trading Systems have both resulted in an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, while at the same time bringing in record profits for some of the worst climate criminals. Not only does carbon trading create additional social and environmental problems, it simply doesn’t work.

The deregulated, market-obsessed economics that have dominated the political agenda of recent decades are widely seen to have failed, yet governments around the world are still making futile attempts to apply the same failed market logic to the problem of climate change.

Maintaining control

Earlier this summer up to 100 indigenous people in Peru were massacred for resisting a free trade agreement with the US. As part of the Peru-US free trade agreement, Peru agreed to repeal several laws including parts of the constitution that had protected indigenous people’s traditional lands in the Amazon from resource exploitation, in particular oil and gas.  Basically the US promised favorable trade conditions with Peru in exchange for, among other things, unfettered access to the country’s oil and gas reserves.

In response to this assault on indigenous sovereignty and the Amazon rainforest, indigenous people and supporters staged nationwide strikes, shutting down much of Peru’s critical infrastructure including roads, railways, and oil installations. The Peruvian government, not one to shy away from violence, sent in troops to break up the blockades often times opening fire on the unarmed crowds. Governments will stop at nothing to ensure the smooth flow of capital.

While the US-Peru free trade agreement is not an official policy of the G20, it is a fine example of the types of conflicts that will continue to emerge if the G20 are successful in pushing their free market agenda. A key function of entities such as the G20 is to open new markets to corporate exploitation by breaking down trade barriers and forcing countries to sell off their natural resources in exchange for financial aid. The $1.06 billion that was pledged at the London G-20 summit will not come without its conditions on primarily poor countries to open their doors to corporate exploitation, or as they call it, foreign investment.

Of particular interest for those of us wanting to avert a global climate meltdown is the fact that as fossil fuels become increasingly scarce “economic harmonization” and free trade agreements will become ever more important for rich countries to ensure an uninterrupted, cheap supply of carbon intensive fuels. The G20 is one such mechanism by which corporations and governments ensure the smooth flow of global capital and maintain their control over resources and peoples.

Our climate is not your business

As has been pointed out by others, it is absurd to say that we are fighting climate change. To say we are fighting climate change is to say we are fighting the Earth’s natural processes. Climate change is the natural and long predicted outcome of a society burning fossil fuels and destroying natural ecosystems in order to maintain an economy that’s central tenet is never ending expansion and growth. We are not fighting climate change, we are fighting this economic system that puts profits and production above all else.

On April 1^st in London when the G20 last met, tens of thousands of people flooded the financial district to resist the policies of the G20. A Climate Camp was set up in the epicenter of global capital under banners reading, “Nature doesn’t do bail outs” and “Our climate is not your business.” Several banks responsible for waves of evictions and disappearing pensions in Britain were ransacked and one of the world’s largest financial centers was effectively shut down by a coalition of groups fighting for economic and environmental justice.

As we round the corner to the Pittsburg summit a promising coalition of anti-capitalist, indigenous, anti-war, climate justice, economic justice, and anti-authoritarian groups are coming together to let the G20 know that our world is not for sale. In addition to marches and direct actions that are in the works, groups including the Mobilization for Climate Justice are organizing the 3 Rivers Climate Convergence Sept. 20^th -25th in Pittsburgh to coincide with the G20 meetings. The climate camp will be a place to come together, learn, share skills, and plan actions.

“The Earth is not dying, it is being killed and the people killing it have names and addresses.” –Utah Phillips

On September 24 and 25^th 20 such people (and more than a few of their lackey’s) will be residing at: David L. Lawrence Convention Center, 1000 Fort Duquesne Boulevard, Pittsburgh, PA 15222. No need to phone ahead, they know we’re coming.

For more info check out:

www.actforclimatejustice.com

www.risingtidenorthamerica.org

www.resistg20.org

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

Organized by the Mobilization for Climate Justice – West

Phone/email: 415 373 3825, mcjbay@gmail.com

Website: http://actforclimatejustice.org/west

Join us to protest:

• Chevron’s polluting oil refinery in Richmond • Chevron and oil industry expansions – killing people and the planet for profit • Chevron and Big Oil standing in the way of solutions to climate change

We invite you to join our alliance for this mobilization that will continue until Copenhagen, including international days of action on October 24 (called by 350.org) and November 30 (called by Mobilization for Climate Justice). We aim to localize the global fight for climate justice and support communities and local organizations that are fighting for climate justice where we live.

We believe that we, in the Bay Area and California, have the potential to create well organized, creative, and powerful mobilizations and actions that can help catalyze a mass climate justice movement to confront the root causes of climate change, and build the local leadership necessary for shaping local, state, national and global solutions. To realize this potential, we need your group’s participation.

FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION:

For the Saturday, August 15 mobilization at Chevron:

1) Action Agreement:

All participants are asked to agree to the following guidelines:

• Our actions will be nonviolent – respecting the safety and long-term resilience of local activists, their families and communities.

• Our action strategies and tactics will respect, and be shaped in dialogue with, local activists and organizations campaigning against Chevron.

• Our action strategy will embody tactics that make space for a diversity of participation, enhance opportunities to organize against the Chevron refinery in the years to come, and empower local community activists to embrace their leadership of the climate justice movement.

2) Climate Justice:

Our basis of unity for this action shall be a universal commitment to Climate Justice, including:

• Rejecting carbon-trading mechanisms, particularly those that allow corporations and wealthy countries to continue polluting by funding “clean development” projects in poor countries.

• Achieving low-carbon, community-based economies, without resorting to global markets-based schemes and false, corporate technologies such as nuclear power, biofuels and “clean coal”.

• Protecting the rights of those affected by the transition to a just energy economy, especially frontline communities and workers.

• Amplifying the voices of frontline community organizations fighting for environmental health and Climate Justice, against polluters such as Chevron.

Bali Principles of Climate Justice: http://cbecal.org/pdf/bali-principles.pdf

GOALS:

Our goals for this action include:

• Localize Climate Justice struggles, and situate the local struggle for Climate Justice within community-based organizing and priorities.

• Build awareness among local activists (especially youth) about the Climate Justice movement, as well as about both real and corporate solutions to the climate crisis.

• Build the capacity of local activists to participate in the Climate Justice movement, and in other struggles for social and environmental justice.

• Contribute to a broader definition of the Climate Justice movement, and contribute to the inclusion of the goals and aspirations of community-based organizations and workers in that movement.

• Re-energize and redefine mass-based, nonviolent direct action, and demonstrate its potency as a force for social change.

• Build towards later popular mobilizations for Climate Justice – including international days of action on October 24 (called by

350.org) and November 30 (called by Mobilization for Climate Justice) – and build a movement that will continue to fight for Climate Justice after those mobilizations have ended.

DEMANDS

OIL REDUCTION, NOT REFINERY EXPANSION! CAP THE CRUDE!

Instead of reducing oil production and shifting to sustainable industries, Chevron and other Big Oil corporations are expanding their refineries, pipelines and extraction projects to process dirtier, heavier crude oil from places like the Alberta Tar Sands. This massive expansion is destroying communities and ecosystems across North America, and if allowed to continue would derail any efforts to adequately reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Communities for a Better Environment recently released a study that found that, “a switch to heavy oil…. could double or triple greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. oil refineries”.

Richmond and Bay Area environmental and climate justice groups are leading a precedent-setting fight against this expansion. A fierce, local grassroots campaign has been fighting Chevron’s pushing, lying and bribing strategies to expand their Richmond refinery. After Chevron pushed their expansion plans through the (formerly

pro-Chevron) Richmond City council, environmental justice groups sued the city to stop the expansion and are demanding a “Crude Cap” that would monitor and prevent the refining of heavier, dirtier crude. Like the No Coal campaign, it’s time for the climate justice movement to step up and take on big oil and their deadly expansion plans .

It’s also time for the Chevron, and our society more generally, to move beyond fossil fuels – and to move beyond corporate-driven solutions to corporate-caused problems (such as nuclear power, biofuels, waste incineration and “clean coal”). We demand a rapid transition towards an economy based on environmental sustainability and social and environmental justice.

http://cbecal.org/campaigns/Chevron.html

CORPORATIONS OUT OF COPENHAGEN – OUR CLIMATE IS NOT YOUR BUSINESS!

We demand that Chevron and other corporate polluters stay out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – that corporate lobbyists be barred from participation, and thus prevented from further interfering in the development of climate stabilization strategies. To date, the UNFCCC meetings have had corporate lobbyists vastly outnumber representatives of governments and civil society groups – sometime as high as 4:1. Meanwhile, Indigenous Nations, frontline communities and the most impacted people from around the world are not allowed meaningful representation at the table. We demand that such corrupt international processes be stopped, and that sovereign Indigenous Nations and frontline communities be allowed leadership roles in developing a global climate strategy in the interest of people and planet. ant

Mobilization for Climate Justice West is a collaboration of:

Art in Action

Asian-Pacific Environmental Network

Bay Localize

Communities for a Better Environment

Direct Action to Stop the War

Earth First!

Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative

Forest Ethics

Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives

Global Exchange

Global Justice and Ecology Project

Greenpeace

Headrush

International Forum on Globalization

Justice in Nigeria Now!

Movement Generation

Rainforest Action Network

Richmond Progressive Alliance

Ruckus Society

Rising Tide North America

West County Toxics Coalition

350.org