tagged w/ Climate Justice
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There is another earthquake shaking up Washington Dc this week: the beginning of what will hopefully be the shaking up of the status quo that has kept us from achieving the truly sustainable future we can give to ourselves and our children. Those continuing to sit in to stand up for humanity and all species in the wake of the effects of climate change and the absolute apathy and greed of corporations deserve our support.
And this is without regard to race, creed, or politics. This pipeline will affect ALL of us regardless of labels. Its dirty, toxic ingredients will threaten the water of the Ogalalla aquifer that irrigates our heartland. The burning of its ingredients will set off a carbon timebomb that will make the words "tipping point" all too real.
IT'S TIME TO BREAK THE ADDICTION.
The call to say NO to this pipeline is also a call to say YES to clean renewable energy. Clean energy jobs. Clean water. Respect for the rights of others.
This is the moral challenge of our time!
We cannot betray future generations for a quick buck. The price is simply too high.
So please, let's keep this going on Current. Let's keep giving these brave people our support and with each NO or other sign of encouragement we also tell President Obama that we the people are the voice and his NO is a vindication of his caring about that voice.
Keystone XL-NO!There is another earthquake shaking up Washington Dc this week: the beginning of what... more
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The story of the Battle of Blair Mountain starts in the southern coal camps of West Virginia, a time when King Coal reigned supreme, openly and without apology.
Mining companies owned workers' homes; they owned the schools, the air and water; they owned the police and even private armies. They owned miners' lives.
Which is why murder seemed permissible. When a notorious strikebreaker shot down labor hero Sheriff Sid Hatfield, who refused to be bought by the coal companies, more than 10,000 enraged miners and pro-union forces rose up in Mingo and Logan Counties and converged on Blair Mountain. A private army of management mercenaries shot guns and dropped leftover bombs from WWI—it was the nation's largest armed conflict since the Civil War and the largest labor confrontation ever.
Don't know about the Battle of Blair Mountain? There's a reason for that. West Virginia—a state still dominated by the coal industry and its political interests— has resisted highlighting the battle in history books and has denied commemoration attempts. When the federal National Register of Historic places chose the historic site for protection, the state—working with coal company lawyers—contested the decision. The site was de-listed last year, when West Virginia state officials submitted a "revised" list of 57 landowners supposedly objecting to the historic preservation decision. The list even included 2 dead people.
This Battle of Blair Mountain continues today. Coal companies stand literally to erase this history by obliterating the mountain.
Massey Energy and Arch Coal hold several permits in various stages to mine this land in the very worse form of strip mining on this planet: Mountaintop removal mining (MTR). One active mountaintop removal site is already blasting away the mountain and is moving within a few hundred yards of the historic battle site. Massey Energy, of course, is the company responsible for killing 29 of its workers last April in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion. Since then, it has come under extreme fire for its tens of thousands of violations of safety law and its corporate culture of profits before people. Not to mention, by Massey's own records, they've had 67,000 violations of just one of the environmental statute. It's influence among West Virginia politicians, of course, is far-reaching.
All across Appalachia today, mountaintop removal mining is destroying mountain communities by ripping apart its landscape, environment, health, heritage and economic prospects. Mining companies come in, break the law, reap profits, and leave a wasteland. In MTR regions in W. Va, companies are exploding dynamite the power of a Hiroshima-sized bomb—every single week. This form of mining isn't good for jobs either. Ripping up the mountain rather than carefully extracting coal is "efficient" -- i.e. it replaces people with machines to enhance company profits. As is noted in the wonderful documentary The Last Mountain, which is being released this week, while Appalachian coal company profits and production have skyrocketed in recent decades, at the same time some 40,000 mining jobs have been lost.
This is a new "Battle of Blair Mountain" taking place today --- and raising national awareness about this amazing story could help pressure an agency that hardly ever received much attention to reconsider its decision. This victory would be a huge symbolic win for the Appalachian communities, and for the organized labor movement around the country, which is again under siege today.
contThe story of the Battle of Blair Mountain starts in the southern coal camps of West... more
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"The American people should see that corporations have abandoned them long ago," says scientist, environmentalist, and food justice activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, named one of the seven most influential women in the world by Forbes magazine. "The people will have to rebuild democracy as a living democracy."
Dr. Shiva has been fighting corporate takeover in every area in her native India, combating a nuclear plant one week and patented, genetically modified seeds another. She joins Laura in studio to advise American activists how they can fight the merging of corporations and government here at home and around the world."The American people should see that corporations have abandoned them long... more
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"Today, the event culminates in real action -- thousands of those activists are now taking to the streets to confront Congress and the White House on climate inaction. They're also stopping at the US Chamber of Commerce -- the nation's biggest anti-climate lobbying force -- and BP headquarters to call out the oil giant for filing a multibillion dollar tax refund on its spill cleanup expenses. Check out some amazing pics from the front lines of the march:
Amazing photos of the event are streaming in from activists using Twitpic, and these are just a few. Follow the #powershift on Twitter for more.""Today, the event culminates in real action -- thousands of those activists are... more
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Cancún, Mexico -- As representatives of Indigenous peoples and communities already suffering the immediate impacts of climate change, we express our outrage and disgust at the agreements that have emerged from the COP16 talks. As was exposed in the Wikileaks climate scandal, the Cancun Agreements are not the result of an informed and open consensus process, but the consequence of an ongoing US diplomatic offensive of backroom deals, arm-twisting and bribery that targeted nations in opposition to the Copenhagen Accord during the months leading up to the COP-16 talks.
We are not fooled by this diplomatic shell game. The Cancun Agreements have no substance. They are yet more hot air. Their only substance is to promote continued talks about climate mitigation strategies motivated by profit. Such strategies have already proved fruitless and have been shown to violate human and Indigenous rights. The agreements implictly promote carbon markets, offsets, unproven technologies, and land grabs—anything but a commitment to real emissions reductions.
The Voices of the People Must be Respected
Indigenous Peoples from North to South cannot afford these unjust and false ‘solutions’, because climate change is killing our peoples, cultures and ecosystems. We need real commitments to reduce emissions at the source and to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Because we are on the front lines of the impacts of climate change, we came to COP-16 with an urgent call to address the root causes of the climate crisis, to demand respect for the Rights of Mother Earth, and to fundamentally redefine industrial society’s relationship with the planet. Instead, the Climate COP has shut the doors on our participation and that of other impacted communities, while welcoming business, industry, and speculators with open arms. The U.S., Industrialized nations, big business and unethical companies like Goldman Sachs will profit handsomely from these agreements while our people die.
Women and youth in our communities are disproportionately burdened by climate impacts and rights violations. Real solutions would strengthen our collective rights and land rights while ensuring the protection of women, youth and vulnerable communities. While the Cancun Agreements do contain some language "noting" rights, it is exclusively in the context of market mechanisms, while failing to guarantee safeguards for the rights of peoples and communities.
The failures of the UN talks in Copenhagen have been compounded in Cancun. From the opening day to the closing moments of the talks, our voices were censored, dissenting opinions silenced and dozens ejected from the conference grounds. The thousands who rallied outside to reject market mechanisms and demand recognition of human and Indigenous rights were ignored.
The Market Will Not Protect Our Rights
Market-based approaches have failed to stop climate change. They are designed to commodify and profit from the last remaining elements of our Mother Earth and the air. Through its focus on market approaches like carbon trading, the UNFCCC has become the WTO of the Sky.
We are deeply concerned that the Cancun Agreements betray both our future and the rights of peoples, women, youth, and vulnerable populations. While the preamble to the Cancun Agreements note a call for "studies on human rights and climate change," this is in effect an empty reference, with no content and no standards, that will not protect the collective rights of peoples. The market mechanisms that implicitly dominate both the spirit and the letter of the Cancun Agreements will neither avert climate change nor guarantee human rights, much less the Rights of Mother Earth. Approaches based on carbon offsetting, like REDD, will permit polluters to continue poisoning land, water, air, and our bodies, while doing nothing to stop the climate crisis. Indeed, approaches based on the commodification of biodiversity, CO2, forests, water, and other sacred elements will only encourage the buying and selling of our human and environmental rights.
The Cochabamba People's Agreement Points the Way Forward
There is another way forward: the Cochabamba People's Agreement represents the vision of everyday people from all corners of the globe who are creating the solutions to climate change from the ground up, and calling for a global framework that respects human rights and the Rights of Mother Earth.
If any hope emerges from Cancun, it comes from the dramatic demonstrations we saw in the streets and from the deep and powerful alliances that were built among indigenous and social movements. The Indigenous Environmental Network joined thousands of our brothers and sisters to demand real climate solutions based in the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the rights of Mother Earth, and a just transition away from fossil fuels. We will continue to stand with our allies to demand climate justice.Cancún, Mexico -- As representatives of Indigenous peoples and communities... more
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Dr Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecologist, feminist and author who has been awarded the Sydney Peace Prize after defending the developing world against the free-market system for more than three decades.
Transcript
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Now to tonight's guest. Dr Vandana Shiva is an environmental activist who's in Australia to accept this year's Sydney Peace Prize.
For three decades she's argued that the world's poor and the planet's ecosystems have suffered at the hands of the free market system.
She'll deliver a lecture tomorrow night at the Sydney Opera House titled "Making Peace with the Earth" and a short time ago she joined me in our Sydney studio.
Dr Shiva, thank you for joining us.
DR SHIVA VANDANA, ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST: My pleasure.
LEIGH SALES: You've been described as an eco feminist. What does that mean?
SHIVA VANDANA: Well, that means putting together the feminist movement and the ecology movement. In any case the oppressions of both women and nature come from the same roots - a world view that sees nature as dead, women as passive, unproductive, unintelligent - and it's time to give recognition to the life and creation and productivity of both.
LEIGH SALES: So how do you marry those two things, then?
SHIVA VANDANA: You know, I woke up to the deep connection when I got involved as a young, young volunteer in the Chipko movement - this movement of women coming out to hug trees - and whether it's Bhopal, or Chipko, or the water movements, anywhere you look - or the toxic (inaudible) - women act.
Then I realised, "You know, they've been left to look after the care economy and they've been left to look after life".
It's not in our genes but it's definitely in the social division of labour and that's what woke me up to the fact that if we have to care about nature and we have to learn how to live differently - a different relationship - we have to give up the paradigms that have come from what I have called capitalist patriarchy and start building alternatives on the basis of this convergence of feminism and ecology for all - men included.
LEIGH SALES: I'll come to some questions about capitalism in a moment but I wanted to ask, first of all you've got a lecture in Australia, in Sydney - a sell out lecture - tomorrow called Making Peace with the Earth. What will you be saying in that lecture?
SHIVA VANDANA: The first thing I'll be saying is that we have unleashed a serious war against the Earth, against her diverse species, - which is what is biodiversity extinction - against regulatory systems for maintaining a stable climate, a predictable climate. We've got climate chaos, climate change.
No matter what the climate sceptics say they can't deny extreme weather conditions, floods in Pakistan that we've never had on the scale we've had this year.
And this war has to end if humanity has to survive. It's become an imperative.
I will definitely talk about my work, which I focused increasingly on biodiversity, sustainable agriculture. Because in 1984 we had the Bhopal disaster in India, we had terrorism in Punjab. It was all linked to a violent way of producing food - totally unnecessary, because there are nonviolent ways. That's what we practice in Navdanya. And I will talk about the way forward.
LEIGH SALES: You've drawn attention to the problem of suicide among Indian farmers and linked it to genetically modified seeds. What is the connection there in your view?
SHIVA VANDANA: Well the connection is basically through debt.
Seeds used to be farmers' common property and then you get the Monsantos coming in with genetically engineered seed - in the case of India genetically engineered cotton. They claim it's their intellectual property, they collect huge royal - two thirds of the price of the seed is royalty.
Seed that used to cost 5 rupees jumps to 3,600 rupees a kilo, and the promise that this will control pests doesn't work. New pests are being created. Every season we have new pest - 13 times more increase in pesticide use. The combination is huge debt, unpayable debt.
And when the farmer who thought he'd get more production, he would get more comfortable situation in life finds that his land is now slipping out of his hands that's the day the farmer usually drinks pesticide to end his life.
And it's always the men because they're the ones who go to the market place. That's where the agents of the company say "Here's a miracle seed. It's going to make you a millionaire".
So it's a combination of false advertising, renewable seed becoming non-renewable, low cost seed becoming costly and the promise of pest control not working.
LEIGH SALES: The Indian prime minister says that genetic engineering and fertilisers and pesticides have rescued India from regular famines and reliance on food imports. The Scientific American magazine argues that modern cultural technology has allowed food production around the world to increase very substantially in recent decades. What do you say to that?
SHIVA VANDANA: Well unfortunately that's exactly the issue I looked at in 1984 when we had this eruption of violence. And the green revolution - which is chemical farming, industrial farming - was given a Nobel Peace Prize.
And I said "If this was given a Nobel Peace Prize then", I said, "why is there violence and war in Punjab?"
What I found out through a very, very in-depth study of the Green revolution in Punjab was yes, commodities increased, rice and wheat production increased but because we put more land under rice and wheat and we put more irrigation to rice and wheat.
You could have done that kind of acreage increase with organic farming. You'd still have got a lot of rice and wheat.
But other crops went down. Pulses went down and for us in a vegetarian country, pulses which are the only source of protein are very, very important.
Oil seeds went down. Oil seeds are important. It's the only way you can absorb nutrients in your diet - and today India's having to import oil seeds and pulses.
So food is not just rice and wheat and increase in commodity is not increase in food production. The manipulation is through the fact that you look at monocultures - you find more monocultures; you never calculate how much less you're growing of diversity. And - even more importantly - you never calculate how much more resources, water, energy, financial inputs you're using.
Energy terms, 10 units of input in industrial agriculture are giving you 1 output. That is a negative economy.
Water, 10 times more water in industrial agriculture than you would use in ecological agriculture and as our work, Navdanya - the movement I started in India to save seeds and promote organic farming - has shown, you can grow more nutrition per acre through intensifying biodiversity and intensifying ecological processes rather than intensifying chemical input and fossil fuels.
cont.Dr Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecologist, feminist and author who has been awarded... more
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Ten years ago, I ended up on the mud flats of the Nile delta with a water engineer. He explained how everything we could see around us would be under water if sea levels rose as they are predicted to do – the nearby city of Alexandria is one of the most vulnerable to climate change in the world. It was just before a major conference on climate change, and the aim had been to find stories – and images – of global warming that got beyond the cliche of a melting ice cap. But as a journalist it was hard to bring this future to life; this sleepy bit of coastline hardly evoked the sense of urgency required to mobilise the international attention needed.
This is the central paradox of climate change politics, argued the sociologist, Anthony Giddens, that electorates can't grasp the significance of climate change because it is too abstract, and not dramatic enough (they need catastrophe footage), and won't – until it's too late. By the time we are experiencing massive floods, freak weather, sea-level rises and higher temperatures, we will be well past the point of doing anything about it. He christened it Giddens paradox.
Ten years on, the impact of climate change is frighteningly more concrete. In the remote town of Anakila in Mali, west Africa, I find what we were looking for in the Nile delta 10 years ago. Campaigners know the power of images to drive the message home, and that's why the aid agency Tearfund took me on a 1,000km journey from the capital, Bamako.
Three hours after we left the paved road, we arrived at low mud houses clustered under large mango trees. This is part of the Sahel, and the nine months of the dry season have always left a narrow ecological perch for the community and its subsistence agriculture. They are poor, yet the town is vibrant; the Dogon people are much admired in Mali for their resourcefulness and hard work. Circling the town are the small vegetable gardens on which they depend.
For years now, the elders explain, they have been worried by climate change. Disrupted rain patterns, shifts in winds have no parallel in collective memory; they notice how it is prompting changes in the behaviour of animals and birds. But all of these anxieties are dwarfed by the sand dune now looming above their town – the result of those drier, fierce winds and erratic, intense rainfall.
The dune stands several hundred feet high, spilling into the river and stemming its flow, slowly burying trees whose trunks are now deep in soft white sand. Plenty of fields have been swallowed by the sand already. The villagers' defences against further encroachment are hedges of euphorbia – they surround the rows of sorghum that stand pitifully in ground which is more sand than soil.
The dune glows golden in the sun, a dramatic and unfamiliar eruption in the landscape. This area was once forest, but gradual deforestation has thinned the tree cover and exposed the sandy soils. The dune is moving inexorably towards the outskirts of Anakila. It's a sinister sign of the vulnerability of the Sahel, the grasslands that border the Sahara in a swath across Africa, and where millions have farmed and herded cattle for centuries. The ecological niche in which they have built their lives has always been full of uncertainties – and often hardship – but now the niche on which they have built cultures of great sophistication and resilience is shrinking beneath them as desert threatens.
This is another paradox of climate-change politics: it is in remote places like this that climate change will hit first and hardest. It is cultures built on deep understanding of their environment – whether the Sami of the Arctic or the Dogon of the Sahara – whose way of life is the first to be threatened. Anakila's residents are the canaries down the mine, their experience a foretaste of an Earth hostile to human inhabitation. But their experience of threat, potential devastation and loss of livelihood is discounted and ignored. No dunes are threatening Manchester.
But Anakila's plight will come back to haunt us in two ways. The entire debate around Africa and aid will shift in coming years from one dominated by charity and post-imperial responsibility to one framed primarily around environmental justice. The continent is one of the most vulnerable, with many of its delicate ecosystems threatened, as Camilla Toulmin's charts in her book, Climate Change in Africa. It is also the least well equipped to respond – and the least responsible for the coming calamities.
Media attention on the climate change talks in Cancún at the end of this month will focus on the negotiations over emission cuts, but equally important is the financing of climate adaptation – at Copenhagen $100bn a year by 2020 was pledged. Detailed proposals are due to be published this week on new forms of climate financing to start bringing this into effect. But the danger is that funding for climate adaptation will be poached from aid budgets. Already the development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, has made it clear that the pledge for foreign aid of 0.7% of GDP inherited from Labour will be used to finance climate adaptation. Ensuring this money reaches communities as marginalised and as poor as Anakila is a huge challenge.
snip
As we left Anakila, we were given gifts – fresh milk and two hens. When might this generosity become a demand for environmental justice? When might such visits prompt anger and recriminations instead of smiles and greetings? Mali is a country of crushing poverty, and the predicted outcomes of climate change could spell catastrophe for much of the country. Back in Bamako, a government spokesperson wanted compensation put on the agenda in Cancún. It's only a matter of time before the demand for compensation becomes the rallying cry for a new generation of activists – not just in Africa, but across the globe.Ten years ago, I ended up on the mud flats of the Nile delta with a water engineer. He... more
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Readers of a certain age, and a certain literary bent, will recognize the words of Alexander Portnoy’s psychiatrist, spoken at the close of Philip Roth’s transgressive 1969 novel, Portnoy’s Complaint.
After lo these many years, they popped into my head today as I read that Senate Democrats had finally thrown in the towel on an energy bill that would have included a partial cap-and-trade provision for limiting carbon emissions from power plants. The bill, written by Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, was touted by Washington insiders and some major environmental groups as this year’s last hope for federal climate legislation. Yet it would have relied on carbon offsets and other dodges to postpone the day of reckoning with true, visible carbon emissions pricing — the cornerstone of meaningful climate policy.
Instead, reported the New York Times, Senate Democrats will pursue a limited bill aimed at increasing oversight of oil drilling and tightening energy efficiency standards — with no direct assault on climate-destabilizing CO2. (For a later Times story amplifying the first, click here.)
Yes, now, we may begin — “we” being Americans who care about climate, sustainability, and Earth — to unite around a climate approach that is effective, equitable and transparent enough to win the support of our fellow citizens and a Congressional majority.
I’m referring of course to the idea advanced by climatologist Jim Hansen as fee-and-dividend and by the Carbon Tax Center as a revenue-neutral carbon tax, by which fossil fuel extractors and importers pay the U.S. Treasury fees pegged to the carbon content of the coal, oil and gas they take from the ground or bring into U.S. ports, and the Treasury distributes the revenues to all Americans via equal monthly dividends (“green checks”), or by tax-shifting from regressive taxes such as payroll taxes.
The Senate’s antipathy to even the partial cap-and-trade proposed by Sen. Kerry will doubtless be spun as indicating that for the foreseeable future the well for climate legislation has been poisoned. The Carbon Tax Center says that the opposite may be true: with cap-and-trade out of the way at last, the political well can begin to be de-toxified so that the effective, equitable and transparent carbon fee-and-dividend can be seriously considered.
For this to happen, however, the Big Green groups like EDF and NRDC that for years have dominated climate discourse among environmentalists, and that convinced Congressional Democrats and the White House that the only way to “put a price on carbon” in America was via carbon cap-and-trade, will have to abandon that approach and allow others, and themselves, to try a fresh start.
It will be said that cap-and-trade failed because Fox News and other climate deniers branded it as “cap-and-tax” and, therefore, a carbon tax (or fee) cannot possibly succeed. And it is true that carbon cap-and-trade was looked to, years ago, as a way to build on the success of acid rain cap-and-trade, win over Republican free-marketers, and put a price on carbon without having to parade the dreaded t-a-x word before the public.
In the event, though, carbon cap-and-trade did none of these things.
Instead, Big Green’s pursuit of carbon cap-and-trade tethered the climate movement to complex financial instruments and branded us as servants of Wall Street elites. It opened the legislative floodgates to off-the-charts Beltway deal-making that rightly repulsed the public. Perhaps most importantly, the co-optation of climate advocacy by the cap-and-traders robbed us of the high moral ground we might have shared with abolitionists, suffragists, labor agitators and civil rights workers — true American heroes who fought to liberate our society of oppression and injustice.
If you’re in the climate movement, you recognize that fossil fuels’ assault on Earth’s climate is an ultimate form of oppression and injustice: of rich against poor, of the profligate against the frugal, of the present against the future. Ending this assault will require concerted action on many fronts; and it starts by internalizing the climate-damage costs of coal, oil and gas into their prices, so that the free ride for fossil fuels is ended and all of the alternatives, from energy efficiency, renewable energy and low-carbon fuels to conservation-based behavior and mindfulness toward energy consumption, may compete fairly and effectively.
continuedReaders of a certain age, and a certain literary bent, will recognize the words of... more
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In a recent article published in the Huffington Post, the Auerbach and Parenteau write:
"Our policy making elites have discovered that the underclass doesn't matter politically anymore, so why respond to it? That indifference is extending to the middle class. Ordinary, struggling folks are all becoming so demoralized that they present:
[1] No voting threat, because none of the major political parties in Europe or the US genuinely represent their interests (and haven't for years). There have been, as a result, no political price to pay for such shameless predatory capitalism.
[2]They present no power threat, because they have been systematically destroyed over the last 30 years and what is happening now in Europe represents the final assault on the residue of the 20th century welfare state (the US social safety net eviscerated well before this).
The message from the G20 seems to be this: We're through with domestic spending to employ the underclass.
There are decent jobs for about 20% of the working-age population in the west. And for the rest? Poverty a la South America. It is extraordinary that voters around the globe continue to tolerate this corrupt state of affairs, but it's getting increasingly hard to see a way out."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-auerback/he-g20-votes-for-global-d_b_603454.html
The organizers of the US Social Forum in Detroit believe organizing the "lower classes," becoming educated, and reasserting ourselves is the way out. Held in Detroit next week June 22-26, tens of thousands of participants will learn about economic alternatives, climate justice, strategies for building power, organizing labor,media justice, and more.
If you can't be there in person, there are many other ways you can participate, such as reading the USSF Writers Network blogs and watching Free Speech TV's live, streaming coverage.
For more information, visit http://www.ussf2010.org or http://www.freespeech.org.In a recent article published in the Huffington Post, the Auerbach and Parenteau... more
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The World People’s Conference of Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth came to an end yesterday, as delegates in Cochabamba, Bolivia gathered for the closing ceremonies to mark Earth Day.
The grassroots summit was called by Bolivian President Evo Morales–the only indigenous head of state in the world–to provide activists, experts, and government representatives with an alternative forum to the failed UN climate talks last December. According to official estimates, over 100 countries around the world were represented, including more than 40 official government delegations and thousands of activists and representatives of various social movements.
The conference consisted of 17 working groups which discussed concrete proposals: a declaration of rights for the protection of the environment, a climate justice tribunal to hold violators legally accountable, climate debt schemes to compensate under-emitting countries for damage caused to their ecosystems by global warming, and a global referendum on climate change.
Though the process was at times chaotic, progress was made on several proposals. A declaration of rights was formulated and modified by over one thousand delegates, who aim to complement the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by expanding rights-based protections to the environment. To be considered by the UN however, the document would need to be raised by a member state–a seemingly distant prospect at this point.
A working group on forests presented a final declaration rejecting the UN-sponsored Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program–one of the more controversial issues at Copenhagen last winter. Introduced at the 2007 UN climate summit in Bali, REDD is being promoted as a global initiative to provide financial incentives for developing countries who reduce emissions through tropical forest preservation. Critics say the controversial program will in fact privatize and commodify tropical rainforests, rather than protect them.
“REDD is a predatory program that pretends to save forests and the climate, while backhandedly selling out forests out from under our Indigenous Peoples…displacing those of us least responsible for the crisis, who have been stewards of the forests since time immemorial,” said Tom Goldtooth, Director of the US-based Indigenous Environmental Network.
The declarations forged by the working groups in Cochabamba will be proposed by President Morales at the next UN climate summit in Cancún in December 2010 to counter the widely criticized Copenhagen Accord.
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Driven by feelings of exclusion and marginalization, activists came to Cochabamba for a more open and democratic discussion about climate solutions. Perhaps the most important result of the summit is its success in creating such a forum, where disparate groups could gather without having to confront backdoor meetings, leaked documents, and police intimidation. As delegates now move forward, they seek no less than to redefine global climate justice and, in the process, redefine democratic practice.The World People’s Conference of Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth... more
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Note: This commentary has been endorsed by renowned climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, who adds the following comment:
“Governments will not put young people and nature above special financial interests without great public pressure. Such pressure is not possible as long as big environmental organizations provide cover. So the best hope is this — individuals must demand that the leaders change course or they will lose support.”
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“Our friends have become the planet’s worst enemies"- Dr. James Hanson
With climate scientists warning that we are in a global emergency and tipping points leading to runaway catastrophe will be crossed unless carbon pollution is rapidly reduced, one would expect groups identified as environmental defenders to be shifting into high gear. Instead, we are witnessing the unspeakably tragic spectacle of a mainstream environmental movement allowing itself to be seduced and co-opted by the very forces it should be vehemently opposing. At the very moment when moral leadership and courage are needed the most, what we see is a colossal failure of both – with potentially irreversible consequences for our civilization.
If Congress chooses an inadequate response to the crisis, policies can get “locked in” which virtually guarantee that these tipping points are crossed. These organizations are using their significant financial resources to create a public impression that the “environmental community” has given its “stamp of approval” to this policy and to marginalize the voices of the genuine grassroots activists who represent the heart and soul of the climate movement. With nothing less than the future of the planet at stake, these groups must now be publicly challenged and held accountable for their actions.
The stage has been set for this necessary debate by publication of Johann Hari’s excellent commentary entitled “The Wrong Kind of Green” ( link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100322/hari/single ). In this piece, Hari provides important insight into some of the relevant history. He describes how in the 1980s and 1990s some of the larger environmental groups began to adopt a policy often called “corporate engagement”. The basic idea was that by participating in “partnerships” with corporations – some involving receipt of monetary contributions – there would be opportunity to exert positive influence.
It is not possible to look into the minds of those who promoted this shift. Perhaps there was a sincere hope that corporations would be moved toward more responsible behavior. Whatever the case, the critically important task at this time is not to evaluate possible motives but rather the real life consequences. To do so honestly, all self-interested blinders must be set aside.
The truth is that this policy has created a “slippery slope” leading to severely compromised stances – nowhere more apparent than in regard to the over-arching issue of climate. In 2007, a coalition was formed between corporations and environmental organizations called the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, or USCAP – whose purpose was to influence U.S. climate legislation. Some of the large groups that joined were Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Nature Conservancy, and National Wildlife Foundation. In January 2009, USCAP presented its proposals and these became the framework of the Waxman-Markey bill.
The physical context is that previously projected worst case scenarios are already being surpassed and humanity is running out of time. Ice is melting far more rapidly than expected, releasing the “albedo effect” where open water absorbs more heat and accelerates further melting. The normally quite cautious National Science Foundation is ringing alarm bells about the methane – a greenhouse gas over 30 times as powerful as CO2 – now venting from the Siberian seabeds (NSF press release: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=116532&org=NSF&from=news ) . According to the NSF statement: “Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.” These are only two examples of “reinforcing feedbacks” that can significantly move the process closer to tipping points.
Within a context so dire that in reality a war-time level of mobilization is needed, what kind of legislation is being offered? First of all, the emission reduction targets themselves - apart from the theoretical strategies for achieving them – categorically ignore the science. The goals do not even aim at stabilization at 350 ppm (let alone the lower figures more likely to be necessary) and the time frame for enacting meaningful reductions is not even remotely close to the speed needed to prevent disaster.
Beyond the issue of targets is that of reduction strategies. USCAP would like to see a trillion dollar carbon market put into place, where traders can claim “pollution rights” to the sky and seek profits from the exchange of such “rights”. Such a system – which would determine whether life-supporting ecosystems survive or collapse – would be placed into the same manipulative hands on Wall Street that brought on the financial meltdown. As this commentary goes to press, several traders in the European carbon market (the world’s prototype) have been arrested in connection with a massive fraud estimated at $6.75 billion. ( http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62T44K20100330 ) While some of us lay in the street in nonviolent civil disobedience to block this immoral atrocity (including one of the authors, 5 minute video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHJOOiyZR_s ), NRDC and EDF are sending their own people to promote it at carbon trade conferences.
continuedNote: This commentary has been endorsed by renowned climate scientist Dr. James... more
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This is the weekly feature of the Sustainable Agriculture Group that seeks to reconnect us to the Earth that sustains us. As we draw closer to Christmas and are now in the season of Hannukkah, Kwanza, and other celebrations, we must remember especially the most precious gift we have : life. For many in our world life is a constant daily struggle and lack of food and water are the reasons as well as a lack of hope. We must all make a pledge that next year we will truly work to alleviate the suffering of those who hunger, thirst, and have no justice. I hope for environmental justice. I hope for climate justice. I hope for peace. I hope for all who need food and water to never be denied it again. I hope for a world in which all of our children have a sustainable planet that gives them all they need to preserve the one true precious gift we have: life.
Thank you for supporting the Sustainable Agriculture Group this year on Current. May we see theh day of true food justice and sovereignty for all!
Happy Holidays.This is the weekly feature of the Sustainable Agriculture Group that seeks to... more
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On December 15th, La Via Campesina and a number of other groups will be leading a day of action in Copenhagen to put agriculture front and centre in the discussions over climate change. Although the official Convention is sure to disappoint, these groups will be carrying a message of hope. What they want the world to know is that, in their on-going struggle for food sovereignty, there is a way out of the climate crisis.
GRAIN couldn't agree more. Today's global food system needs an overhaul. According to our calculations, the expansion of the industrial food system is the leading cause of climate change. Through its reliance on fossil fuels, massive exports, market concentration, erosion of soils and expansion of plantations, it generates 44-57% of the total global green house gas (GHG) emissions. This industrial food system is also completely incapable of assuring people's food and livelihood needs as the world moves further into climate change. Already it has left a billion people without enough food to eat, and hundreds of millions of more people will go hungry in the coming years if the food system is not reorganised.
The most devastating consequence of this industrial food system, however, is that it is destroying other food systems that can turn climate change around and provide for the world's food needs.
Forget about carbon markets, geo-engineering and all the other false solutions. Here is a real way out of the climate crisis.*
- By using agroecological practices to rebuild the organic matter in soils lost from industrial agriculture, total GHG emissions can be reduced by 20-35%
- By decentralising livestock farming and integrating it with crop production, total GHG emissions can be reduced by 5-9%
- By distributing food mainly through local markets instead of transnational food chains, total GHG emissions can be reduced by 10-12%
- By stopping land clearing and deforestation for plantations, total GHG emissions can be reduced by 15-18%
These straightforward measures would lead to a reduction of 1/2 to 3/4 of current global GHG emissions.
What is required to get there is what farmers and food producers have been defending and calling for for decades:
- decentralisation of production and distribution,
- effective support for agricultural practices based on agro-ecological processes, biodiversity and local knowledge, and
- profound agrarian reform
Politics is the only thing standing in the way of such a transition. The problem is that the corporations that profit from industrial food are setting the policy agenda. It's time to take the fate of the planet and humankind from the hands of big speculators and put the world's food producers first.
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To contact the Via Campesina delegation in Copenhagen, please call:
Isabelle Delforge and Boaventura Monjane: +45 5059 8325
For information on Agriculture Action Day:
http://www.climate-justice-action.org/mobilization/agriculture-action-day/
climate-action (at) aseed.net
*The complete facts and figures are available from the following newly released reports:
Small farmers can cool the planet :A way out of the mayhem caused by the industrial food system, November 2009
by GRAIN
http://www.grain.org/o/?id=93
References: http://www.grain.org/go/climatecrisisrefs
Small Scale Sustainable Farmers Are Cooling Down The Earth, November 2009
Via Campesina Views
http://viacampesina.net/downloads/PAPER5/EN/paper5-EN.pdf
Earth matters - Tackling the climate crisis from the ground up, October 2009
by GRAIN
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=643
The international food system and the climate crisis, October 2009
by GRAIN
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=642On December 15th, La Via Campesina and a number of other groups will be leading a day... more
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Syncrude Canada Ltd pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges in the deaths of more than 1,600 ducks in a toxic waste pond in 2008, a case that heightened international concern about the environmental impact of developing Canada's vast oil sands.
After a brief court appearance in St. Albert, Alberta, just outside Edmonton, Syncrude officials declined to divulge details of the company's defense in the high-profile case, in which the waterfowl got coated in oil and sank.
Syncrude, the largest oil sands miner and processor, faces charges under Canada's Migratory Birds Convention Act and Alberta Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act. The trial is slated to begin March 1 in Alberta Provincial Court.
Syncrude Chief Executive Tom Katinas said he would not explain the decision to plead not guilty "out of respect for the judicial system".
"We will provide our reasons in court, and we ask Canadians for their patience as we go through this legal process," he said in a statement.
The birds were killed in April 2008, when a snowstorm delayed deployment of bird-deterring sound cannons at Syncrude's tailings pond. Other lakes in the region were still frozen, leaving the migrating flock with no other option for setting down, the company has said.
Syncrude, a joint venture of several international oil companies, initially said 500 ducks were killed. But last March it said the number was more than triple that.
Alberta's oil sands represent the largest oil deposits outside the Middle East, and the tar-like crude is seen as an important source of secure energy for the United States.
Environmentalists argue that multibillion-dollar oil sands mining developments harm wildlife, land, air and water.
Green groups say the Syncrude case shows governments are not doing enough to restrict the spread of tailings ponds, which are filled with water, clay and some oily residue from the oil sands extraction process.
"For us, the real issue here is about powerful oil companies and weak politicians," said Bruce Cox, executive director of Greenpeace Canada. "The pressure's got to be on our elected officials to get serious about the environmental degradation that is happening in the tar sands."
Syncrude reiterated it is sorry about the incident and said it had made improvements to its waterfowl protection program.
"Our position on what happened hasn't changed. We feel horrible that this occurred and we've put a lot of resources and time into implementing changes to help prevent it from happening again," Syncrude spokesman Alain Moore said.
Greenpeace released a report Monday that charges, among other things, that the oil sands have a much higher carbon footprint than any other commercial oil product, and if development continues unabated could produce more greenhouse gases than Austria, Portugal, Ireland or Denmark.
The report, called "Dirty Oil: How the tar sands are fueling the global climate crisis", by Alberta author Andrew Nikiforuk, also says growing revenue from the oil sands has turned Ottawa into a "carbon bully" that fights against moves to lower greenhouse gas emissions.Syncrude Canada Ltd pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges in the deaths of more than... more
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Now this is the renewable energy America needs to see more of.
excerpt:
The protest at Chevron was part of a campaign to generate political pressure and “street heat” leading up to the international climate change talks to be held in Copenhagen in December. Other protests will be held later in the year and in other parts of the country.
“People, not corporations, should drive the critical climate talks in Copenhagen,” said Ananda Lee Tan, a member of the Mobilization for Climate Justice spokescouncil and the U.S. Campaign Coordinator for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. “To date, at the United Nation’s climate talks, corporate lobbyists have outnumbered representatives of governments and civil society groups by a ratio of as high as 4 to 1. We want Chevron and all corpor ate lobbyists banned from, and frontline community voices represented at these talks.” ”The MCJ seeks to empower community-based activist groups and networks to lead a global climate justice movement in confronting the root causes of climate change at home,” said Torm Nompraseurt of theAsian Pacific Environmental Network, “while defining community priorities and self-determination pathways for a new energy economy.”
The Mobilization for Climate Justice-West includes more than 35 diverse groups: AFSCME Local 444, Amazon Watch, Art in Action, Asian-Pacific Environmental Network, Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace and Justice, Bay Localize, Burmese American Democratic Association, Communities for a Better Environment, Contra Costa Greens, Direct Action to Stop the War, Earth First!, Environmental Justice & Climate Change Initiative, Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity (FACES), Forest Ethics, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Global Exchange, Global Justice Ecology Project, Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, Greenpeace, Headrush, International Forum on Globalization, International Rivers, Justice in Nigeria Now!, Movement Generation, Pacific Environment, Poor Magazine, Rainforest Action Network, Richmond Mayor’s Task Force on Environmental Justice and Health, Progressive Bengali Network, Richmond Progressive Alliance, Ruckus Society, Rising Tide North America, Solidarity, West County Toxics Coalition, Youth In Focus, 350.orgNow this is the renewable energy America needs to see more of.
excerpt:
The... more
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A reflection from an organizer about the VICTORY yesterday bringing thousands to engage in mass civil disobedience to shut down the coal plant that powers congress for the afternoon, sending a strong message for clean energy solutions to our twin economic and climate crises.A reflection from an organizer about the VICTORY yesterday bringing thousands to... more
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Its the morning of our protest, and there is a blizzard outside. People are asking if its still on. IT IS! Just means we tell our grandkids about trudging uphill in both directions in ten inches of snow....and thats one of the reasons why they live in a healthy and safe world, with clean energy, climate justice, and self determined communities.Its the morning of our protest, and there is a blizzard outside. People are asking if... more
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Hi, my name is Joshua Kahn Russell. Right now I'm helping to coordinate the largest protest on Global Warming in history.
I'm an organizer, which means I spend my time building power of regular folks to take control of their lives and communities. I've spent half my life helping to bridge movements for racial justice and the environment.
Current TV asked me to record my life for 2 minutes a day. The series is gonna be called the "ACTING UP", so search for that tag if you want.
Our protest is called the Capitol Climate Action - CCA (www.capitolclimateaction.org), and will bring thousands to risk arrest in civil disobedience at the Capitol Coal Plant that powers our congress with dirty energy.
We have a coalition of over 70 conservation, public health, labor, social & racial justice, faith-based, environmental and other advocacy groups, along with figures like NASA Climatologist Dr. James Hansen, and advocates like Vandana Shiva, Wendell Berry and Bill Mckibben who will be joining us and sitting in.
We can't afford to wait any longer for the slow gears of the political process, while our economy tanks and the planet burns. I believe now is the time for bold action that communicates a message of urgency.
We have written and testified and organized politically. Now is the time to do more for the health of our communities and our planet. There are moments in a nation's--and a planet's--history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil and push for its correction. Such a time has arrived.
Join me for the next 11 days in the build up to the largest civil disobedience for climate justice in history. It's gonna be a wild ride.Hi, my name is Joshua Kahn Russell. Right now I'm helping to coordinate the... more
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Climate change is the single most destructive force confronting humanity, according to Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations. Annan is heading the first ever Global Humanitarian Forum in Geneva. Some of the world’s heavyweights in politics, business and science are discussing how to slow climate change. World Radio Switzerland’s Alex Helmick was at the forum and has this report.
Transcript and photo at link:
http://www.worldradio.ch/wrs/news/switzerland/annan-pushes-climate-justice.shtml?11077Climate change is the single most destructive force confronting humanity, according to... more
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