Tag: COP-15

Copenhagen spoof shames Canada; Climate Debt No Joke

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15 December, 2009 — The Yes Men

Press conference: 1pm CET, Frederiksholms Kanal 4, Copenhagen
Contact: Margaret Matembe, margaret.matembe@enviro-canada.ca, +45-23960186
Coverage: Click here, or click throughout press release for specific links
Videos:
Canadian announcement (hi-res download)
Ugandan response (hi-res download)
Canadian retraction (hi-res download)
Climate debt agents take responsibility (hi-res download)

More dream announcements coming soon! Come make your own or stay tuned at good-cop15.org.

Copenhagen Spoof Shames Canada; Climate Debt No Joke

African, Danish and Canadian youth join the Yes Men to demand climate justice and skewer Canadian climate policy

COPENHAGEN, Denmark – “Canada is ‘red-faced’!” (Globe and Mail) “Copenhagen spoof shames Canada!” (Guardian) “Hoax slices through Canadian spin on warming!” (The Toronto Star) “A childish prank!” (Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada)

What at first looked like the flip-flop of the century has been revealed as a sophisticated ruse by a coalition of African, North American, and European activists. The purpose: to highlight the most powerful nations’ obstruction of meaningful progress in Copenhagen, to push for just climate debt reparations, and to call out Canada in particular for its terrible climate policy.

The elaborate intercontinental operation was spearheaded by a group of concerned Canadian citizens, the “Climate Debt Agents” from ActionAid, and The Yes Men. It involved the creation of a best-case scenario in which Canadian government representatives unleashed a bold new initiative to curb emissions and spearhead a “Climate Debt Mechanism” for the developing world.

The ruse started at 2:00 PM Monday, when journalists around the world were surprised to receive a press release from “Environment Canada” (enviro-canada.com, a copy of ec.gc.ca) that claimed Canada was reversing its position on climate change.

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Interview with Bolivia’s Climate Change Ambassador By Robert Eshelman

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9 December, 2009 — Climate and Capitalism

For the capitalist system everything, nature – even other humans – is considered an object that you can use to obtain a profit. What we are seeing is the consequence of this vision

The Nation, December 9, 2009

On day three of COP15, I spoke with Bolivian Climate Change Ambassador Pablo Erick Solón Romero Oroza about his delegation’s position at COP15, how negotiations are proceeding, and why Bolivian president Evo Morales has called for a Universal Declaration of Rights for Mother Earth.

What are the demands of the Bolivian delegation at COP15?

We are asking, first, to discuss the main issue, which for us is Mother Earth. We think that is the key issue.

Second, we are asking for a goal that will allow that will save all of humanity. We think the goal that they have put on the table is going to save probably only half of humanity because a two degree Celsius increase and a rise in carbon levels in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million means a 50% chance that there will be severe ecologic failure.

Third, we want that climate debt be paid. It should be paid in terms of reduction of emissions, but real reductions, in terms of a transfer of technology, and in terms of finance – and that brings me to our fourth point. We see the numbers when it comes to finance are really too small. Ten billion dollars when you compare it to what they have spent in terms of military budgets or to save Wall Street they spent trillions of dollars. But to save the future of mankind, they are saying only $10 billion.

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Copenhagen eyewitness: The rising tide of climate justice By Lauren Carroll Harris

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14 December, 2009 — Green Left Weekly

A first-hand report from the largest climate protest ever

(Copenhagen) One hundred thousand protesters braved near freezing temperatures and took over the Danish capital, Copenhagen, on December 12 to crank up the heat on world leaders at the United Nations Climate Summit (COP15) and demand climate justice.

The protest, in a carnival-like atmosphere, brought together a broad range of groups — from the explicitly anti-capitalist to the lobbying NGOs — and was led by a group of indigenous activists on a 4.5 kilometre march to the Bella Center, where the COP15 is taking place.

The demonstration was the main focus of a fortnight of climate justice protests, and was proceeded by a 5000-strong ‘flood’ of Copenhagen, organised by Friends of the Earth.

The protest involved mainly youth. The many groups included Jubilee South and Action Aid (who both call for reparations from the First World to repay their ecological debt and aid sustainable development in the Third World), the French New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) and the Danish group Attac, which carried a banner saying ‘Don’t let corporate lobbying destroy our climate’.

An Australian contingent highlighted the issue of global dependence on fossil fuels for power, chanting ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, quit coal now!’

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COP-15 Guía de Acciones /Le Guide d’Action /Guida all’azione /Protestleitfaden /Action Guide

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11 December, 2009 — https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/copenhagen2009info

Espanol
Guía de Acciones para el COP15
Mapa de Acciones… Version ‘en línea’ de este mapa:
tinyurl.com/ycqolgo

Francais
Le Guide d’Action pour la COP15
La Carte des Actions… Voir la carte en ligne:
tinyurl.com/y85p4op

Italiano
Guida all’azione per il COP15
Mappa delle azioni… Versione online qui:
tinyurl.com/yeb9ewh

English
Action Guide to COP15
Action Map for COP15… Online version of this map:
tinyurl.com/yhevc5c

Deutsch
Protestleitfaden für die COP15
Aktionskarte… Eine online version dieser Karte:
tinyurl.com/y98hy6z

https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/copenhagen2009info
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/climate09-int

Media

www.climate-justice-action.org/get-connected/

and others www.earthlife.org.za/?p=710

www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney/

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Welcome,info&accomodation +45 50588751
convergence center
Støberiet (Blågårdsplads 3, Nørrebro)
infopoint@stoberiet.dk

legal support +45 28255320

Legal Team Office, Rusk, Bragesgade 6, basement medical support number +45 52686076
Støberiet (Blågårdsplads 3, Nørrebro)

Emotional First Aid/Trauma Support +45 52768566
located at the Green Room in Christiana

Daily CJA meeting: arrive at 5:45 for a 6pm start, and we aim to finish up by 9. These assemblies will be held at Ragnhildgade (1B in the Protester’s Guide to Copenhagen, and map here: tinyurl.com/ragnhildgade).

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www.climate-justice-action.org
www.klimakollektivet.dk/en/start/
www.climate-justice-now.org
www.klimaforum09.org/

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Leaked Document Shows Rich Nations Plan Climate Coup in Copenhagen By John Vidal

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8 December, 2009 — The Guardian

Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN’s negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as ‘the circle of commitment’ – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalized this week.

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We Cannot Shop Our Way Out of the Problems John Bellamy Foster Interviewed by Max van Lingen

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1 December, 2009 — MRZine-Monthly Review

John Bellamy Foster is the editor of the socialist magazine Monthly Review and teaches sociology at the University of Oregon.  He has written on numerous subjects, from political economy to Marxist theory.  This year Foster published The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace With the Planet.

Max van Lingen is a student of political philosophy and modern history at the University of Amsterdam and a journalist for the Dutch monthly The Socialist.  A shortened version of this interview appeared in Dutch in the December issue of The Socialist.  The entire interview appeared in Dutch on the website of the International Socialists: http://www.socialisme.nu.

Consciousness about climate change has increased enormously; however, it also seems as if there is a lack of criticism of business and government actions.  Instead it appears as if people are thinking: it doesn’t really matter why people act, as long as they act.

I think people on the left often try to be “practical,” which they interpret as somehow trying to accommodate themselves to the status quo, so as to make minor improvements.  Often this is a kind of desperation to effect change.  However, Copenhagen is already a dead deal before it begins.  The United States and the other leading powers have indicated that there will be no binding agreements, no significant changes, and no non-market solutions.

James Hansen, arguably the world’s greatest climate scientist, has called the latest U.S. climate legislation passed by the House “worse than nothing” in that it locks in a “temple of doom.” The changes, if we are to avoid planetary collapse, need to be much more massive and need to come from below.  Hansen himself has called for mass “civil resistance” and has been arrested while protesting mountain top removal coal mining.

The climate justice movement, which tends to be more radical, is where to take one’s stand at present.  The truth is that we need some extremely strong, short-term solutions to be followed by a long-term strategy of ecological and social revolution.  I have written about this in my new book Ecological Revolution and in an article to appear in the January 2010 Monthly Review.

At the same time people are making ‘green’ choices, which are sometimes much more expensive.  There is a lot of criticism from this group towards people who are opposed to environmental measures because they are afraid they are going to lose their jobs.  Does this contradiction stand in the way of a solution?

There is no doubt that the growing need to make lifestyle changes is important and critical.  A great deal is being learned in this process, which could play into an ecological revolution of the whole society — as part of a total revolutionary dialectic.  Seeking to have a smaller ecological footprint is important on an individual as well as a social level.  But divorced from fundamental economic and political change, such individual, voluntaristic changes, primarily in the realm of consumption, are limited.  We cannot shop our way out of these problems.

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Global Warming: "Fixing the Climate Data around the Policy" By Michel Chossudovsky

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2 December, 2009 – Global Research

More than 15,000 people will be gathering in Copenhagen for COP 15: the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Official delegations from 192 nations will mingle with the representatives of  major multinational corporations, including Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, The representatives of environmental and civil society organizations will also be in attendance. Parties & Observers

Heads of state and heads of government are slated to be in appearance in the later part of the Summit event. (See The essentials in Copenhagen – COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009)

It is worth noting that key decisions and orientations on COP15 had already been wrapped up at the World Business Summit on Climate Change (WBSCC) held in May in Copenhagen, six months ahead of COP15.

The WBSCC brought together some of the World’s most prominent business executives and World leaders including Al Gore and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. (The World Business Summit on Climate Change, includes webcast)

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Climategate and Climate Change: Blowing hot and cold By William Bowles

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2 December, 2009

The leaked emails from the University of East Anglia seem to have put the proverbial cat in with the climatic pigeons. So what to make of it? Firstly, there’s an awful lot of information to wade through, some of which I find extremely confusing eg, Climate Change: This is the Worst Scientific Scandal of our Generation by Prof. Christopher Booker. What is he saying? That the data has been fixed to prove that the planet is heating up? And if so, does the ‘fix’ mean that the planet isn’t heating up after all? And what of the agenda of the individuals who hacked the emails, are they only concerned with the truth? And what is the ‘truth’?

As far as I can ascertain the debate comes down to the finding that the planet’s temperature appears to have dropped by an average of 1C over the past ten years. What isn’t clear is whether this is a ‘blip’ in the graph of steadily rising temperatures or as some analysts claim, a natural process connected to changes in the Sun’s activity?

What is sinister about the leaks is their timing, only weeks before the COP-15 meeting in Copenhagen, a meeting whose agenda has already been fixed by the corporate elite and of course in their favour, especially the crucial issue of Carbon Trading or Cap and Trade as it’s being called. And mighty convenient the leaks are as they dovetail perfectly into the Carbon Trading scam.

“The Copenhagen Summit not only serves powerful corporate interests, which have a stake in the global multibillion dollar carbon trading scheme, it also serves to divert public attention from the devastation resulting from the “real crisis” underlying the process of economic globalization and a profit driven war without borders, which the Pentagon calls “the long war”.” — ‘Global Warming: Fixing the Climate Data around the Policy’ By Michel Chossudovsky

It seems to me that there are two quite distinct but connected issues involved in the climate change debate:

1. Is the planet heating up because of human activity and even if it isn’t does this mean that it’s okay to keep chowing the planet?

2. Regardless, from a socialist perspective the disastrous impact of industrial capitalism on the great majority of the planet’s people is plain for all to see. Thus the leaks serve a very definite purpose, to divert attention away from the issue of capitalism’s plunder of the planet’s resources.

What doesn’t seem to be questioned by the climate skeptics is the rise in sea temperatures and the rising sea levels. Are these also ‘natural’? And what of the extremes of weather the world is experiencing, even if as one scientist says, the drop in world temperature is natural? But this only since 1999 and the one thing we do know about the world’s weather is that it’s incredibly complex and trends can only be measured relatively accurately over decades if not centuries and definitely not over a ten-year period (this is the same argument climate skeptics have used, namely that short-term observations are meaningless).

What is incredible is that some on the left, after years of accusing the developed nations of denying climate change, are now saying that Climate Change was a corporate plot all along! Come on guys, get it together!

“The current global warming propaganda scare is being hyped by politicians and special interests such as Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street financial firms that stand to reap billions trading new carbon credit financial futures. They are making an all-out effort to scare the world into a deal at the December Copenhagen Global Warming summit, the successor to the Kyoto agreement on CO2 emission reduction. It’s been estimated that the Global Warming bill supported by Barack Obama and his Wall Street patrons, passed by the House of Representatives but not by the more conservative US Senate, would cost US taxpayers some $10 trillion.” – ‘Global Warming or Global Freezing: is the ice really melting?’ by F. William Engdahl

Of one thing we can be sure, the leaked emails have sown confusion the world over and succeeded in diverting attention away from the real culprit: capitalism.

Global Research have created an archive of articles on Climate Change some which I have provided links to below, an invaluable resource for anyone who has the time to wade through one hundred essays.

Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?
– by Prof. Richard S. Lindzen – 2009-11-30

The Day Global Warming Stood Still
– by Mark Sircus – 2009-11-29

Emails originating from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia
 Access to Email data bank
– by eastangliaemails.com – 2009-11-29

Manipulation of Data and Concepts: The Climate Change Emails
 University of East Anglia emails: the most contentious quotes
– 2009-11-29

Copenhagen: A Climate of Suspicion
– by Christopher Caldwell – 2009-11-29

Climategate: the Whitewash Begins
– by James Delingpole – 2009-11-28

Climate Change: This is the Worst Scientific Scandal of our Generation
– by Prof. Christopher Booker – 2009-11-28

Climate Change: The current rate of CO2 rise is unprecedented in the recent history of the Earth
 Last Train to Copenhagen
– by Dr. Andrew Glikson – 2009-11-28

Invitation to the 7th International meeting for Climate Justice Action 

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28 November, 2009

And call to participate in Direct Action for Climate Justice at the fifteenth UN Climate Conference (COP-15)

When: Saturday the 5th, Sunday the 6th, and Friday the 11th of December 2009.
Where: Copenhagen Denmark.

To Register: climatesignup@gmail.com or http://www.climate-justice-action.org/practical-info/let-us-know-youre-coming/

For more info: climatemeetinginfo@gmail.com

On December 6th, 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.

You are invited to the next international meeting of Climate Justice Action in Copenhagen, Denmark just prior to the UN Climate Conference (COP-15). Climate Justice Action meetings will also be held during the week of the UN meetings (Dec 11 onwards) in order to share information about actions and coordinate plans for the upcoming year of climate justice.

The Climate Justice Action network has built links around the world and brought together plans for mass mobilization. With direct action we will reclaim the power of people and push for climate justice. We will make sure that the most affected and most struggling people are heard during the COP15 and we will work to stop the world leaders from promoting false solutions. We believe that the global movement for climate justice will kick off in Copenhagen in December, and we need to collectively visualize what our future will be when we put people before profit.

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A Call to Climate Action

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31 August, 2009 — Climate and Capitalism

The following call to climate action was developed last Fall during a meeting of nearly 100 activists from organizations around the world who came together in Copenhagen, Denmark to discuss a mobilization on climate change to coincide with the 2009 UN climate conference that begins in Copenhagen on November 30, 2009.

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 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 neighborhoods 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 neighborhoods 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