12 April, 2010 — Climate & Capitalism
Bolivian Ambassador to the U.N., Pablo Solon, invites individuals, governments and NGOs to Cochabamba, April 20 to 22, 2010, for the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.
Note: OneClimate.net will be broadcasting live on the Internet from Cochabamba, April 19-22. Details here.
Pablo Solon: Part Two
Pablo Solon: Part Three
5 April, 2010 — Bolivia Rising
When Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, was sworn in to a second term in January, he proclaimed Bolivia a plurinational state that would construct ‘communitarian socialism.’ In an accompanying address, Vice President Álvaro Garcia Linare, envisioned a ‘socialist horizon’ for Bolivia, characterized by ‘well-being, making the wealth communal, drawing on our heritage . . .’ The process ‘will not be easy, it could take decades, even centuries, but it is clear that the social movements cannot achieve true power without implanting a socialist and communitarian horizon.’
During the past decade Latin America has become a scene of hope and expectations as its leaders and social movements have raised the banner of twenty-first century socialism in a world ravished by imperial adventures and economic disasters. Proponents of the new socialism assert that it will break with the state-centered socialism of the last century, and will be driven by grassroots social movements that construct an alternative order from the bottom up. There is also widespread concurrence that the process will take a unique path in each country, that there is no single model or grand strategy to pursue.
30 December, 2009 — Bolivia Rising
For Bolivia, December marked an important and historic step forward in climate change politics. We are of course not referring to Brokenhagen, where we saw the worst of intransigent, undemocratic and cynical tactics from the world’s largest emitters of carbon dioxide. The interesting action happened in a completely unreported event in New York when on 22 December, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution which put the issue of Mother Earth rights as an item on the UN agenda.
This might sound rather esoteric, when you consider that in Copenhagen, it was the failure of rich nations to set ambitious and binding specific targets that led to the conference’s rightly discredited conclusion. For Bolivia, which is already facing unprecedented droughts, disappearing glaciers and water shortages, the difference between a target of 2 degrees or 1 degree is a matter of life and death for many. But we also believe that even if we had succeeded in achieving consensus on these important issues, we would still have left with a flawed agreement.
This is because the UN climate change framework does not deal with the root causes of climate change and the wider problem of environmental exploitation. Climate change is like a fever that is symptomatic of an underlying disease which must be cured before the fever will dissipate. The underlying cause is the belief that humans are separate from, and superior to, nature and that more is better. These beliefs have fueled the misconceived and doomed attempts of industrialized, consumer-based societies to achieve lasting human well being by exploiting and damaging Earth.
The New Dark Age 