As COP19 Gets Underway: Time for a Revolution to Save Ourselves from Fossil Fuel

By Glenn Ashton

The South African Civil Society Information Service

12 Nov 2013

Picture credit: cuipo

This week the latest round of climate negotiations, the 19th Conference of the Parties (COP19) is meeting in Warsaw Poland, to grapple with the stalled Climate Change Convention. At the opening of the conference Dr Alicia Illinga, a Filipina delegate highlighted how her country had already been hit by 22 typhoons this year. The devastating Typhoon Haiyan, the most powerful typhoon to have ever made landfall, hit the Philippines on the eve of the conference, causing over 10 000 fatalities and affecting up to 10 million people. Climate change is implicated in these events, despite ill-informed denials. Natural weather disaster costs are at record levels. So why are we so slow to take action on climate change?

The fight against climate change takes its space in the World Social Forum

PRESSE-TOI À GAUCHE

MARCH 30, 2013

Fight for the environment can be costly. There have been many murders and disappearances of activists environmentalists. Sombath Somphone, Laos is one of those victims. Pablo Solón, director of Focus on the Global South, stated yesterday during the inauguration of the "Space Climate" World Social Forum (WSF) taking place currently in Tunis.

For the first time, a WSF account with a specific and permanent space to analyze the causes and impacts of climate change, to exchange experiences and discuss new strategies to confront the ecological crisis. This is the "Space Climate", supported by nearly 40 environmental organizations around the world, such as La Via Campesina, Focus on the Global South, the ETC Group, Ecologists in Action, or ATTAC France, among other.

Climate change is a central element in the systemic crisis of capitalism, it threatens the future of life on the planet and clearly highlights the inability of the current model to solve really. Climate change, governments, international institutions and multinational coincide fully depress the accelerator and bet on a series of false technological solutions, instead of solving the crisis, will instead deepen even more. They also promote market solutions to fill their pockets with the purchase and sale of greenhouse gas emissions. Nature becomes a commodity and more a source of profit masked by green rhetoric without real content. A green that looks like the dollar and not that of nature.

The organizers of the "Space Climate" do not go around the bush because time is against us and the world: "We have lost too many important battles in the fight for climate justice and we have little time to prevent Mother Earth and humanity rushing into the abyss. Climate change is already causing 400,000 deaths per year. ". But they also highlight the need for hope and mobilization by stating that "we need to act if we want to change the future."

We now see how the economic crisis further exacerbates the climate crisis, energy and food. The same people who speculated with mortgages "subprime" venture funds, insurance companies, etc.., Are those today who monopolize land and speculating with food. Everything is good for profit: water, seeds, land, grain. As stated Nnimmo Bassey of Oil Watch International at the end of the inauguration of the Espace Climate: "It is time to intensify the struggle and create alliances."This is also the commitment ratified by numerous assistants. As the song says: "The people united will never be defeated! ".

Tunis 28/03/2013.

Source: http://blogs.publico.es/esther-viva ...

Climate Change: The Tragic Farce At Doha

Solidarity Ecosocialist Commission

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontieres
11 December 2012

Activists demand action on climate change at a protest march on Saturday. Article HERE.

As the Doha COP18 climate talks draw to a close, they have unfortunately confirmed The Economist’s description of the event as a “theater of the absurd.” Even as the World Bank has released a report describing a rise in average global temperatures by a catastrophic 4 degrees Celsius over the course of this century, no greater sense of urgency emerged at the talks, largely due to the obvious futility of trying to formulate global policy without a serious commitment by Washington to reduce its own gargantuan carbon footprint. Meanwhile, the effects of climate change have accelerated with the ferocious global warming-fueled superstorm Sandy and the enormous Typhoon Bopha that has ravaged the southern Philippines, to mention only the most recent and dramatic that have ravaged communities as a result.

Pipeline politics — Can popular protest stop the tar sands leviathan?

By Richard Fidler 

Life on the Left

December 8, 2012

Petroleum giant Enbridge Inc. has taken huge strides in recent weeks to complete its plan to transport tar sands oil to eastern Canada and from there to foreign markets.

Already assured of support from the Harper government, the company is rapidly lining up further backing from provincial politicians and industry players, including a key trade union. And it is fast-tracking the regulatory approval process.



Enbridge’s project entails reversing the flow of an existing pipeline circuit across southern Ontario to Montréal, Quebec and from there through New England states to Portland, Maine. At present imported oil is carried from Portland to Sarnia, Ontario, where existing refineries already process dirty tar sands oil piped from Alberta. Enbridge also plans to increase the pipeline’s capacity from 240,000 barrels per day to 300,000 bpd.

New study states that climate change may not be reversible

All Voices

December 2, 2012

The threat of global warming is quite an immediate one, having a potential to not only cause irreparable damage to global ecology but also, if left unchecked, to make the planet earth unliveable. Visible effects of global warming have already been felt, with scientists recently collating data on the rise in sea levels because of global warming, noting the increase to be around 11 millimeters. Of course the issue of whether or not the effects of global warming climate change can be reversed has been a hotly contested subject for many years now with conventional wisdom urging that regardless of the damage done so far, carbon emissions, which contribute directly to global warming, must be cut down upon.

However a new study suggests that perhaps it is too late, that carbon emissions are now too high for humanity to turn back the tide of climate change. Researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia in Britain have found that it is unlikely that global warming, which stands at 2C above pre-industrial levels, will ever be reverted, saying that carbon emissions had gone beyond a level to control.

The research, published in the journal, Nature Climate Change stated that carbon dioxide emissions had reached 35.6 billion tons this year, an increase of 2.6 percent from last year and an alarming 58 percent increase since the 1990s.

Tyndall's director, Corinne Le Quere, said, "These latest figures come amidst climate talks in Doha, but with emissions continuing to grow, it's as if no one is listening to the scientific community. I am worried that the risks of dangerous climate change are too high on our current emissions trajectory. We need a radical plan."

Read more HERE.

Canada, the surprise 'pariah' of the Kyoto protocol

Some Canadians doubt whether their country should have any say in negotiating the second Kyoto protocol after it became the only nation to reject the first one

By Isabeau Doucet in Montreal
guardian.co.uk

26 November 2012 

Oil city: steam rises from refineries outside Edmonton, Alberta. Photograph: Andy Clark/Reuters

Of all the delegations in the room in Doha, the Canadians adopt the lowest profile. Some question whether they should be there at all: The country's first and only Green party MP, Elizabeth May, said: "HavingCanada in the room negotiating to weaken the second Kyoto, when we have already signalled that not only will we not be participating in taking on new targets in the second period but we're legally withdrawn from the protocol, should make us pariahs."

"I can't imagine how anybody would want us in the room."

Economic Growth and Our Collective Demise

By Jim Harding

No Nukes
October 1, 2012 

Stephen Harper wants to transform Canada into an “energy superpower”. Most Conservative policy seems to follow from this huge gamble with our future. On the surface this “vision” seems feasible; once examined it turns into a nightmare.

Oil is already Canada’s no 1 export and Harper wants to expand the oil-export economy. According to Rubin, in his End of Growth, Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline to ship bitumen to China, which Harper wants to fast-track, “would move more than half a million barrels a day of very precious oil” and this would “lift the revenues of Canadian oil companies by billions of dollars”. Oil flows, money flows. How could anyone question such a seemingly self-evident vision for our country?

There remain vital questions about the risks and costs of environmental contamination, about who would really benefit and how much “trickle down” would actually occur. And whether this would make the economy more or less sustainable and what kind of society Canada will become if it continues down Harper’s path?

I Broke the Law to Defeat Climate Change

By J.B. MacKinnon

TheTyee.ca 

19 September 2012

Editor's note: On May 5, 13 people were arrested on the railway in front of the White Rock Pier for blocking trains loaded with American coal from reaching port in Tsawwassen. It was the most dramatic act of civil disobedience against climate change yet in the Lower Mainland. This Friday, members of the "White Rock 13" will lead a public discussion on whether nonviolent civil disobedience is needed to increase the pressure for action on climate change. J.B. MacKinnon, co-author of The 100-Mile Diet, gets that conversation rolling for The Tyee with arrestee Lynne Quarmby, who is also chair of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Simon Fraser University.

J.B. MacKinnon: Lynne, are you now, or have you ever been, a "professional activist"?

Lynne Quarmby: Never. After grad school in the early '80s I did participate in the big peace rally on the Burrard Street Bridge, with 100,000 people. And at various times in my life, I've been a big letter writer -- I've written dozens of letters to politicians. So I've been politically aware -- sort of an activist, but not a protester.

Ecologists, leftists and Rio+20

BY THOMAS PONNIAH
Rabble.ca
March 7, 2012

A thematic Social Forum focused on "Capitalist Crises, Environmental and Social Justice" was held from January 24-29, 2012 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The dominant theme of the Forum was the upcoming Rio+20, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development taking place this June in Rio de Janeiro, 20 years after the famous 1992 UN environmental conference held in the same location. The great sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos has written a thoughtful report on the Porto Alegre event.

Santos notes that social movements focused on the challenges that the current form of globalization poses: climate change, water shortages, salinization, desertification, the devolving quality of food, the privatization of biodiversity and modern society's perpetual inability to control technology. As well, activists presented proposals that could replenish nature: food sovereignty, responsible consumption, the defence of humanity's common goods, non-Eurocentric forms of knowledge, ecological democracy and the move from an anthropocentric civilization to a bio-centric one. The genius of the social forum space is that it facilitates a global alliance of progressives by encouraging the articulation of common frames of understanding across diverse, often divided, movements such as environmentalists and leftists.

Climate Market Failure

Whatever Happened to Constructive Conflict?

BY PATRICK BOND
CounterPunch
February 29, 2012

Nick Stern 

In 2007, former World Bank chief economist Nick Stern termed climate change the worst ‘market failure’ in history – since those who pollute greenhouse gases are not charged, and since they threaten future generations and vast swathes of natural life – and at that moment, even the 1991 ravings of another former Bank chief economist, Larry Summers, made sense.

‘I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up that’, according to a memo with Summers’ signature (http://www.whirledbank.org/ourwords/summers.html), although actually Summers was a mere plagiarist of Harvard economist Lant Pritchett’s genius, insiders allege.

It makes sense if you envisage every aspect of life to be a commodity, and if in turn you believe carbon trading is the right way to address climate change, through privatization of the air coordinated by financial markets (as do Stern and Summers). Indeed ‘Payment for Environmental Services’ is the mantra for neoliberal ‘Green Economy’ advocates at the extravaganza Rio+20 Earth Summit in June.

Another Future is Possible

By Thematic Social Forum

Working Paper that is a compilation of all the proposals taken from the texts produced by the Thematic Groups at the Thematic Social Forum of Porto Alegre (January 24-29, 2012). Bringing together the thematic groups under four core themes is a proposal for articulating the different themes. Some groups can of course be connected to two or more core themes.

Come to Reinvent the World at Rio+20

Rio+20 will be a strong political moment and a unique opportunity to “reinvent the world” by pointing to alternatives to the dangerous path in which we are currently ensnared. Nevertheless, judging from the actions of the hegemonic actors of the international system and from the mediocrity of international agreements negotiated in previous years, their false solutions, and the non-application of the principle already agreed upon at Rio 92, we understand that although we should not give up on our attempt to weigh upon their actions, neither should we feed illusions about our influence being strong enough to launch a virtuous circle of negotiations and meaningful compromises intended to deal with the serious problems that are threatening humankind and life on the planet.

Billionaires back controversial geoengineering methods

BY BLAKE DEPPE
People's World
February 21, 2012

A small unit of climate scientists, supported financially by notable billionaires, is lobbying governments and international organizations to back experiments in geoengineering - a controversial practice that would involve changing the climate to avoid global warming. Environmental activists, however, are concerned.

Geoengineering is a process in which artificial means are used to drastically change the earth's environment, in response to the growing threat of climate change. There are various implementations being considered, including using seawater to brighten clouds, spraying aerosols high in the stratosphere, and placing sun-shielding technology near the earth (this option is called solar radiation management).

La Vía Campesina Call to action: Reclaiming our future: Rio +20 and Beyond

La Via Campesina
Feb. 22, 2012

On 20-22 June 2012, governments from around the world will gather in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to commemorate 20 years of the “Earth Summit”, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) that first established a global agenda for “sustainable development”. During the 1992 summit, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and the Convention to Combat Desertification, were all adopted. The Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was also established to ensure effective follow-up of the UNCED “Earth Summit.”

Twenty years later, governments should have reconvened to review their commitments and progress, but in reality the issue to debate will be the “green economy” led development, propagating the same capitalist model that caused climate chaos and other deep social and environmental crises.

La Vía Campesina will mobilize for this historical moment, representing the voice of the millions of peasants and indigenous globally who are defending the well-being of all by implementing food sovereignty and the protection of natural resources.

Warming waters: the impact of climate change on indigenous communities

By Stephanie Kelly
The New Brunswick Beacon
February 10th, 2012

Igloolik, Nunavut was featured in the documentary 

As a child, Zacharias Kunuk couldn’t imagine a world beyond his Inuit village on Baffin Island.

“I thought we were the only people on earth, living on the land moving around by dogs, building igloos and building sod houses for winter and hunting the animals,” he said.

Nearly fifty years later, with an Order of Canada and established career under his belt, Kunuk has made it his life’s work to connect both worlds through film.

About 150 people gathered at MacLaggan Hall on Wednesday evening for the screening of Kunuk’s latest film, Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change.

Fighting for a Real Green Economy

By Anil Naidoo
Council of Canadians
January 12th, 2012

Dear Friends,

The Zero Draft document was released this week and this will be the starting point for negotiations at the Rio+20 Earth Summit. It is a very general document and seems to be fairly non-threatening, but please do not be fooled!

If you have been following Rio+20, you will know that the Green Economy is being heavily promoted for Rio. We understand that our current actions are unsustainable and so most of us would welcome a Green Economy, but as Maude Barlow and Pablo Solon have articulated in the book “The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth”, this proposed Green Economy is very dangerous. Passages from both are attached below….

Leaked Rio+20 document outlines 10 sustainable development goals

By Brent Patterson
Council of Canadians
January 10th, 2012

The Guardian reports, “Countries will be asked this summer to sign up for 10 new sustainable development goals for the planet and promise to build green economies… According to a leak of the draft agenda document seen by the Guardian, they will also be asked to negotiate a new agreement to protect oceans, approve an annual state of the planet report, set up a major world agency for the environment, and appoint a global ‘ombudsperson’, or high commissioner, for future generations.”

“Governments will (also) be expected to strengthen the Nairobi-based UN Environment Programme body which is widely thought to be underfunded and unable to address the growing threats to ecosystems. UNEP is likely to be put on the same level as the World Health organisation (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). …(And) although the agenda could change in the next six months, it looks likely they will be asked to pledge to use stretched resources better and reform the subsidy system of fossil fuels which encourages climate change.”

Call for building and mobilizing for Peoples Assembly at Rio+20

Climate Connections
January 11, 2012

We call organizations, Networks and movements in the struggle for Environmental Justice, against the greening of capitalism and mercantilization of life and in defence of common goods, to join this call and the process of building and mobilizing for the Peoples Assembly at the Peoples Summit during Rio+20, between 15 and 23 June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro.

An assembly of peoples affected, oppressed and aware of the structural causes of systemic crisis and related social and environmental injustices; of peoples affected, indignant, critical and resistant to the new forms of reproduction, militarization and greening of capitalism; of peoples that mobilize and transform, protect traditional knowledge, create and recreate real solutions and no capitalist alternatives, defend the common goods and claim for the Right of Mother Earth.
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To join this call, send an email with the name of the organization and country until 21/01/2012 to: movilizacion.rio20@gmail.com
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Continental Cry of the Excluded, Convergence of Movements of the Peoples of the Americas, Coordinator of Andean Indigenous Organizations, Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean, Grassroots Global Justice, Jubilee South/Americas, Oilwatch, Southern People’s Ecological Debt Creditors Alliance, La Vía Campesina, World March of Women, World Rainforest Movement

The Biggest Story of 2011 for Me? Canada’s Failure on Climate Change

By Maude Barlow
Council of Canadians
December 26th, 2011

The biggest story of 2011 for me was the national and international attention given to the environmental dangers of Canada’s tar sands, and the failure of the Harper government to meet our obligations to combat climate change. Until this year, most criticism of Canada’s climate policy was restricted to Canadian and some international environmentalists. But three events of 2011 caused Canada’s energy and climate policies to come under intense scrutiny here in Canada and around the world.

The first was the surprisingly passionate and bitter debate in the U.S. over the Keystone Pipeline, meant to carry Alberta bitumen - the dirtiest oil on earth - over an endangered aquifer to be refined in Texas. A noisy and organized opposition that included environmentalists, Native Americans, ranchers, and even Republican politicians sounded the alarm. They made daily national and international news in the late summer when over 1,200 people got arrested in front of the White House. That inspired a more active movement in Canada. 

The true colors of green economy

By Silvia Ribeiro
América Latina en Movimiento
December 19, 2011

Twenty years after the UN Conference on Environment and Development (World Summit or Eco ‘92) a new world conference will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012. Rio+20, as it is known, will be set in the midst of the greatest global crises in the century: environmental devastation, biodiversity erosion, climate crisis, economic and financial crisis, food crisis, and health crisis.

Although Rio+20 was supposed to review the commitments made, the state of the real problems and the strategies to resolve them, the issues on the agenda are green economy and new forms of global environmental governance. If the term “sustainable development” was ambiguous and was profusely manipulated, the substitution for green economy points to an even more restrictive approach, which privileges those who dominate the markets.

Corporations, climate and the United Nations: How big business has seized control of global climate negotiations

Polaris Institute
December 2011

In time for COP 17 in Durban, South Africa, the Polaris Institute  prepared a report outlining how multinational corporations and their lobbyists have infiltrated the United Nations and are influencing the outcomes of climate negotiations. The report uncovers and describes where corporations influence the United Nations in the build up to and during climate change negotiations and how this corporate interest is the driving force behind the preferred market based initiatives that are emerging from the UNFCCC process.

Examples of corporate infiltration of the UNFCCC process are presented in order to highlight how multilateral and national level climate change policies carry the fingerprints of corporate interests. The corporate control of agendas inside the UN is not new and the report is framed within the historical roots of the access business and industry enjoy inside the United Nations.

This report exposes and critiques the corporate powers that influence the UNFCCC and use the United Nations to mask damaging operations. In conclusion, the report calls on activists to bring these corporate powers to account along with a UN system that has spent far too long working in partnership with destructive corporations instead of regulating their troublesome behaviour.

For the full report, go to http://www.polarisinstitute.org/files/CorporationsClimateandtheUN.pdf