Protesters clashed with police in Copenhagen this weekend while attempting to disrupt the World Business Summit on Climate Change, a gathering of the worlds largest corporations and, not coincidentally, biggest polluters. Organized by the Danish government, the Business Summit gave corporate interests unprecedented access to the ongoing UN climate talks, including face time with UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon and so called climate “hero” Al Gore.
The group of protestors, lead by a banner reading “Our Climate is not Your Business” attempted to breach police lines in order to disrupt the meeting. The lively group of activists wanted hightlight the damaging and disruptive role that corporations play in the international climate talks. The list of corporations attending included #1 carbon emitter in the world Shell Oil, Duke Energy (#12 at last count), and BP among other climate criminals.
“The Danish government appears to be under the impression that some of the world’s most polluting companies are going to put forward tough measures to tackle climate change,” said Kenneth Haar, a researcher with Corporate Europe Observatory. “But unfortunately this doesn’t seem likely to be the case. The majority of the corporations attending the World Business Summit on Climate Change seem more intent on pursuing business as usual – with the promise that future technologies will resolve the problem at a later date.
“Corporate lobbyists have been trying to influence the UN climate talks from the start. But now they are being invited to set the agenda before the negotiators have even sat down. If their demands are listened to, we might as well give up the fight against climate change now.”
The WBSCC draws into question the legitimacy of the UN climate talks. How can we trust a process that opens the door to the very corporations that created the climate crisis, while shutting out the worlds poor, indigenous, and land based
Protesters try an alternative route to the meeting!
peoples who are least responsible for climate change, yet will bare the brunt of its impacts?
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I like a lot of the things rising tide does, but I have to disagree with some of this premise. Certainly some of these corporations are greenwashing and have ill intentions(especially the oil and energy companies), and we should oppose their efforts to weaken a treaty. However, there were over 500 business leaders at this. If even half of them can be convinced that it’s in their interest to support a strong global treaty, that makes this less of an uphill battle than it already is. We shouldn’t compromise on our reduction targets and adaptation principles, but sitting down and talking with your opponents and trying to find ways to work together is necessary. I hardly see the credibility in calling Al Gore a “so called climiate hero”. We’re on the same team last time I checked.
I have a different take on the businesses visiting here: http://madrad2002.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/getting-down-to-business/
I do agree however that the people who will bear the brunt of the impacts should have more of a say. The structure of the UN in general doesn’t allow for that, and it’s a problem.
I would give this the Facebook *thumbs up* if I could.
Matt D, thanks for your comments. I would like to respectfully disagree. Your comments are based on the presumption that these corporations are meeting because they care about climate change. Unfortunately they are not. They are meeting because they know that climate legislation is coming down the line weather they like it or not and they need to band together to ensure that their profits come before real action on climate change. If you think i am being overly cynical look at how Duke energy and the coal industry managed to work in so many special favors into the Waxman bill that this initially extremely weak bill is essentially meainingless. Furthermore if companies such as Duke were really serious about fighting climate change, as the WBSCC would lead you to believe, why would they be building new coal plants. why would Chevron be expanding oil refineries while blabbing on about Human Energy?
We can in no way benefit from getting the corporations “on board”. They have one primary interest, making money, for themselves and their shareholders. And they will do whatever it takes to maintain their profits, planet be damned. The companies at the WBSCC are the same ones that for decades funded massive climate denial campaigns. Now that they have realized that tactic is no longer feasible and some form of climate legislation is inevitable they have switched gears. Now they are in the business of cooptation and watering down of climate legislation and agreements.
Thanks for responding Matt W, I completely understand your points regarding energy companies, and in my comment above I exempted my defense of oil and energy companies in the 1st sentence. We should be extremely wary of their inevitable involvement, and oppose their efforts to weaken a treaty at every available turn. For example Chevron and Shell can go to hell.
However there were also non-energy corporations there as well. To give one example of a much maligned corporation to some on this blog, Nike has been pushing for a very strong US climate change bill and a strong global treaty. The targets they’ve been lobbying for have been as strong if not stronger than most of the targets environmental groups have been asking for. They also formed their own coalition called BICEP, and other major companies such as Starbucks and GAP have signed on: http://madrad2002.wordpress.com/?s=BICEP
Last I would encourage you to look at the UN Chief’s speech which is hardly bending backwards for the corporations
http://madrad2002.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/ban-ki-moons-speech/
and what came of the conference
http://www.montereyherald.com/news/ci_12450229?nclick_check=1&forced=true
Now a 50% cut below 1990 levels isn’t what we need, but I would take 500 corporations demanding a price on carbon and a 50% cut than opposing action at every turn any day, and especially this year.
In my state of Maryland we fought labor and the polluters over passing a global warming bill for 2 years and got close to winning but we couldn’t get over the hump. We found that by sitting down and negotiating with labor, we were able to craft a bill that still set the caps we wanted but was something labor could support. It became labor+environmentalists versus the utilities, and we won.
Nobody hearded of your action in France or in Switzerland, but it’s very fine.
Next step: Bonn?
Best regards
René
Last news on the report of global humanitarian forum Geneva: The reports calculates more than 300 million people are seriously affected by climate change at a total economic cost of $125 billion per year
Report projects that by 2030, worldwide deaths will reach almost 500,000 per year; people affected by climate change annually expected to rise to over 600 million and the total annual economic cost increase to around $300 billion.
http://www.ghf-geneva.org