I came across an article that President Obama is going to Denmark. For crucial international negotiations in Copenhagen this December about the next global climate treaty? Not quite.
“President Barack Obama will travel to Denmark this week to support Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.”
“Obama would be the first U.S. president to take on such a direct role in lobbying for an Olympics event.”
Well, lets hope he returns this December as the first U.S. president to take on a direct role in lobbying for the most important global treaty in the history of mankind. If he doesn’t, I sense the activists will really have a field day with this one.
This morning the Thai Prime Minister opened the session by saying “There is no plan B, if we do not realize plan A, we go straight to plan F, which stands for failure.”
So, no pressure.
With an invigorated sense of skepticism, civil society, governments, and of course business interests are here to try to hammer through obtuse and contradictory text to create something that can be of some use on the table at the Copenhagen meetings this December.
The UN press office was quick to hand me a defensive-sounding media release stating ‘Negotiations set to pick up in Bangkok as a result of New York Climate Change Summit’ – hoping to put a positive spin on the process. Sure, the New York summit yielded lots of big talk about Climate – unfortunately very little in the way of meaningful targets and commitments, as pointed out (to much applause) by a Sudanese delegate this morning.
The reality of the US being able to meaningfully commit is grim, as illustrated by the statement released by John Podesta and Rajendra Pachauri, this Friday. Despite Obama talking a good game (which in itself is a welcome departure from the Bush years), he still failed to put forward any details. Hopes previously pinned on Obama have been deflated by stalled domestic legislation that NASA’s Dr. James Hansen said, if implemented “would do more harm to the environment than nothing at all.”
On the flip side, many people here in Bangkok have been encouraged by China’s announcement at the NY summit that it is increasing commitments on carbon reduction. We all know though, that responsibility to lead with these negotiations lies on the global North to make bolder and serious commitments. India and China are moving, and the classic US approach trying to pin blame on them is increasingly seen as excuse-mongering even to those who may have bought the line before.
From where we stand now, it looks like Copenhagen will be a greenwash. But civil society here in Bangkok is not taking this as a moment to despair but as a higher call to action for just and equitable ways to meet meaningful targets. Peoples movements and activist networks from across the globe are taking this opportunity to build and organize, invigorating local solutions back home, regardless of what ends up on the negotiating table. And so we keep pushing. If we temper our ambition along with our expectations, governments will feel more emboldened to backslide and allow the treaty to be an industry giveaway. Lets keep pressure up.
Here’s an inspiring quickie of organizers in the United States working for community based solutions to the climate crisis:
Macalester College, a small liberal arts college I attend in Saint Paul Minnesota, released its Sustainability Plan on September 15th. In the midst of a flurry of action on the national policy level, internationally around Copenhagen, and in the local fights against mountain-top removal and other dirty energy, one more college sustainability plan seems almost insignificant. What’s important about this plan, however, is not what its goals are (though they include carbon neutrality by 2025, zero waste by 2020, and more) but how it plans to achieve them. I hope this focus on the method as well as the goals can inform and inspire the climate movement. Here’s a brief synopsis of the key features of the how, which I’ll explore in more detail below the fold.
1. Going carbon neutral will be revenue positive, meaning a carbon-free future is as much commonsense smart decision-making as it is a moral imperative.
2. Designing the vision was participatory – 400 students, faculty, and staff contributed at a college with a student body of 1900 – and implementation will continue to be. The plan clearly states that it is a baseline platform, not a ceiling.
3. The changes really matter – with a few exceptions, the plan identifies strategies to that make actual change, rather than check the boxes of conventional practice.
4. The college plans to create ripples of change that extend far beyond campus – emphasizing pathways to broader change through the supply-chains, education process, and community relationships it engages.
5. Sustainability is defined holistically as the ongoing process of nurturing a healthy environment, social justice, and a strong economy. It is a guiding quality of all the institution’s core values, not an addition to them.
I’m using this announcement to encourage us to dig deeper into figuring out the how, and to introduce future posts exploring what it really means to deliver the visions of a sustainable society that we advocate for constantly. To guide the story, I’ll use the case study of Macalester and the efforts I’ve been involved in that now extend far beyond it, not because the method is limited to this example (it would be flawed if so), but because I know them well. These posts will explore how campus leaders made success not only broad but also deep, meaningful, and transformative, the expansive horizons to which similar methods have grown our work far beyond campus, and the implications that each step has for the broader climate movement over the coming decades. Stay tuned for more stories from the process.
Co-authored by Miranda Brown, Intern with the KY Beyond Coal Campaign and Lauren McGrath, KY Beyond Coal Campaign Staff
On Tuesday, September 29th, the Sierra Club’s Big Picture Campaign is holding a “Coal is Dirty Business” Day of Action to demonstrate that citizens across the country are eager for the United States government to take a stand against big coal for the sake of the waterways, air, health, and pocketbooks of America. Organizers across the nation are preparing for local rallies and other events on this day.
The people have got it—that dirty coal has got to go, that we can’t keep polluting with this inherently dirty, carbon-rich fuel. President Obama and the U.S. Congress have promised to quickly take care of climate change and other environmental problems. The Senate is poised to debate the climate bill. The Environmental Protection Agency recently made a bold move by upholding the Clean Water Act in their review of 79 mountaintop removal mining permits. During this time its critical that citizens show public support for EPA enforcement of the Clean Water Act and pressure the Administration and Congress towards further responsible action to halt our dependence on coal. That’s why on September 29th thousands of citizens across the U.S. will urge the politicians and agencies to make a clean break from dirty business with the coal industry.
In day to day life, more and more are seeing the effects—asthma rates increasing, water quality deteriorating, mercury levels in fish increasing, mountain communities are being devastated, and metals from coal ash threaten to contaminate municipal water supplies
In Kentucky, some residents are even starting get worried about their local soft drink and Kentucky trademark, Ale-8, seeing as the lone bottling company lies only a few miles downstream from the location of a proposed coal-burning power plant and coal ash storage facility. According to a comprehensive but little known risk assessment released by the EPA in 2007, nearby residents have as much as a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer from drinking water contaminated by arsenic, one of the most common, and most dangerous, pollutants found in coal ash.
That’s why as part of the “Coal is Dirty Business” National Day of Action, residents of Lexington, Kentucky, will gather to celebrate this local favorite and take action at the “Don’t Contaminate Our Ale 8″ event to ensure this Kentuckian trademark is not contamination by hazardous coal ash from the proposed plant.
Other local events around the U.S. are listed, here.
It was a funny day in Durham earlier this week, when after two years of international climate change lobbying, it all came home! Senator Chris Dodd arrived to celebrate the Durham Fair (one of Connecticut’s largest fall events) and parked his car at my house, a serendipitous lobbying opportunity occurred. Along with my district’s representative to the Connecticut state legislature and Senate, we discussed the role of green jobs and clean energy to rebuild Connecticut’s and America’s economy, while also setting us on target to a bold, equitable, and science-based agreement in Copenhagen that will bring the planet back to 350 ppm.
Senator Dodd was enthusiastic and agreed that he would work to ensure strong energy policy in the United States in the coming months. Meanwhile, Connecticut representatives Matt Lesser and Ed Meyer agreed to continue to push through Connecticut’s solar energy policy and ensure that the energy efficiency stimulus funds actually get distributed to the families that need it most to stay warm this winter and stay green all year long. At the fair, lots of people commented on the sign, and singers from The Guess Who shared their support for 350 as well, after a crowd of 25,000 heard them sing “Share the Land” and explain that we’re all in the same canoe! We are all on this planet, this canoe, together, and it’s time to bring messages around the world and back home.
I can’t stand either. (Read: Major gaps existing in otherwise quite good material and design.)
Said tights.
Among the most important memos of the 21st century (aside from ‘It’s highly respected to still know all the words to New Kids on the Block’s ‘Step by Step’” and ‘No, it’s not okay to wear tights as pants, especially the slitted ones from American Apparel.’) is: ‘All other governments in the developed world are doing way more on climate change than Canada’.
Memos are what they are. Pop culture stands strong, fads fade (or are imagined), and the ambition of government tends to fall out of their pocket unnoticeably as they run down the halls of Parliament to their next meeting.
Last weekend, activists from across the west coast joined residents of Richmond, CA for the West Coast Convergence for Climate Justice and Action, from September 18-20th at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Richmond. The goal of the Convergence was to connect local environmental justice struggles, especially the Richmond community’s ongoing struggle against the local Chevron refinery, to the global fight for climate justice. The global climate justice movement recognizes that the impacts of climate change fall most heavily on poor communities and that true solutions must come from those same communities on the front lines.
The West Coast Convergence for Climate Justice consisted of 3 days of plenary speeches, workshops, and strategy sessions, followed by a non-violent direct action on Monday, September 21st. Workshops and plenary sessions placed the local struggle against Chevron in the broader context of the movement for climate justice leading up to the Copenhagen climate negotiations. Speakers emphasized the role of corporations like Chevron in watering down climate policy and drew connections between the Richmond fight and other frontline community struggles, including those against tar sands in Canada and against the Dooda Desert Rock power plant in New Mexico. Other workshops focused on organizing skills and on local solutions, from urban gardening to local climate action plans. According to Carla Perez, one of the conference organizers, “the convergence was a gathering of stellar minds & hearts rooted in community organizing for social and ecological justice. It brought clarity and a deep understanding of the root causes of the climate problem and inspired Richmond leaders to connect their local work to this global struggle for a livable future.”
Climate Activists Drop Banner halting UN Motorcade, Raise Warning of Ineffective “False Solutions” to Climate Change
New York, NY – Early Friday morning, at the end of the first week of the High Level meetings during Climate Week in New York, a caravan of police-escorted limousines and SUVs carrying UN delegates was delayed as they approached the 42nd street bridge en route to the UN complex on eastern Manhattan. A 25-foot banner reading “UN: Cap + Trade is a Dead End” was deployed as the motorcade drew near.
A group referring to itself as the “Greenwash Guerrillas” claimed credit for the banner, and prior to a hasty departure threw leaflets down onto the stalled traffic articulating their demands:
(TEXT:)
We know a highly-developed campaign has been launched in the United States by the worst transnational corporate polluters, Wall Street financiers, and well-funded professional enviros along with their lesser-funded camp-followers to pass a bill, any bill, possessing the namesake of ‘the climate’;
We hold that polluting corporations have never advocated for anything that would harm their bottom line, their short-term profits or their shareholders;
We recognize that Wall Street financiers, responsible for a world-wide economic recession due to a speculative bubble collapse, have set their sites on a $14 trillion carbon trading system as a means of reviving their fortunes;
We know that corporate polluters have effectively defanged the mainstream US environmental movement. Many organizations that appear to publicly support environmental defense are welcoming disastrous policy within the US and the leadup to the December COP15 Climate Talks in Copenhagen. The mainstream environmental movement has become little more than a sounding board for corporate sponsors of profit-generating climate change legislation.
As a people, we cannot define the systematic destruction of our environment, the unprecedented exctinction crisis, and oncoming impacts of climate catastrophe as a money-making opportunity. We will not forget or forgive those who mindlessly, selfishly advocate a cap-and-trade system. The False Solutions agenda of the corrupt circles of government at home and abroad will meet resistance.
(New York) Climate justice activists from Rising Tide North America and Climate SOS in New York took to the streets on the final day of the UN Climate summit, making housecalls to the New York offices of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and the Nature Conservancy. NRDC’s street-level banner was festooned with a 14 foot mock “Climate Bill” in the form of $2 trillion bank note (the approximate value of a U.S. carbon market). Imagery on the giant spoof bill critiques roles of many large environmental groups in their push for passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), chiefly for its advocacy of an carbon market. Following NRDC, the offices of EDF and The Nature Conservancy received delivery visits where activists desperately tried to present organizational representatives with their version of the “green”.
These organizations are leading members of the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), which has united them with highly polluting corporations such as Dow, DuPont, General Electric and Alcoa Aluminum under the auspices of lobbying Congress to reduce emissions. This unsavory alliance played a major role in crafting the Waxman-Markey ACESA bill (HR 2454) passed by the US House of Representatives in July, and expected to make its way for a Senate vote imminently. Continue reading ‘NYC: Climate Activists Expose the True “Green” of Big Enviros, Deliver Giant Climate “Bill” to Offices’
G20 Leaders are likely to miss the boat on financing climate change financing. We welcome them to prove us wrong, because tomorrow we’re going to be marching on the G20 summit and bringing this message to them.
This week we’ve seen Gordon Brown commit to going to Copenhagen and helping to finance climate adaptation. Japan’s new government has announced more ambitous climate targets, and China and India have come out with bigger cuts. German Chancellor Merkel and US President Obama are holding the rest of the G20 back when it comes to a fair, ambitious and binding global climate treaty.
