It\’s Getting Hot In Here

It’s been over a week since the Copenhagen climate talks ended. Most bloggers and pundits have taken a couple days off from 24-7 prognostication, so it feels safe for me to venture into the fold and submit my humble take on what happened at COP15, and what it means for the global climate movement. First, I’d like to look back at the last couple years of the climate movement leading up to the Copenhagen talks.

note: this is a long post – click here to see the whole piece

The movement comes of age

Let’s step into our time machine for a moment and take a trip back to Bali, Indonesia, where COP13 was held in December 2007. Still logjammed by the Bush administration’s oil-slicked representatives, delegates from other countries agreed to the Bali Roadmap, basically an agreement to keep moving towards an agreement, with vague topical goalposts along the way: technology transfer, forests, financing, adaptation and, of course, the elusive carbon cuts.

Even with the US delegation blocking progress at every level, there was a sense of momentum, and with US elections coming up, a flickering light shown at the end of the tunnel. In 2007, the climate movement also came of age.

All over the world, climate activists — in particular young people — realized that nobody would save the world from catastrophic climate change for them. They would have to do it themselves. In Australia, India, the US, all over Africa, in Mexico, China, Europe and the Middle East, activists began forming coalitions of social justice, environmental, faith and other progressive groups to take on the fossil fuel interests and intransigant elected officials.

While many of these groups existed before 2007, a combination of innovative public campaigning, shocking scientific reports and natural disasters vaulted climate change into the center of the political arena. In a sense, that year was when the global climate movement came of age – two major organizing pushes in the US (Step It Up 2007 and Powershift 07) inspired a rash of similar events around the world over the next two years. As the Bali negotiations came to a close, the movement learned about a new number that would set a goalpost for years to come: 350 — the safe level of carbon in the atmosphere in parts per million.

While the results of the Bali negotiations proved to be nothing more than a band-aid on the international climate negotiation process, the two weeks spent there helped activists forge relationships and ideas that would serve us well throughout the next two years.

Continue reading ‘Copenhagen: Triumph or Failure?’

UPDATE: Everyone is out!

Iran is not the only place where government agencies are trying to (marginally) disrupt people advocating for change.

Today, the West Virginia State Police picked up four Climate Ground Zero activists at home in Rock Creek on some old charges from October.  Back during a peaceful march organized by seniors against mountaintop removal led by 81 year old Roland Micklem, two young activists –Gabe Schwartzman, 19, and David German, 18– were arrested for unfurling a banner on top of Walker CAT’s headquarters.  The charges are related to that banner drop.  Last month, the state police arrested Micklem over the same incident.

As a result of the Oct. banner hang, Walker CAT president Steve Walker equated the anti-MTR activists holding a banner on his propert with terrorist suicide bombers, that’s right, suicide bombers.  Beyond the insult to real victims of actual suicide bombers, Walker’s comment had only the intention of creating more tension in a West Virginia already marred by violence and intimidation.

Next month, Climate Ground Zero will have a three week winter action camp which will prepare 30-50 anti-MTR activists in the Coal River Valley to carry out civil disobedience actions.

Could these arrests be a pre-emptive arrest to disrupt Climate Ground Zero’s activities?

We’ve spent 2009 escalating the fight to end mountaintop removal.  The coal industry spent 2009 escalating their rhetoric (example above) to cast us as “extremists” and “terrorists,” and encouraging intimidation and violence in the coalfields.  Now West Virginia law enforcement is arresting activists and lead organizers in Rock Creek on “old” charges.

Continue reading ‘Four Anti-Mountaintop Removal Activists Arrested at Home’

Monthly page views since May '07 when we moved to wordpress.com. Stats calculated by wordpress.

The global youth movement came to a bit of a peak this month, and IGHIH not only reflected it, we wrote it as it was happening.  Just take a look at our monthly traffic over the past 3 years.  December was the biggest month by far, topping 100,000 views. An epic youth climate sit-in at the Bella Center in Copenhagen (live-blogged by Whit Jones), but it was by no means the only amazing instance of activists telling the story in their own words, and the world listening.

For commentary on the decade and the 5 year history of this site, other people will need to do step in, since I’ve only been involved here for 2 years.  But you’re in luck! In January, over a dozen veteran youth climate activists who’ve been involved here for longer than me will post as part of the “Climate Generation” series – stay tuned for updates.

Also in January, there will be a bit of an overhaul process.  We’ll start with a survey on how the site works for readers, writers and partner organizations.  That feedback will go into a proposal to make changes to how this whole thing works, which should start to be implemented by the end of the month.  We’ll be revamping the ‘events and opportunities’ page to make it easier to post and also overhauling the list of contributors and authors.  Lastly, the editorial board needs some fresh blood, and recruitment will start at the end of the month.  Like to promote the voices of the youth climate movement?  Lets talk.

Now to really geek out, here are this month’s most viewed posts, referring sites, web searches and outgoing links.  Hold your breath, hold it, hold it, here it is…. Continue reading ‘How’s the Blog Doing? (Holy Crap!)’

While the international drama around the Copenhagen climate negotiations has unfolded this month, activists in Oregon have simultaneously been continuing the struggle to keep high-carbon liquefied natural gas (LNG) out of the western US.  This December saw several important developments in the fight – some good and some bad – which I’ve attempted to summarize below.  A quick preview of the highlights: US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (yeah it’s in Maryland, not Oregon) each took actions that spell hope for activists working to keep LNG out of Oregon, and out of the country. Continue reading ’4th Circuit Court & Senator Wyden Stick it to FERC Over LNG’

I probably don’t even need to provide a link to “How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room,”  Mark Lynas’s recent Guardian article that has found itself at the center of so many a post-Copenhagen conversation.  Chances are you’ve read it.  Just in case: Of China’s role in this month’s round of UN climate talks, Lynas says, “China’s strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world’s poor once again.”

Continue reading ‘Getting Past “Blame China”’

I spent eight weeks traveling Europe with a group of 13 AVAAZ climate activists from five different continents, organizing for a better Copenhagen.  For the past three days I’ve been trying to make sense of what happened in the final moments of that journey.

The story of Copenhagen began in Bali, Indonesia two years ago. After an intensive two weeks of negotiations, 192 countries, including the Bush Administration, signed on to the Bali Roadmap, a plan to complete a binding global climate treaty in Copenhagen. The Bali Roadmap was a political agreement acknowledging that the evidence for the planet warming is “unequivocal”, and that further delays in reducing emissions would further increase the risks of “severe climate change impacts.”

Deepa Gupta speaks to a crowd of onlookers during a global hunger strike for climate justice event in Copenhagen

Fast forward to 2009 – after two years of high level negotiations and new peer-reviewed scientific findings warning that climate change is accelerating faster than previously anticipated, the stakes had been raised for Copenhagen. In the first week and a half of the negotiations, leaders from small island states like the Maldives and Tuvalu and from African countries already being thrust into water-related conflicts from extreme drought resisted threats and bribes from developed countries as they insisted on an ambitious and fair legal treaty committed to containing warming below 1.5 degrees C. Tensions ran high and the talks were deadlocked as rich nations and emerging economies blamed each other and the most vulnerable.

After nine hours of direct negotiations from world leaders on the final day, a weak agreement was reached by a diverse group of interests. The three-page Copenhagen Accord is by all accounts far short of the ambitious and fair legal treaty promised in Bali. While it does finally tie emerging economies like China and India in with the United States under the same climate agreement, it also punts most of the hard decisions down the road another year.

At most the Copenhagen Accord can be called another baby step forward, when the world needed a bold leap. The reason for this colossal failure of leadership was a No Ambition Coalition of the United States and China. Held hostage by fossil fuel lobbyists and an addiction to a 20th century growth paradigm, China held out against a legally-binding outcome and international verification of emission targets while the United States refused to budge from their weak emission targets.

Continue reading ‘Understanding Copenhagen’

Young clean energy & climate companions,

The following is an enlightening piece from the Huffington Post by David Gershon, one of our movement’s older-in-body-but-young-at-heart  visionary thinkers and author of the just-released book, Social Change 2.0, which I highly recommend you check out.  I invite you to read carefully, consider implications for our strategies moving forward, and let me know if you’d like to get connected to David:

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The political leaders of the world that gathered in Copenhagen had the unenviable responsibility of forging a strategy to pull humankind back from the brink of a dire future. What ultimately will come from this meeting is uncertain, but whatever occurs, the challenge ahead is immense. According to conservative climate change science, we need to stabilize concentrations of carbon dioxide at 400 ppm and then begin reducing it to 350 ppm to avoid triggering a cascading set of irreversible tipping points. To be successful in this task requires us to develop a solution to achieve by 2020 what the current treaty being negotiated hopes to achieve by 2050 — an 80 percent reduction in CO2 emissions.

The scale and speed of change required goes well beyond anything political leaders have ever had to contemplate, much less achieve. And even if the political will were there to achieve this level and speed of carbon reduction, the social change 1.0 tools at their disposal — command and control, and financial incentives — are not designed for this type of rapid, transformative change. They were purposely designed over two centuries ago for gradual, incremental change.

Continue reading ‘Solution in the Wake of Copenhagen — If Governments Can’t, People Can’

Rising Tide North America is pleased to announce www.WhatIsCop15.net – an instant archive project compiling some of the incredible work of the global climate movement at and in the lead up to the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen (the 15th Conference of the Parties or COP15).

Much has been said about the failure and collapse of the climate of COP15 last weekend to reach a binding agreement, and you’ll find lots of analysis at www.WhatIsCop15.net.

But the real story from the climate summit — which at best was expected expand the carbon market and entrench corporate control of climate policy — is a happy one.

It’s the massive organizing success and coming of age of the climate justice movement. 100,000 in the streets, tens of thousands in attendance at the climate justice oriented Klimaforum, and countless actions against the root causes of climate change.

www.WhatIsCop15.net compiles images, reports, videos, reflections and education resources from COP 15, to thank those who organized for climate justice in Copenhagen and to inspire those of us who weren’t there to equally monumental actions.

Whether you’ve been struggling to keep up with the news or were there in Copenhagen, we invite you to learn, enjoy, and spread the word about the online archive! We’d love it if you contributed content as well!

@UNFCCC #COP15 #FAIL. You could have tweeted it before any arriving delegates strolled from their jets to their waiting limos. All that sign waving (and wow was there a lot of it!) inspired millions waving their own banners at home, but the windowless plenary wasn’t paying attention. A significant number of anarchists got beat up and gave the mainstream media their cover story. In the end we observed a handful of rich countries smoking cigars in a backroom, playing dice with human life. The UN, of course, did “take note.” So did we, and clearly we’re not clicking any “Like” buttons on this one.

What are we going to do? Shout louder? Damn straight. Sign 365 new petitions before COP16? Hell yes. Consolidate our resources into the most powerful lobbying organization in the world? YE… um, what?

Not kidding. There are limits to non-violence. We’ve reached them. It’s time to enter the ring, line the gloves with brass knuckles and bloody the opposition. I mean that figuratively. Put the brass knuckles down.

In concrete terms, we must, right now, consolidate our movement, enlist the best of the best lobbyists, persuade middle-America into a sustainability frenzy and get ourselves elected to local government where we can be most effective. Our united campaign must start immediately. We’ve got until the elections next November.

That’s the general vision. Details after the jump.
Continue reading ‘A Time For Pragmatism’