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Climate Discord: From Hopenhagen to Nopenhagen
Barack Obama said, minutes before racing out of the U.N. climate summit, "We will not be legally bound by anything that took place here today." These were among his remarks made to his own small White House press corps, excluding the 3,500 credentialed journalists covering the talks. It was late on Dec. 18, the last day of the summit, and reports were that the negotiations had failed. Copenhagen, which had been co-branded for the talks on billboards with Coke and Siemens as "Hopenhagen," was looking more like "Nopenhagen."
As I entered the Bella Center, the summit venue, that morning, I saw several dozen people sitting on the cold stone plaza outside the police line. Throughout the summit, people had filled this area, hoping to pick up credentials. Thousands from nongovernmental organizations and the press waited hours in the cold, only to be denied. On the final days of the summit, the area was cold and empty.
Most groups had been stripped of their credentials so the summit could meet the security and space needs for traveling heads of state, the U.N. claimed. These people sitting in the cold were engaged in a somber protest: They were shaving their heads. One woman told me, "I am shaving my head to show how really deeply touched I feel about what is happening in there. ... There are 6 billion people out there, and inside they don't seem to be talking about them." She held a white sign, with just a pair of quotation marks, but no words. "What does the sign say?" I asked her. She had tears in her eyes, "It says nothing because I don't know what to say anymore."
Obama reportedly heard Friday of a meeting taking place between the heads of state of China, India, Brazil and South Africa, and burst into the room, leading the group to consensus on "The Copenhagen Accord." One hundred ninety-three countries were represented at the summit, most of them by their head of state. Obama and his small group defied U.N. procedure, resulting in the nonbinding, take-it-or-leave-it document.
The accord at least acknowledges that countries "agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science ... so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius." For some, after eight years with President George W. Bush, just having a U.S. president who accepts science as a basis for policy might be considered a huge victory. The accord pledges "a goal of mobilizing jointly 100 billion dollars a year by 2020" for developing countries. This is less than many say is needed to solve the problem of adapting to climate change and building green economies in developing countries, and is only a nonbinding goal. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refused to specify the U.S. share, only saying if countries didn't come to an agreement it would not be on the table anymore.
Respected climate scientist James Hansen told me, "The wealthy countries are trying to basically buy off these countries that will, in effect, disappear," adding, "based on our contribution to the carbon in the atmosphere, [the U.S. share] would be 27 percent, $27 billion per year."
I asked Bolivian President Evo Morales for his solution. He recommends "all war spending be directed towards climate change, instead of spending it on troops in Iraq, in Afghanistan or the military bases in Latin America." According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2008 the 15 countries with the highest military budgets spent close to $1.2 trillion on armed forces.
Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, one of the major NGOs stripped of credentials, criticized the outcome of the Copenhagen talks, writing: "The United States slammed through a flimsy agreement that was negotiated behind closed doors. The so-called ‘Copenhagen Accord' is full of empty pledges." But he also applauded "concerned citizens who marched, held vigils and sent messages to their leaders, [who] helped to create unstoppable momentum in the global movement for climate justice."
Many feel that Obama's disruption of the process in Copenhagen may have fatally derailed 20 years of climate talks. But Pica has it right. The Copenhagen climate summit failed to reach a fair, ambitious and binding agreement, but it inspired a new generation of activists to join what has emerged as a mature, sophisticated global movement for climate justice.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
- Posted in
34 Comments so far
Show All"... it inspired a new generation of activists to join what has emerged as a mature, sophisticated global movement for climate justice."
We can only hope. Change will never come from within the u.s.'s borders. Global Climate Insurgents are the best bet.
Alas, we don't have a generation to screw around on this.
the insurgency must begin at once.
The people of the USA will not be bound by any pile of money the Wall Street pimps have paid their hooker in the White House either,
AD
And exactly how much time did the pres. spend at the Climate Conference for the photo-op?
Amy, your the queen of awful puns, and ridiculous headlines. please stop. just stop. i'm getting sick over here.
but i like DN! (without the puns, of course)
on another note, not one of your shows has ever seriously addressed the economic system (capitalism) as the root cause of the problem of climate change. in fact, it was only two guests that raised this as the core problem: Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez. (yes, i have been keeping track)
and if you want a snappy catch-phrase for this, here ya go:
"you can't have infinite growth on a finite planet"
stick that on your PB&J
Yes, and is not Naomi Klein such a lover of excessive wealth
capitalism, the way she comes on DemocracyNow.org once
a week and spends an hour bragging about the benefits of
capitalism. Has Naomi ever taken the time to read the book
Disaster Capitalism?
And how silly it was that Naomi got pepper sprayed during a
protest march in Copenhagen.
For agitkid, who can stomach a hypocrite, one so deceitful and
belligerent?
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/11/klein
NAOMI KLEIN: Over at the Bella Center, a particular model of dealing with climate change is dying. It is revealing itself before the world as nothing more than a final scramble for the remaining resources of a planet in peril. That’s what’s going on at the Bella Center. And when you’re in there, you can feel it. It feels really ugly.
There was a protest yesterday of people from Tuvalu, and they were making themselves visible. They were—I see all you nodding, because it’s been very odd in there. They were talking about the absence of their future, the disappearance of their country, which is a form of genocide. It meets the UN definition of genocide, which is the acts that lead to the disappearance of a people. And as they were staging this protest, you watched people in business suits file by and look at their shoes and try not to meet their eyes, in the way that you see people in the streets avert their eyes in the face of a homeless person. But this was a country that was disappearing. And that’s what it feels like over there...
We are seeing a redefinition of environmentalism, which has always been a bit of a kind of, sort of touchy-feely movement here in the North. “We’re all in it together. Let’s hold hands,” right? There’s nothing wrong with holding hands, but the fact is, we’re not all in it together in the same way. There is an inverse relationship between the people who created the problem and where the effects of those problems are being felt. There’s an inverse relationship between who created the problem and who can afford to save themselves from the problem, and it isn’t only in the Global South. Think about New Orleans. Right? It’s also the South in the North. The people who had resources could drive out of the disaster zone; the people who depended on the state were left on their roofs, a kind of a climate apartheid, in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, and also tenth anniversary edition of her No Logo is just out. She was speaking at the Klimaforum. She’s also blogging from Copenhagen at thenation.com.
Naomi is kinda middle ground though. She is the darling of the progressive intellectuals who made a killing off of No Logo by kinda describing what we, who actually shut down the WTO in '99, actual do. Don't get me wrong. I like Naomi's work.
Granted, she does deal with 'capitalism' in general when it comes to describing the behavior of the system, but i don't think she ever gave a critique of global warming explicitly from an anti-capitalist analysis; meaning she is calling for an anti-capitalist movement, a revolutionary anti-capitalist movement. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Further, let's be honest, about it, Disaster Capitalism is just a re-branding of longtime critiques of capital and the state that go back a century and a half. When that book came out, I was like 'duh'. It's not ground breaking to anyone paying attention, but it is to liberals who live in the U.S.
Finally, my critique is really with Goodman who never follows the line of questioning that goes deep into a systemic radical analysis. That line of thinking would link political economy and militarism and the state together, and ultimately to a radically different understanding of the world. Goodman routinely compartmentalizes analysis, as good as it may sometimes be.
What we need is systemic, wholistic analysis that is sorely lacking with DN! The logical conclusion, that I have drawn, is that we need a revolutionary anti-capitalist movement to undermine the power of the state and corporations, otherwise our species may not survive at all. Half-hearted measures are equivalent to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Anyone who knows not what Naomi Klein stands for belongs over at Huffington Post or Fox News.
Naomi Klein is the absolute best in describing the
corrupt relationship between capitalism and global warming.
Either you are locked in darkness or generating darkness.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/11/klein
how does Naomi feel property ownership plays in?
my position is that the world's citizens are locked into the world-killing industrial economy due to having had the planet's surface stolen from them, and held ransom...pay up or curl up...and die...
Naomi Klein has a specific perfection, a gifted ability to
give you the light you need to know what the corporate rich
plan to do next, how they use any disaster that comes along
to do it, and how painful will be your misery.
Her point is, let us first put excessive wealth capitalism
out of its misery and then argue about what kind of
economics will govern society.
Did you read anything I wrote?
I actually said I like her work. I have read Disaster Capitalism, have you? My critique comes from a place of comradery, not hate.
But to say she is the "best" in describing this relationship just means you haven't paid attention. I would put the work of Murray Bookchin and the folks at the Institute for Social Ecology way ahead of Naomi:
http://www.social-ecology.org
But instead of putting our hero Naomi down,
would it not have been far better if you built your hero Murray up?
Quote the man, give us some light as to where stands the man,
for now we know absolutely nothing about the man.
That's a really good point, and I agree. I'll get back to you about this when I have a minute. Thanks for the comment.
Politicians are no better or worse then the people they govern,
which means that our self-absorbed majority must feel that
capital growth and quick return on investments is of the highest
priority. High above an environment that will self-destruct
sometime after their organic bodies start pushing up daisies.
So our burden is to give an attitude adjustment to all those
with an illusion that they deserve more, which gives then a
guilt-free conscience as they take all they can take.
But life is short and if such a doomed existence is all we get,
then exactly what do we deserve?
But then, is what we deserve really the issue? For what would
be the best for humanity, an attitude that would be the most
harmless and friendly, should not this determine how our laws
should be written?
For now all our laws reinforce the capitalist ideal that we all
deserve to be rich.
Bottom line: Every aspect of the mind character and personality is
set in concrete, and totally dependent on, what one feels they deserve.
The US must spend all that money on war, because its the only way they can secure the oil in and near those countries. If we don't have lots of (cheap) oil, we won't have an economic recovery and we'll continue to lose jobs.
We can't have it both ways and ALL of us need to decide: Do we want jobs and a growing economy (and our money and the lives of our soldiers spent on wars to maintain it, with no concern for climate impacts?) or do we want a livable planet, our remaining tax money spent to bolster renewable energies where feasible and help us build resilience in our communities? Rather than "jobs" using a lot of resources, and getting paychecks to buy things to meet our needs - food for example, a lot more of us would be involved in growing food. Its a fantasy to think a "green" economy is one that would employ as many people as a brown one- that is a fossil fuel based economy. It ain't gonna happen.
Trying to do both is like holding a flamethrower in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other. Can't have it both ways.
"Trying to do both is like holding a flamethrower in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other. Can't have it both ways."
great...
of the two, I would suggest the flamethrower be the one extinguished...all 'flamethrowers', everywhere, on September 22, 2012...
Let's get those gardens growing!
Why 9-12-12?
2012 is the new Y2K.
False dichotomy.
There are all kinds of senses and ways in which an economy might grow. It could become larger in the usual sense by spending on constructive instead of destructive things.
It could grow closer to sanity by directing resources to ameliorate need rather than create it.
So Obama invoked the Bush Doctrine: "We will not be legally bound by anything that took place here today."
Exactly what anyone ought to expect from Public Enemy #1.
Ignorance is the disease and the Internet is the cure.
We can no longer wait for governments to do the right thing.
Our environment (air, water, land) is suffering and so are we, as a result of our actions, or inaction.
51% of C02 emissions are the direct result of livestock products.
Denying the impact our food choices make on the planet, is like denying there is climate change (pollution).
It's time we all made the effort and begin eating healthier alternatives to animal products.
Please check out this website detailing the work of Robert Goodland, retired lead environmental adviser at World Bank Group 23 years and Jeff Anhang, research officer and environmental specialist at World Bank International Finance:
www.worldwatch.org/ww/livestock.
But changing diet for most people is harder then changing religions, for in 35 years of teaching nutrition little to no sucess has been my efforts.
Anyway, the only way to get global warming turned around
is a mass rebellion, so may be kick into action.
Obama didn't disrupt the climate talks, he helped them.
And why are we looking to the UN to solve anything? Kyoto was a disaster, emissions rose. Any treaty on climate from the UN will not be enforced and has no punishments for non-compliance. This is the wrong approach.
People who expected miracles at Copenhagen are misguided. The "summit" did exactly what it was designed to do, distract us so individual countries don't get going on what needs to be done.
From now on, push your own governments to stop emissions and shut down coal plants. Don't wait for the UN. The UN is good for some things, but not this. There is no enforcement and Kyoto didn't work.
We need real people doing the work. Get busy. This wasn't Obama's fault.
He screwed up as much as he could.
To simpify: corporate profits vs. well-being for the rest of us.
"... just having a U.S. president who accepts science as a basis for policy might be considered a huge victory."
This would be a great statement if it were true. If there is any "science" with those that promote global warming its "junk science".
So, the fact that emails were leaked exposing this whole global warming theory as a con, that doesn't figure, isn't even worth a mention.
The fact that the writers of the accord were forced to show their secret draft that exposes this whole thing as a scam to rape the developing countries by the international central banks even more than they are now, as they dismantle the industrial countries. That, I suppose doesn't matter either.
This site is nothing but a breeding ground for sheeple who would believe anything shown to them that comes packaged in something shinny. Forget that MSM plummets you with lies, never giving the thousands of scientists that oppose this theory a voice, just believe what you hear, don't do any research of your own, after all, if its on TV it must be true - right?
I mean what could go wrong? You give unlimited power to elite international bankers, bankers that are not elected, and who can't be held accountable. You allow a totally new Ponsi game in the guise of Carbon Trading, that will enrich the rich, do nothing to curtail pollution, indeed it will promote it, and there isn't one dissenting voice against this. Just a site full of sheeple being lead to their own slaughter, happily baying to those that would see them enslaved.
Never have so many been so fooled by so few.
"... just having a U.S. president who accepts science as a basis for policy might be considered a huge victory."
This would be a great statement if it were true. If there is any "science" with those that promote global warming its "junk science".
So, the fact that emails were leaked exposing this whole global warming theory as a con, that doesn't figure, isn't even worth a mention.
The fact that the writers of the accord were forced to show their secret draft that exposes this whole thing as a scam to rape the developing countries by the international central banks even more than they are now, as they dismantle the industrial countries. That, I suppose doesn't matter either.
This site is nothing but a breeding ground for sheeple who would believe anything shown to them that comes packaged in something shinny. Forget that MSM plummets you with lies, never giving the thousands of scientists that oppose this theory a voice, just believe what you hear, don't do any research of your own, after all, if its on TV it must be true - right?
I mean what could go wrong? You give unlimited power to elite international bankers, bankers that are not elected, and who can't be held accountable. You allow a totally new Ponsi game in the guise of Carbon Trading, that will enrich the rich, do nothing to curtail pollution, indeed it will promote it, and there isn't one dissenting voice against this. Just a site full of sheeple being lead to their own slaughter, happily baying to those that would see them enslaved.
Never have so many been so fooled by so few.
thousands you say. prove it, where are these thousands at, hhmmm. i'm honestly interested.
Support?
Any whatsoever?
Climate Discord: From Hopenhagen to Nopenhagen
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Since Amerika's tyrannical plutocracy has set a new standard for self-centered, socially irresponsible escapism, I never feel more patriotic than when I vacation in Dopenhagen.
· Yr Obd't Servant
EVO !!