Naomi Klein Kick-Starts the Activism at Copenhagen with Call for Disobedience

The Copenhagen deal may turn into the worst kind of disaster capitalism, Naomi Klein said last night. In her speech to Klimaforum09,
the "people's summit" she told the thousand or so campaigners and
activists that this was a chance to carry on building the new
convergence, the movement of movements that began "all those years ago
in Seattle, fighting against the privatisation of life itself". Here
was an opportunity to "continue the conversation that was so rudely
interrupted by 9/11".

"Down the road at the Bella Centre
[where delegates are meeting] there is the worst case of disaster
capitalism that we have ever witnessed. We know that what is being
proposed in the Bella Centre doesn't even come close to the deal that
is needed. We know the paltry emissions cuts that Obama has proposed;
they're insulting. We're the ones who created this crisis... on the
basic historical principle of polluters pays, we should pay."

Around the city, opening events were kicking off a fortnight of negotiations, debate and protest. In the morning Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the IPCC, and Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark, opened the conference with a plea for action.

Later,
in the centre of town special UN envoy Gro Harlem Brundtland and
climate change UN chief Yvo de Boer declared the heavily branded Hopenhagen
open, as a globe bearing a large Siemens logos was illuminated. The
popular Danish band Nephew kicked off (to bigger cheers than Brundtland
or de Boer).

And in the evening Klein joined with Henry Saragih, the general convenor of the Via Campesina movement, and international Friends of the Earth chair Nnimmo Bassey, to declare Klimaforum09 the "real event in Copenhagen".

Saragih called for food sovereignty
- greater power for small farmers - and said that changes to
agricultural practices could reduce carbon emissions by up to 50%.

Bassey
said that crude oil only appeared cheap because we do not pay the true
price, and told the audience; "Leave the oil in the soil, leave the
coal in the hole, leave the tarsand in the land". And Klein finished up:

We
have to be the lie detectors here. Let's not restrict ourselves to
polite marches and formulaic panel discussions. If Seattle was the
coming out party, this should be the coming of age party. And, as a
friend of mine called John Jordan says, I hope that we have grown up to
be even more disobedient. Why are thousands of us burning fossil fuels
to get here? Because we have to build a global mass movement that will
not allow leaders to get away with what they are trying to get away
with. Think of it as the mother of all carbon offsets.