Copenhagen: * Rich Dumping on Poor? * Police Arresting Activists

The Guardian (UK) today published a piece headlined "Friends
of the Earth Among Activists Barred from Copenhagen Conference Center:
Security intensifies ahead of mass action to invade summit as 115 world
leaders arrive for high-level talks."

ANNE PETERMAN
Peterman is executive director of the Global Justice Ecology Project,
based in Vermont. She said: "The domination by corporations, the
refusal of the rich countries of the world to take responsibility for
the problems they have created and the emphasis on profit-oriented
false solutions, have led to a total disenchantment with the process."
The group with others issued a statement deploring the arrests of
accredited participants: "UN COP critics silenced with police action as
talks enter final days." See climatevoices.wordpress.com

SIMONE LOVERA
Based in Paraguay, Lovera is co-founder of the Global Forest Coalition.
She said today: "At this point the process [in Copenhagen] has become
ridiculously corrupt; many groups have been barred from the meetings.
In the streets, police are beating up totally peaceful people."

NICOLA BULLARD
Bullard, senior associate with the group Focus on the Global South,
said that the process is Copenhagen is not achieving "climate justice.
... By climate justice we mean that corporate globalization must be
stopped and governments must begin just transitions into a low carbon
economy. This means food and energy sovereignty, localization of
production and consumption and full recognition of indigenous peoples
and local community rights."

LIDY NACPIL
International coordinator of Jubilee South, Nacpil is based in the
Philippines. She said: "We should see the problem of climate change as
a debt that is owed by the rich countries to the rest of the world, to
the developing nations especially. ... [It's] clearly the
responsibility of rich countries, of corporations, for creating the
problem, for taking up the atmospheric space more than what they are
entitled to, so that the rest of the world, the developing world
especially, is deprived of that space and now have to deal with the
impacts of the problem that they [the rich countries] created." Nacpil
was interviewed on Democracy Now, which is broadcasting from Copenhagen, earlier this week.

Nacpil and other analysts and activists from around the world are
reachable via Hallie Boas, hallie@globaljusticeecology.org, and Orin
Langelle, orinl@globaljusticeecology.org, who are with the Global
Justice Ecology Project. Profiles of those available for interviews are
posted at New Voices on Climate Change.

The Guardian (UK) last week broke a story about an apparent
behind-the-scenes agreement that would further empower rich countries: "Copenhagen
Climate Summit in Disarray after 'Danish Text' Leak: Developing
countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand
more power to rich nations, sideline the UN's negotiating role and
abandon the Kyoto protocol."