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For Immediate Release
Contact: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

The Real Climate-Gate? WikiLeaks and Climate Talks

WASHINGTON

The United Nations summit on the climate crisis is continuing this week in Cancun, Mexico. The following are there and reachable for interviews:

MICHAEL DORSEY
Professor of global environmental policy at Dartmouth College, Dorsey can comment on events in Cancun as well as the U.S. diplomatic cables recently released by WikiLeaks regarding climate negotiations. See in the Guardian: "WikiLeaks cables reveal how U.S. manipulated climate accord: Embassy dispatches show America used spying, threats and promises of aid to get support for Copenhagen accord."

ORIN LANGELLE
JEFF CONANT
Langelle and Conant are with the Global Justice Ecology Project. They can arrange interviews with a number of activists on global warming and climate disruption from around the world currently at the summit.

Also, see climatevoices.wordpress.com

Conant said today: aEURoeThe WikiLeaks cables reveal that the can-do, earth-saving rhetoric of the U.S. administration masks disturbing behind-the-scenes efforts to sabotage the climate negotiations. The U.S. is putting economic interests ahead of its moral and environmental responsibilities. The WikiLeaks cables open a window, too, into the disturbing nature of the policies themselves: a policy like REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), and carbon offsets in general, are fronts not only for evading moral and political responsibility, but for denying land rights to peasants and indigenous peoples, while allowing dirty industries to continue driving climate change."

LAURA CARLSEN
Carlsen is director of the Mexico City-based Americas Program of the Center for International Policy. She said today: "It's a foregone conclusion that world leaders will fail to win a binding agreement on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming at the COP [conference of the parties] 16 in Cancun. Although they'll announce 'progress' toward continued talks next round, their inaction will mark an historic failure and an affront to future generations.

"Meanwhile, the proposed market-based mechanisms to supposedly mitigate climate change, like the UN forestation program REDD, instead of solving the climate change crisis, pose threats to governments' regulatory role and local and national stewardship of natural resources."

She recently wrote a piece titled "In Mexico City, a Message for Cancun."

Democracy Now is broadcasting from the summit this week: democracynow.org

A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.