MG & Allies hold Report Back on Copenhagen in Washington, D.C.

Evaluating Copenhagen:
What it Means for Ecology, Economy, and Equity

Tuesday, February 16th 7 pm – 9 pm

JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER THEATRE
1529 16TH STREET NORTHWEST
WASHINGTON, DC 20036

Featured Speakers:

•Martin Khor, Director of the South Centre

•Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Director of the Tebtebba Foundation and Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

•Maude Barlow, Chair of the Council of Canadians and Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the UN’s General Assembly

•Gopal Dayaneni, Movement Generation, head of delegation to Copenhagen for US grassroots leaders from urban, racial, economic and environmental justice groups

•Victor Menotti, Executive Director, International Forum on Globalization

This FREE event aims to:
• Provide alternative perspectives on the outcomes of the December 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen
• Reinforce the reasons why a UN climate process is so critical
• Point to possible ways forward to a successful conclusion at Cancun in December 2010

Sponsored by the International Forum on Globalization, Institute for Policy Studies, Oil Change International, Friends of the Earth, Movement Generation, and ActionAid.

Downloadable Flyer for DC Copenhagen Eval

Taking Stock & Looking Forward: Building Climate Justice in 2010

WHEN: Wednesday, January 20, 6:30-9:00 p.m.
WHERE: Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, 1440 Broadway, Suite 301, Oakland, CA 94612

Much of 2009 was defined by the visibility of Climate Justice organizing throughout the world, and the Bay was no exception. Mobilization for Climate Justice-West, led some of the strongest CJ organizing in the country leading up to Copenhagen. As we close out the year with the Failed Climate Negotiations, what next for Climate Justice organizing in the Bay Area and beyond?
Read more »

Towards a Coordinated and Powerful Climate Justice Movement in the US!

by Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan,
December 18, 2009 (updated 12/21)

The Copenhagen round of the UNFCCC 15^th Conference of Parties has ended in failure  It is essential for the future of life on this planet that we achieve a global pact based on sound science and equity soon.  But given that the U.S. and its key allies were not willing to consider a fair and binding agreement, it is highly encouraging to see that social movements and many third world nations successfully united behind the slogan, “No deal is better than a catastrophic deal.”

Sadly, the US has been unwilling to put forth real solutions with the speed and scale needed. Instead, Hilary Clinton arrived on Thursday trying to extort an unfair deal by offering a vague package of $100 billion that would amount to a new climate colonialism. At the same time, a UNFCC analysis was leaked showing that the combined offerings of the US and other countries would amount to at least a 3 degree Celsius rise.  This would mean the eradication of whole island nations, dire drought for Africa, and massive displacement from increasing storms and flooding in South Asia.
Read more »

What’s At Stake In Copenhagen

by Mateo Nube, December 17, 2009

La Paz, Bolivia, where I was born and spent my first 18 years “could perhaps be the first large urban casualty of climate change,” according to The New York Times. [1]   I’ve been tracking the melting glaciers that supply water to the La Paz metropolis for the last few years. Each year the pace of melting has outstripped prior predictions in dramatic fashion. As a kid and a teenager I used to visit the emblematic glacier, Chacaltaya, mentioned in the Times article.  It is now gone.  Extinct.  Scientists speculated that it would be gone by 2020; it formally disappeared this year.  The crisis is no longer a futuristic prediction.  It has arrived.  The human impact stands to be incredibly stark. Margarita Limachi Álvarez, a Bolivian woman living in a village impacted by receding glaciers was quoted in the Times article saying,  “A lot of us think about not having kids anymore.  Without water or food, how would we survive? Why bring them here to suffer?”

Let’s transpose that experience to a U.S. context:  Lake Mead, which is a major source of water for LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, Tucson, and Phoenix, has a 50% chance of being completely dry by 2021. [2]   That is only 11 years from now.  Major urban centers in Southwest U.S. are going to suffer dramatic decreases in water supplies within the next decade.

Tens of millions of lives are at stake in Copenhagen and beyond.  Literally.  Our profit- and growth-based economy has pushed the planet’s life systems to the brink.  Hence the motto on the streets of Copenhagen this week:  “We need Systems Change, not Climate Change.”  It’s way too late for compromises. Read more »

MG featured in Yes Magazine: How to Break the Climate Stalemate

by Gopal Dayaneni and Mateo Nube
go to full article >>>

Rich and poor countries are in this together. If either fails to step up, the planet is in trouble. A climate deal must take into account the Global North’s responsibility for nearly 70 percent of greenhouse pollution and the Global South’s need to move out of poverty. The North must cut back sharply on emissions while the South leapfrogs over the industrial age to clean-energy prosperity. Read more…