by Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan,

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.

The Obama Administration has offered cuts amounting to 4% from 1990 levels by 2020. To survive, the Island Nations, African Union, and other third world governments such as Bolivia joined with Indigenous People and others to call for industrialized nations to cut emissions by 49% from 1990 levels by 2020. They are demanding real solutions to the dire mitigation and adaptation issues they face.

Increasingly coordinated social movements and many 3^rd World governments held the line that no deal is better than a genocidal pact. Given this context, this is an important victory for the global south & impacted communities in the north on the path to winning:

- rapid, deep reductions in emissions;
- payment of climate debt;
- a rights-based approach to international and domestic climate change policy; and
- the inclusion of our communities in the processes.

On Thursday, December 17, US grassroots forces from impacted communities stepped up to challenge our government’s obstructive behavior.  Representatives of indigenous communities and other communities of color from the US and Canada delivered a letter to President Obama calling on him to act accountably and responsibly.

Today, Movement Generation stands proud to be building a powerful climate justice movement with

- Indigenous Peoples Movements
- Environmental Justice Communities and Coalitions
- Right to the City Alliance
- Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and
- Just Transition Alliance

We must build a powerful climate justice movement that can successfully pressure the US government to act accountably and responsibly.

The next round of negotiations will take place in Mexico City in late 2010.  Not just about climate, as Gopal Dayaneni says, “these negotiations are about everything, international trade; forests; food and agriculture; the rights of the indigenous and forest peoples; resource privatization; international finance (private and public); development rights; oceans; rivers; technology; intellectual property; migration, displacement and refugees; and biodiversity, to name a few. The reduction of emissions is only one part of the negotiations.”

One outcome could be that the ruling elites win an agreement that sets up a new global infrastructure for maintaining inequity amidst an increasingly militarized world where the rich control scarce food, water, land, and energy resources.  Or our social movements could use the next year to build our power to win a pact that helps us transition out of a capitalist system that is clearly broken and towards liberated communities that control our own land, water, and energy systems.

We must build this power starting in our own communities: talking with members, taking local action to frame the problem and the solutions. Along the way, the US Social Forum will be a critical space to align our movements and articulate an irresistible vision.

TAKE ACTION
As our delegation departs Copenhagen over the next few days, we call on you to stay connected to this historic effort to build a powerful climate justice movement led by frontline communities in the U.S.

- Look out for Report Backs & Strategy Sessions in January 2010
- Sign on to the Letter to President Obama
- Integrate Climate Justice into your basebuilding, leadership development, campaigns, and alliance building.
- Gear up to make Climate Justice a central frame of our movements at the US Social Forum through your workshops and other movement building work.

Social movements in the U.S. must seize 2010 to build our power towards winning System Change Not Climate Change. This is our moment to move millions to win a world driven by healing, cooperation, mutual aid, and a healthy relationship to the ecosystems we are a part of.

Here are some highlights on the work of the delegation & my work here so far:

1) “No Decisions About Us Without Us!”

They are severely restricting access to the Bella Center for Civil Society as of today, and the restrictions on badges (and the requirement for secondary badges) means that many accredited delegations from impacted communities, north and south, are excluded from the process. There will be an action today and a press conference about the restricted access, and we are organizing folks under the message, “No Decisions About Us Without Us.”

2) RECLAIM POWER ACTION– Wednesday

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is the MAJOR action, called RECLAIM POWER. Folks from outside will march to the Bella center (COP) and come up to, and possibly through, the gate to meet a civil society and country delegate walk-out of the talks to make a “Peoples’ Assembly”. At the front of the march to the Bella center will be southern peoples and other impacted peoples who are accredited and not allowed access. This is the Seattle-ing of Copenhagen.

Remember, if Parties of Conference walk out (that means country delegates) the whole thing comes to a halt, because it is a consensus process. We think we have several southern countries.

If we frame the collapse, we build our power moving forward. If we frame the collapse, we have a year to build up our base, and support the work of our allies who are engaged in all the processes. What we can move, or stop, in the COP is one way to measure our power. Here, you can’t talk about climate without talking about Climate Justice. For most, that means try to take away it’s meaning. But it has also shifted the debate significantly. Equity is central. Even mainstream NGOs are talking about debt. Stern was forced to say “climate debt” which is incredible, even if to deny it (you can not deny a frame without evoking it first).

Nothing good will come from this COP, so the question is who gets to frame the collapse. Do we get to frame it as Civil Society and Southern Countries say, “We won’t settle for Death.”  or will Northern countries blame the collapse on “China and the G77.” Or will the rich countries cobble together a bad deal that is a Political Agreement and not a legally binding treaty, and then say, “we did it,” when in fact they have done nothing but waste more time.

3) Danish Cops are Keeping the People’s Voices Out!

The Danish cops are coming down very hard on demonstrations. Last night it is reported that Naomi Klein was tear gassed.

4) Towards Strategic Alignment of Movements

We helped pull together a meeting of POC/EJ/RJ forces form the US yesterday that was one of the first to get unity. We are sending a letter to Obama (as a vehicle) to talk about both that we stand with the south, and that “what is bad for the south is bad for us too.”  (see media advisory)

I gave a talk with Naomi Klein the other day and the whole delegation will be getting together with her later this week.
Oh- and we have been quite successful in moving this idea that there is a “south of the north” and some of the new messaging for Reclaim Power and other things have included the idea of “the global south and climate impacted communities in the north.”

We also pulled together a meeting last night of Global South folks and grassroots groups from the North (all people of color) to a meeting that included some amazing folks. That was very well attended, and I think good. We’ve been finding ways of engaging, for sure.

5)  WEDNESDAY MORNING (6:30am COP time)

We have the big RECLAIM POWER action this morning, in which we will march with La Via Campesina, Jubilee South and Focus on the Global South onto the Bella Center, and then, possible, through the gate and meet up with folks walking out from the inside.

Access to the COP has been severely restricted by the UN, resulting in the vast majority of people, even accredited people like us, being locked out of the process.

Okay, we have to move, we are anchoring one section of the mobilization.

Following are notes from Karen Orenstein, FoE US
December 11, 2009, Copenhagen

Fundamental is issue of 1.5 degrees C and 350 ppm. Centrality of this is a deal that cannot save god, humanity and nature is not a deal we should entertain in the first place.

2 degrees is a trade off between life, humanity and profits and revenue seeking pursuits. It has no basis in science.

IPCC says 2 degrees will result in Africa warming up to 3.5. Small island states equally threatened by sea level rise. Two degrees C is certain death for Africa, certain devastation of island states. A policy decision maker, a scientist who tried to do that is definitely is not only ill advising others, he is ill advising himself. Fundamental, if not starting proposition, for beginning sound negotiations and discussions.

Second issue is issue of emissions reductions. Must be radical reductions of emissions, starting from now. In our view, by 2017, we should cut developed countries must cut by 52%, 65% by 2020, 80% by 2030, well above 100% by 2050. The more you defer action, the more you condemn millions of people to immeasurable suffering. The idea that you start from 4% today and achieve 80 or 50 in 2050 simply means that you do not care about the lives of people who will be devastated until you pick up the pace. This is one of the reasons we have asked the American administration, people, Obama – to join the effort and to join KP. We must defend KP. Those who think not defending Kp is the way forward are totally misguided b/c if you eliminate the balance of obligations between developed and developing countries, and I’ll say this to our colleagues from western civil society you have definitely a small group of industrialists and their representatives in their executive branch. You have become an instrument of your governments. Whatever you say it’s because it’s tactically shrewd or not, it’s an error that you should not continue to make. Having said that, we do believe equally that a very significant, substantial financial package both for short term and long term is necessary. How do we define that? It’s simple. Developed countries must avail in the next 5 years fast track financing – 1% of GNP of developed countries — $400-500B, depending on what happens to their economies. Of this, $150B can be issued with immediate effect, b/c as we sepeak today IMF is sitting over $250SDRs that are not allocated. Many of you would say that’s a lot of money. Think about how much is poured into your defense budgets, and which wars are you fighting. Is there another war greater than this war on climate change? I don’t think so. Let me equally give you the fallacy as to how big this amount – EU proucly announce 2.4 B available for now, but $300 billion is amount bankers in London city pocketed this year. So ask yourself, are your executive branches climate skeptics, notwithstanding their utterances like UK PM that the cost of inaction on climate change is irreparable – his actions say he’s a climate skeptic. If he allows bankers to get $300B and says UK max is $500 million to support climate change. What are we saying? What are you saying?. I wonder what the distinguished colleagues from CAN are saying about that. Moreover, we do believe that what is important here in this particular conference is decision-making. There’s a lot of fallacy being spread that we need a new legal instrument. Well, a decision is a legal instrument. Accord decision is binding. Accord decision is biind. Legal instrument means that you as civil society are choosing that you as civil society are choosing that there shall be no action for another 15 years. How many years did it take environmentalists to convince decision makers?

Many of you equally, and I never thought one day I would accuse a civil society of such thing – helping divide G77 is simply something should be left to the CIAs, KGBs, and the rest. It’s mind-boggling, and I say this having been the beneficiary of absolute support from civil society. I come from southern Sudan – we’ve been through wars for almost 90% of lives since independence.

US people and civil society have a very important role to play. One reason is the US is P1 and b/c it’s the greater emitter historically and per capita and it wields huge power both of influence and signaling direction. And that basically what led us to conclude that call upon Obama to join KP. We understand the difficulties he is in – a deep sense of conservative isolationism. It’s an American phenomemnon that you all know – it was reluctant to anything during WWII until Churchill persuaded them to join in, but when they joined, peace prevailed. They have this notion of exceptionalism.  US signaled when they voted Obama into office. Notwittstanding difficulties, problem is not with the Congress, problem is with the conservative laggard of an industrial complex. You have to persuade your Congress to join with the 18 who wrote to Pres Obama. Occidentals and orientals – that China is the obstacle to a deal. 3 things we say about China – there are more people in China than the entire of Africa, the only way to help China to reduce rapidly its emissions is rapid tech transfer, the poor Chinese have a right which we must support  – a right to development. The conservative thinking that it’s all about national strategic advantage and compeitiion is not going to help us. What I ask of Obama is to join, as a precedent, as the leader of industrialized nations, to join KP, to refuse a deal based on 2 that will condemn Africa and small islands to death and to help finance a global deal on climate change. Remember what US did after war to Europe. It was 66% of global economy. It launched a Marshall Plan that was 3.2% of US economy.  When you factor in Europe had a capacity and the know how, you can see that the toal package necessary as a starting point for addressing climate change from public finance is not less than 5%. And it’s common sensical, without going to economics, if you have a house that has decayed or if you have a school in your neighborhood that has been built or infect by asbestos, how much would it cost to repair it. Not less than 30% of its price. If US did that before, Pres Obama should follow in that tradition, in saying to rest of the world, we are able, we have more htan sufficient financing and capital, to help not only the poor but to help ourselves. There will be many more Katrinas in the US. The same is true of the Europeans. How come suddenly you have turned mean, b/c that $2.5B is what some industrialists lose without a sleep over a trade. And I do want you to ask Pres. Obama a simple question – b/c as he is an American citizen, he is an extended citizen, if there is such a notion, of Africa. Doesn’t that lay on him more obligation to do what he can? Shouldn’t he commit to the principles on which many of us find ourselves fascinated and grateful that there is someone like him as president of US. B/c if it’s b/c his advisors are part and parcel of the Bush administration or the Reagenized Democrats, then he should do something about htat. He is the pres, after all. If he is thinking this will save his political life for the next term, then inaction will lead to the opposite. A leader act, takes tough stands. If healthcare is so imporatn, and he is fighting that battle, climate change is 100 times more important, and it is your as American civil society to help build that momentum. Yes, your task is a tough one b/c you ar emoving from a very low base, but that’s part of life. We will not give up b/c the West have absolute power and accept whatever choices they will make. We will continue to defend the interest of our people and the whole world. This equally applies to the Australians, New Zealand, Japan and many other develop countries’ leaders. Many of them have been elected to office b/c they claim they support climate change, but maybe I have to give it to the lobbyists to twist their minds in such a short time that Kevin Rudd, who was only p.m. who came to Bali to say climate change matters, and then his delegation is the complete opposite of that. So I want just to say join hands with those of us who really want a real change b/c I’m confident it will come. And it will come whether you do or you don’t. But let it not be the case that western civil society sided with the power that be in the West. Thank you!

Q and A:

Africa Group has said 50% mitigation, 50% adaptation. 2 other areas where huge efforts need to be launched asap is renewable energy.

China is not looking for money, looking for technology cooperation.

Many western are playing divide and rule. That’s the story of the $10B. Won’t buy food or coffins.

This is nothing. Well, nothing by comparison to what’s coming. The financial crisis for which we must now pay so heavily prefigures the real collapse, when humanity bumps against its ecological limits.

As we goggle at the fluttering financial figures, a different set of numbers passes us by. On Friday, Pavan Sukhdev, the Deutsche Bank economist leading a European study on ecosystems, reported that we are losing natural capital worth between $2 trillion and $5 trillion every year, as a result of deforestation alone(1). The losses incurred so far by the financial sector amount to between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion. Sukhdev arrived at his figure by estimating the value of the services – such as locking up carbon and providing freshwater – that forests perform, and calculating the cost of either replacing them or living without them. The credit crunch is petty when compared to the nature crunch.

The two crises have the same cause. In both cases, those who exploit the resource have demanded impossible rates of return and invoked debts that can never be repaid. In both cases we denied the likely consequences. I used to believe that collective denial was peculiar to climate change. Now I know that it’s the first response to every impending dislocation.

Gordon Brown, for example, was as much in denial about financial realities as any toxic debt trader. In June last year, during his Mansion House speech, he boasted that 40 per cent of the world’s foreign equities are now traded here. “I congratulate you Lord Mayor and the City of London on these remarkable achievements, an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London.”(2) The financial sector’s success had come about, he said, partly because the government had taken “a risk-based regulatory approach”. In the same hall three years before, he pledged that “in budget after budget I want us to do even more to encourage the risk takers”(3). Can anyone, surveying this mess, now doubt the value of the precautionary principle?

Ecology and economy are both derived from the Greek word oikos – a house or dwelling. Our survival depends upon the rational management of this home: the space in which life can be sustained. The rules are the same in both cases. If you extract resources at a rate beyond the level of replenishment, your stock will collapse. That’s another noun which reminds us of the connection. The OED gives 69 definitions of stock. When it means a fund or store, the word evokes the trunk – or stock – of a tree, “from which the gains are an outgrowth”(4). Collapse occurs when you prune the tree so heavily that it dies. Ecology is the stock from which all wealth grows.

The two crises feed each other. As a result of Iceland’s financial collapse, it is now contemplating joining the European Union, which means surrendering its fishing grounds to the Common Fisheries Policy. Already the prime minister Geir Haarde has suggested that his countrymen concentrate on exploiting the ocean(5). The economic disaster will cause an ecological disaster.

Normally it’s the other way around. In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond shows how ecological crisis is often the prelude to social catatrosphe(6). The obvious example is Easter Island, where society disintegrated soon after the population reached its highest historical numbers, the last trees were cut down and the construction of stone monuments peaked. The island chiefs had competed to erect ever bigger statues. These required wood and rope (made from bark) for transport and extra food for the labourers. As the trees and soils on which the islanders depended disappeared, the population crashed and the survivors turned to cannibalism. (Let’s hope Iceland doesn’t go the same way.) Diamond wonders what the Easter islander who cut down the last palm tree might have thought. “Like modern loggers, did he shout ‘Jobs, not trees!’? Or: ‘Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we’ll find a substitute for wood.’? Or: ‘We don’t have proof that there aren’t palms somewhere else on Easter … your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering’?”(7).

Ecological collapse, Diamond shows, is as likely to be the result of economic success as of economic failure. The Maya of Central America, for example, were among the most advanced and successful people of their time. But a combination of population growth, extravagant construction projects and poor land management wiped out between 90 and 99% of the population. The Mayan collapse was accelerated by “the competition among kings and nobles that led to a chronic emphasis on war and erecting monuments rather than on solving underlying problems”(8). Does any of this sound familiar?

Again, the largest monuments were erected just before the ecosystem crashed. Again, this extravagance was partly responsible for the collapse: trees were used for making plaster with which to decorate their temples. The plaster became thicker and thicker as the kings sought to outdo each other’s conspicuous consumption.

Here are some of the reasons why people fail to prevent ecological collapse. Their resources appear at first to be inexhaustible; a long-term trend of depletion is concealed by short-term fluctuations; small numbers of powerful people advance their interests by damaging those of everyone else; short-term profits trump long-term survival. The same, in all cases, can be said of the collapse of financial systems. Is this how human beings are destined to behave? If we cannot act until stocks – of either kind – start sliding towards oblivion, we’re knackered.

But one of the benefits of modernity is our ability to spot trends and predict results. If fish in a depleted ecosystem grow by 5% a year and the catch expands by 10% a year, the fishery will collapse. If the global economy keeps growing at 3% a year (or 1700% a century) it too will hit the wall.

I’m not going to suggest, as some scoundrel who shares a name with me did on these pages last year(9), that we should welcome a recession. But the financial crisis provides us with an opportunity to rethink this trajectory; an opportunity which is not available during periods of economic success. Governments restructuring their economies should read Herman Daly’s book Steady-State Economics(10).

As usual I haven’t left enough space to discuss this, so the details will have to wait for another column. Or you can read the summary published by the Sustainable Development Commission(11). But what Daly suggests is that nations which are already rich should replace growth (”more of the same stuff”) with development (”the same amount of better stuff”). A steady state economy has a constant stock of capital maintained by a rate of throughput no higher than the ecosystem can absorb. The use of resources is capped and the right to exploit them is auctioned. Poverty is addressed through the redistribution of wealth. The banks can lend only as much money as they possess.

Alternatively, we can persist in the magical thinking whose results have just come crashing home. The financial crisis shows what happens when we try to make the facts fit our desires. Now we must learn to live in the real world.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Richard Black, 10th October 2008. Nature loss ‘dwarfs bank crisis’. BBC Online. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7662565.stm

2. Gordon Brown, 20th June 2007. Speech to Mansion House. http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/2014.htm

3. Gordon Brown, 16th June 2004. Speech to Mansion House. http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/1534.htm

4. Oxford English Dictionary, 1989. Second Edition.

5. Niklas Magnusson, 10th October 2008. Iceland Premier Tells Nation to Go Fishing After Banks Implode.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=azZ189JG.1S8&refer=home

6. Jared Diamond, 2005. Collapse: how societies choose to survive or fail. Allen Lane, London.

7. Page 114.

8. Page 160.

9. George Monbiot, 9th October 2007. Bring on the Recession. The Guardian.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/10/09/bring-on-the-recession/

10. Herman E. Daly, 1991. Steady-State Economics – 2nd Edition. Island Press, Washington DC.

11. Herman E. Daly, 24th April 2008. A Steady-State Economy. Sustainable Development Commission. http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications/downloads/Herman_Daly_thinkpiece.pdf