Where: San Francisco Marriott Marquis(55 Fourth Street, SF – near Powell St BART)
Join Mobilization for Climate Justice West for a rally, street theater, and fun!

In order to respond to the present climate emergency in a just and equitable way, the rich countries of the world must take a lead on reducing greenhouse gas pollution that is threatening global climate catastrophe. But corporations and rich developed nations are pushing for policies that would allow them to “reduce” emissions by purchasing carbon “credits.” Unfortunately, carbon credits can be created through offset projects which supposedly reduce emissions in developing countries so that the companies or people purchasing the offsets don’t have to do anything to reduce emissions themselves. The problem is that these projects are frequently hard to monitor and fail to deliver the emissions reductions that they promise. Offsets essentially allow rich countries and corporations to purchase indulgences to keep polluting.

For example, the Nigerian government has stated its intention to participate in carbon trading and several oil companies are attempting to receive emissions credits. If this goes unchallenged, Chevron will be allowed to receive emissions reductions credits for ending the illegal and immoral practice of gas flaring in Nigeria. Under carbon trading proposals being considered in the US Congress, Chevron could keep polluting here at home, like at its refinery in Richmond, the biggest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in CA. It’s almost like a bully demanding a ransom to stop beating you up.

More Details: Carbon Trading 101

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?

As organizers and activists in the Bay Area committed to building a transformative Climate Justice movement led by front-line communities fighting together for systemic change; now is the time to take stock of the past year’s organizing and vision the future.

Where has the Climate Justice Movement landed after Copenhagen? What lessons have we learned and what kind of organizing is needed in the coming year and beyond?

Logistics:
* Childcare available upon request.
* ACRJ has a shoeless office environment. Please remove shoes upon entering. Feel free to bring your own slippers if you prefer. Socks and barefeet are welcome!

For more information or to request childcare call (510) 649-1475 or email michelle@movementgeneration.org

Hosted by the Mobilization for Climate Justice-West and  Movement Generation.
The Mobilization for Climate Justice  West is an alliance of San Francisco Bay Area organizations, organizers and activists  who have joined together to build a movement that emphasizes nonviolent direct action and education for effective and just solutions to the climate crisis. We are a part of the the North American network Mobilization for Climate Justice . As a member of MCJ-West, Movement Generation is co-sponsoring this event.

Contacts:
North American Indigenous Delegation Media Liaison    +45 5268 5594
Movement Generation Media Liaison  +45 2832 8422
(English, español, français, 普通話, portugûes)

COPENHAGEN – On the eve of President Obama’s arrival in Copenhagen to attend the fifteenth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties, organizations representing communities affected by climate change from around the United States delivered a letter urging President Obama to put a stop to the United States acting as a major barrier to real solutions to climate change, and instead to actively advance the concerns of vulnerable and impacted communities in the Global South and at home in the United States. “Global South” is a term often used to describe the G77 + China, or developing countries, including India, Brazil, the Philippines, South Africa, Kenya, and the Small Island Nations.

They held a press conference and rally in front of the US Embassy in Copenhagen, accompanied by chants of “Climate Justice Now!”

The letter was submitted by a convening of United States grassroots climate justice groups, including members of the North American indigenous communities delegation, the Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project (MG), the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative (EJCC), Grassroots Global Justice (GGJ) and the Right to the City Alliance (RTTC).

In the letter to President Obama, the climate justice groups assert, “Unfortunately, the proposals and negotiating positions of the United States government continue to be the single biggest barrier to progress in the Conference of the Parties process. Between side deals, weak targets, false solutions, a lack of transparency and a failure to commit to a legally binding agreement, the U.S. is gambling with the future of life on this planet.”

Wahleah Johns from the Black Mesa Water Coalition offered, “Indigenous peoples and grassroots communities are consistently left out of the climate negotiations, although we are the ones who bear the brunt of the burdens of ecological crisis. For instance, Peabody Coal uses 3.3 million gallons of water every day for mining coal on my reservation. The majority of the people that live out there on the Rez don’t have running water, or electricity, but we supply southern California, Nevada, and parts of Arizona with all of their energy needs. We expect President Obama to demand and support the rights of impacted communities to be at the forefront of just and equitable international negotiation processes.”

Speakers at the press conference and rally beforehand described the impacts of current ecological crises in their communities. Surrounded by colorful signs and banners, they also offered five actions that President Obama could take to address climate change at a scale and speed that would sufficiently match the scale and timeframe of the current ecological crisis.

For instance, Kandi Mossett (Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara), a young Indigenous woman from Fort Berthold, North Dakota, is fighting a so-called clean fuel refinery in her community, including low-wage, dirty jobs and increased debt. Mossett knows firsthand the differential and disastrous impacts of oil refineries – including so-called clean ones – on community health: she’s survived cancer. She continues, “I’m lucky enough to be here but a lot of our people aren’t here anymore. They’re buried under the ground, because of what our governments are doing to us. Given what we know about climate change, why would we continue on this course? We are all going to be wiped off the face of the planet if this continues to happen.”

The letter proposes that rapid and deep reductions in emissions at the source are critical to meeting meaningful targets for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and urges President Obama to immediately reduce the US consumption load, without offsets, by a minimum 49% deduction from 1990 levels by 2020.

Likewise, Henry Clarke, the Executive Director of the West County Toxics Coalition from Richmond, CA, said, “The North Richmond community is on the frontline of Chevron’s chemical assault. We have experienced a lifetime of chemical exposure, asthma, cancer and death. These are human rights violations.” The letter proposes that solutions must include a rights-based framework that adheres to other United Nations rights-based frameworks set out in declarations, covenants and conventions, regardless of whether or not they are ratified by the United States.

Another necessary action demanded by the grassroots climate justice groups included the “recognition and payment of the climate debt” to the Global South. They stipulated that these climate debt repayments would have to be administered through a transparent, funding source and not current multi-lateral development institutions, which they say have failed to provide sustainable development pathways for the Global South, including the World Bank.

Jose Bravo, of the Just Transition Alliance out of San Diego, CA, added that for communities from the global South in the North, sustainability and environmentalism was not a new thing. For Bravo, “Just transition is about shifting from polluting jobs to clean jobs, polluting industries to clean industries.”

Michele Roberts, from Advocates for Environmental and Human Rights out of New Orleans, Louisiana and Washington, DC, adds that communities from the South in the North – like those in the Gulf Coast region – are on the frontlines of ecological crisis, while the beneficiaries of unsustainable resource practices will feel it less. Likewise, a 2 degree Celsius rise in average global temperature is predicted to mean at least a 3.57 degree Celsius rise over continental Africa. Gopal Dayaneni explains, “Two hundred years of compounded industrial production has already committed us to severe and catastrophic consequences for the poorest people on the planet, including much of Africa, coastal Asia, indigenous people and small island states.”

The letter was delivered by Gopal Dayaneni from Oakland, CA and Roxana Aguilar from Los Angeles, CA.

Kalila Barnett, from Alternatives for Community and Environment, out of Boston, MA, closed with the following message to President Obama: “You campaigned on a platform for change and your belief that change doesn’t come from Washington, it comes to Washington.  Change is here, on the streets of Copenhagen, and all over the world. Climate Justice Now!”

TAKE ACTION: Please email this letter to President Obama at president@whitehouse.gov

Dear President Obama,

We are here in Copenhagen as the voices of our communities and our organizations that work to protect the rights of low-income communities, indigenous peoples, people of color and immigrants in the United States.

From the melting Arctic permafrost to the catastrophe following Hurricane Katrina, from the daily toxic assault of power-plants and refineries to the loss of fresh water in the Southwest, Indigenous Peoples and poor people of color in the United States are disproportionately impacted by climate change; which is why we find ourselves at the frontlines of the struggle to reduce these impacts. Due to our shared experience of the damage caused by the climate crisis, we recognize that we are in the same boat as our sisters and brothers in the Global South. We therefore call on you to support a legally binding treaty and to oppose any treaty that does not respect the rights of frontline, climate-impacted communities, both North and South. As someone who has benefited from the experience of growing up in two countries, Indonesia and the United States, and whose family heritage can be traced to Kenya, you are uniquely positioned to respond to this problem from a global perspective.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government’s proposals and negotiating positions are the single greatest barrier to progress in the Conference of the Parties process. Between side deals, weak targets, false solutions, lack of transparency, and a failure to commit to a legally binding agreement, the U.S. is gambling with the future of life on this planet.

Our communities face a triple bottom-line threat: we are surrounded by the polluting industries that at one and the same time condemn us to disproportionate rates of asthma, heart disease and other health threats, and are the primary contributors to the climate crisis; as poor communities, we are the most vulnerable to food insecurity, lack of access to basic services, and other consequences of climate disruption, with no one being more impacted then the women and children among us; finally, should the false solutions proposed in the UNFCCC process come to fruition, our communities will continue to pay the price for corporate pollution while reaping none of the rewards of these failed policies.

As representatives of a grassroots movement across the U.S., we want to be very clear about our expectations of you and your administration:

•  We demand an equitable international negotiation process that acknowledges, respects and advances the concerns of vulnerable communities everywhere, both in the Global South, and in the United States.

• We call for a real, accountable, and just transition from fossil fuel dependency to a more localized green economy that builds community resilience and gives communities real control over the decisions that effect their daily lives.

• We condemn any and all schemes that trade pollution on the financial market and that fail to take into account the rights of indigenous peoples and the need to protect forest biodiversity, such as current cap-and-trade policy and offset-schemes. Market-based carbon reduction schemes will not lead to sufficient carbon reductions, and will continue to create greater health disparities both in the United States and throughout the world.

• We expect your administration to advance proposals that recognize the disproportionate myriad impacts of climate change, and that commit resources commensurate to the scale of the challenges our communities face now and will continue to face in the near future.

• Industrialized nations must provide for reparation of ecological debts. Funds should be provided to assist developing countries to increase their capacities to protect their people from displacement and other potential effects, recognizing the disproportionate impacts on poor women, children and indigenous communities.

The solution to the Climate Crisis requires a rights-based framework that is legally binding and that minimally agrees to the following five commitments on the part of the United States:

1. Rapid, deep reductions in emissions at the source, in the United States, through an immediate ramp-down of the US consumption load, without offsets. This means a minimum of 49% reduction from 1990 levels by 2020.
2. Recognition and payment of reparations, or climate debt, to the Global South through a transparent funding source rather than through the multi-lateral development institutions, such as the World Bank, that have thus far failed to provide sustainable development pathways for the Global South.
3. Operationalize all implementation language in the UNFCCC within all established rights-based declarations, covenants and conventions, whether or not they have been signed or ratified by the US, including the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on Biodiversity; particularly in implementation language of REDD
4. Acknowledge the traditional knowledge of grassroots communities who are and will be the first to feel the burden of climate change, and take this knowledge, along with the most current science, as the basis of policy decisions.
5. Ensure space for the real engagement and participation of our communities, for whom concepts of sustainability and resilience are not new.

In your acceptance speech last year, you spoke of your belief that change does not come from Washington, D.C. but to Washington D.C. In response to your clear call, we are now coming to you from the same communities that organized to win you the presidency, as people from across the United States who have put our confidence in you as our highest elected representative. We stand united; as poor communities we are vulnerable to your decisions, but as communities rich in history and popular will we are prepared to demonstrate our potential to lead the way toward new solutions to the climate crisis. Solutions will only be constructive to our economy if they are done with justice and equity.

The tone and substance of the current proposals in these negotiations do not represent the change you promised or change we can believe in. We expect you to deliver on those promises by standing up for those of us on the frontlines of climate change, by calling for a legally binding treaty built on respect for international human rights obligations, and the responsibility entailed by those rights.  Your role as President is to deliver a fair, just and binding agreement. As you know, our role as organizers demands that we hold you accountable to that charge.

Finally, we do not believe that any agreement is better than no agreement. We join with social movements both North and South in opposing a non-legally binding treaty or any treaty that does not respect the human rights of the Global South, indigenous people, immigrants, women and people of color throughout the United States.

Sincerely,

Advocates for Environmental and Human Rights, Alternatives for Communities and Environment,  Asia Pacific Environmental Network, Black Mesa Water Coalition, Building Alternatives for A Sustainable Environments, Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Indigenous Environmental Network, Just Transition Alliance, League of Young Voters Education Fund, Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project, People Organized to Win Employment Rights, Right to the City Alliance, Southwest Workers Union, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, WEACT for Environmental Justice, West County Toxics Coalition, Women of Color United (partial list of signatories)

Crafted by civil society participants at the 15^th Conference of Parties representing the above organizations.

* CLIMATE TALKS UNDEMOCRATIC & ON VERGE OF FAILURE
* US/RICH COUNTRIES REFUSE SERIOUS REDUCTIONS & CLIMATE DEBT
* MASSIVE POLICE REPRESSION AGAINST NONVIOLENT CIVIL SOCIETY

WHEN: Friday December 18th 4:30-6:00PM
WHERE: Danish Consulate,1 California St, at Market St. (Embarcadero BART), San Francisco [view map]
Bring candles and friends.

“First they shut the public out of the climate negotiations, then they shut out 80% of NGOs who have been accredited to attend, and now they are jailing people who challenge the undemocratic nature of the climate negotiations, while the future of life on earth literally hangs in the balance.”
— Dorothy Guerro, Focus on the Global South, Climate Justice Now Network.

WHY?
UN CLIMATE TALKS ON VERGE OF FAILURE: Because the US and other wealth climate polluting nations refuse to significantly reduce climate pollution and to pay our ecological debt to climate-impacted developing world and because of the lack of democracy in the UN climate talks. On Tuesday, US climate negotiator Todd Stern said he foresees no change in President Obama’s offer to cut emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by2020. The proposal has been widely criticized because it amounts to just a four percent cut when adopting the 1990 emission standard used by the rest of the world. Scientists call for a 40% cut by 2020in order to prevent an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Meanwhile, developing countries including the US, UK and Denmark drafted and circulated a document to completely circumvent the UN from all further future negotiations.

* CIVIL SOCIETY NGO’S BANNED FROM UN: Accredited civil society groups including Friends of the Earth, Avaaz, Tck Tck Tck, and Via Campesina have been banned from the UN Climate Conference. ”The surgical removal of non governmental organizations underscores the lack of democracy inherent in these negotiations. The only way to avoid catastrophic climate change is fully supporting and including peoples movements like the very ones illegitimately removed from this process.,” said Professor Micheal Dorsey, a member of the Climate Justice Now! Network.

* DENMARK VIOLATES DEMOCRATIC & HUMAN RIGHTS, ATTACKS NONVIOLENT ACTIVISTS: Danish police have engaged in mass preemptive arrests, detentions, clubbed and pepper spayed nonviolent activists, raided organizing centers and suspended basic civil liberties and democratic rights. Dr. Tadzio Mueller of Berlin, an accredited NGO observer at the COP 15 and the spokesperson for Climate Justice Action, was arrested without provocation by plain clothed police shortly after a press conference announcing nonviolent demonstrations plans. He remains in jail awaiting trial.

SING A PETITION TO THE DANISH GOVERNMENT:
http://www.petitiononline.com/ Tadzio/petition.html

WHO: Mobilization for Climate Justice West: A coalition of thirty climate justice, environmental justice, community, peace and human rights organizations. http://west.actforclimatejustice.org

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.

Members from several US Environmental Justice and Climate Justice grassroots organizations met today inside the Bella Center to discuss our visions for climate justice in the United States and around the world. I felt honored to sit in the room with people who have fought for environmental and climate justice since before colonization.

We agreed to call an end to the ecological tyranny of our government in the States and abroad. It is no coincidence that the same countries who historically exploit(ed) our people are also at the forefront of driving false carbon market solutions that further degrade our human rights, our land, and our spirits.

We honored those in the US suffering from diseases and disproportionate pollution. We agreed to fight together. We shall rise like a phoenix from the ashes and raise our voices against climate injustice. Tomorrow we will march with our brothers and sisters from Via Campsesina for Food Sovereignty. Fight for and end to the exploitation of our indigenous brothers and sisters in sovereign nations in Mexico, Central America, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and communities of color in the United States! Fight for Climate Justice Now! Rise Phoenix, Rise!

The early winter cold of Copenhagen turns my face into a popsicle, but all I had to do was join the “Flood for Climate Justice” march of a hundred thousand energetic people from around the world to feel warm. A 4 mile, 4+ hour mobilization is enough to keep anyone from freezing. Signs of hope/despair: “There is no planet B,” “Nature doesn’t compromise,” to “systems change, not climate change.”

While on the march, a UK Guardian TV reporter asked me if I was optimistic or skeptical of these climate negotiations. Both. Skeptical because there’s no denying that many of our elected officials are in bed with corporations [while I held up my transported Bay area protest sign “Chevron, Corporations OUT of Copenhagen Climate Talks”]. And optimistic because I can’t just let my babies, family & community die from climate disruption.

We have work to do. I’m already learning a lot just by allies briefing me from the first week of these climate negotiations. Something we don’t hear often in the US is “ecological debt” or what some refer to as “carbon colonization”. It’s that rich countries have colonized the atmosphere with their industrial carbon pollution for so long that it’s time they pay for the mess they’ve caused. And rightly so, as small island nations like Tuvalu are headed to go under water this century, or African nations whose severe droughts have caused massive displacement & wars, they have every right to demand the strictest emissions reductions possible to stabilize the planet. Another big debate is with REDD, which our allies oppose because it would not only displace indigenous forest-dependent peoples, but also start a huge fake forest program around the world. Some say it’s like a rich person could say they’re carbon neutral if they pay to plant a tree but still drive their gas guzzling car.

It makes me think about how deeply we here in Copenhagen really understand the weight & depth of our actions & even solutions. Right now, most of us agree that we need climate justice… but what does that really mean? In this next & last week of the climate talks, our grassroots delegations of frontline, impacted communities & countries need to be heard: from the seriousness of the problems in our communities now, to the solutions we really need to turn the ecological crisis around.

There are many exciting & important events ahead: US grassroots/EJ discussion about how we will apply pressure on Obama as he represents the US later this week, a strategy discussion between North-South base-building allies on how our movements need to step up, to the midweek convergence of “inside” & “outside” delegates into a people’s assembly for climate justice. More stories to come & flood out of our delegation.

Featuring MG’s very own Gopal Dayaneni (formerly known as “Dr. Doom and Gloom)!

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) & Social Movements

Tuesday September 1st, 6-8pm

Centro del Pueblo Auditorium (2nd Floor)
474 Valencia St. @ 16th in SF

Speakers will include: Ananda Lee Tan of the Gobal Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), and Rising Tide, Gopal Dayaneni of Movement Generation, and Payal Parekh, from International Rivers.

Please RSVP to jason.negron.gonzales@gmail.com. Snacks to be provided.

As the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) talks advance towards the 15th Conference of Parties in Copenhagen in December, the stakes are high.
The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and the 15th Conference of Parties is a defining moment in what the post-Kyoto climate regime will look like. Even though catastrophic climate destabilization represents a shared threat that demands a unified response from all nations, it’s a familiar story. Corporations and industrialized polluting nations wield undue power and influence in the meeting halls while the voices of social movements are largely marginalized in the talks, or left out entirely. It’s been a flawed process, with potentially damaging policies on the table.

At the same time, there will be strong resistance by global social movements in the streets. It’s clear that what comes out of the UNFCCC won’t solve the problems of environmental destruction, poverty elimination, or even significantly reducing CO2 emission, but that was never really the question. The question is whether or not the worst policies pushed by polluters will triumph, or whether alliances of global social movements like Climate Justice Now, will succeed in checking those policies, and advancing the demands from the ground. The outcome matters because lives and communities are at stake and time is short.

We are already a-ways along the road to Copenhagen and the journey has given us events to analyze – talks in Bali and Bonn, recent G20 meetings, the Waxman-Markey ACES climate bill. This summer and fall will have more chances for action – a G20 meeting and a Coal industry meeting in Pittsburg, UN meetings in New York, the Conference of Parties 15 meetings Copenhagen, days of action throughout and beyond into 2010.

Movement Generation is sponsoring this briefing to help organizers and activists get more familiar with what’s happening in this process, how it impacts our political work, and where we can stand in solidarity with social movements in the Global South who are fighting like hell on these issues.