So with exactly 2 weeks to go before The United Nations Climate Change Conference, today, I was made aware of a really interesting article, Naomi Klein, recently wrote for The Nation. In it she made reference to the “historic coalition of activists shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle [back in 1999], the spark that ignited a global anticorporate movement.” But;
“Climate-justice activists in Copenhagen will argue that, far from solving the climate crisis, carbon-trading represents an unprecedented privatization of the atmosphere, and that offsets and sinks threaten to become a resource grab of colonial proportions. Not only will these “market-based solutions†fail to solve the climate crisis, but this failure will dramatically deepen poverty and inequality, because the poorest and most vulnerable people are the primary victims of climate change—as well as the primary guinea pigs for these emissions-trading schemes. […] They will aggressively advance solutions that simultaneously reduce emissions and narrow inequality. […] Some of the solutions on offer from the activist camp are the same ones the global justice movement has been championing for years: local, sustainable agriculture; smaller, decentralized power projects; respect for indigenous land rights; leaving fossil fuels in the ground; loosening protections on green technology; and paying for these transformations by taxing financial transactions and canceling foreign debts. […] In addition to the coherent narrative and the focus on alternatives, there are plenty of other changes too: a more thoughtful approach to direct action, one that recognizes the urgency to do more than just talk but is determined not to play into the tired scripts of cops-versus-protesters…”
I’ve become extremely discouraged about how things were and are being played-down the the media, in recent weeks and months, with respect to what we should expect from said conference. But this, this, could get interesting.
I guess we’ll soon see…