Here are some notes (from Karen Orenstein) from the most powerful and moving speech I have heard in the UN, from Abassador Lumumba, chair of the G77:
Most critical aspect for successful outcome:
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.
Indigenous Peoples from across North America and their allies from around the world gathered at the US Embassy in Copenhagen today to deliver a message to President Obama as he traveled to Oslo to accept his Nobel Prize. The delegation of Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and First Nations Peoples is in Denmark this week for the historic COP 15 Climate Talks, and is calling for a climate deal that includes a moratorium on all new exploration of oil, gas, coal and uranium as a first step towards the full phase-out of fossil fuels and a just solution to the climate crisis.
“The United States is importing millions of barrels of oil from the Canadian Tar Sands, which is contributing to the genocide of the Dene and Cree nations of Northern Canada and to the destruction of Mother Earth” said Susana Deranger, a grandmother from Fort Chipewyan in Northern Alberta. “Last summer, there was a flock of ducks that landed on a tailings pond of Tar Sands dirty water, and they all died. This is the water that is poisioning our people. There are clusters of rare cancers that are concentrated in our communities and killing our people. Obama, we urge you: End Envirionmental Racism – Climate Justice now!”
The events this morning included a solemn procession to the US Embassy, and a traditional prayer led by Sarah James, a Gwich’in Alaska Native elder, who is in Copenhagen to tell the world about the impacts of climate change on her homelands, such as melting permafrost and forced relocation. After the blessing, Native American, First Nations, and Alaska Native Representatives spoke about the Presidents Nobel Prize.
“When Obama was campaigning, he captured the hearts of young people and he promised us change,” said Kandi Mossett of North Dakota, Tribal Campus Climate Challenge Organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network. Through tears of frustration she added, “But we are learning that for Native communities, when it comes to reining in oil companies or committing to fight climate change, he is just another politician who goes back on his word. And on these issues, his decisions are matters of life and death for our people.”
After the speeches, a smaller group attempted to cross the street to deliver a message to US ambassador in Denmark for President Obama, who will be in Copenhagen next week for COP 15. After some tense negotiations with police, the party was allowed to approach the embassy and delivered a large hand-written scroll, which included the Indigenous Environmental Network’s positions for the COP 15 negotiations:
“We strongly call for a moratorium on all new exploration for oil, gas, coal and uranium as a first step towards the full phase-out of fossil fuels, without nuclear power, with a just transition to sustainable jobs, energy and environment…We oppose false solutions to the crisis: These include nuclear energy, geo-engineering techniques, so-called clean coal, and the carbon market.”
The US Embassy representative accepted the scroll and agreed to deliver it to the Ambassador. The Indigenous Delegation closed their event with prayer, and traveled to the Bella Center where Obama’s speech was broadcast live.
“In his acceptance speech, President Obama remarked that ‘Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice,’” said Jihan Gearon of Fort Defiance Arizona/Navajo Nation, Native Energy Organizer with Indigenous Environmental Network. “Mr. President – we implore you to come to Copenhagen to make history with a just climate agreement that upholds the rights of Indigenous Peoples and takes decisive action to keep fossil fuels in the ground.”
Echoing the words of Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed (We will not die quietly!) and the African negotiator Ambassador Lumumba, (No to climate colonialism!) hundreds of youth created a loud and energetic “climate storm” today inside the Copenhagen climate talks at the UN. It was the largest demonstration at COP15 yet – and was just a taste of the storm to come. Youth from every continent clapped, snapped, and pounded their feet to make the sounds of a rainstorm in a representation of the typhoons and hurricanes that have ravaged communities around the world this year.
“Negotiators are turning their backs on us and telling us to keep quiet. As a young person living in the Pacific, I know what it’s like to fear climate change,” said Subhashni Raj, a youth organizer from Fiji who spoke at the rally. “I’m here to say that we will not die quietly.”
Responding to growing calls from African, Island Nation and Developing Country delegates for real justice, today’s storm was an effort to link the plight of G77 countries to the debt they are owed by the global North. The over 1,000 youth participating in the talks – the largest youth delegation in COP history – have consistently refused talk of political compromises that amount to “suicide pacts” for many low-lying nations around the world that would be destroyed by unchecked climate change. Youth are specifically calling on developed countries to step up their emissions reductions commitments and to cease the secret, back-room dealing that has plagued the talks.
“Yesterday, in a meeting with African civil society groups, Ambassador Lumumba made it clear that African countries will refuse to sign a suicide pact here in Copenhagen,” said Landry Ninteretse, a youth organizer from Burundi. “European and American aid proposals look more like colonialism than an attempt to solve climate change. Our hopes and dreams can’t be bought off $10 billion dollars.”
Those of us in the North have colonized more than our share of the atmosphere, and it will be impossible to reach a deal without a serious commitment to repaying our climate debt.
Immediately afterward, Indigenous people inside the UN formed a human chain to demand much stronger safeguards for Indigenous Rights within the treaty. Today is human rights day, and it was a celebration in style. With youth support, Indigenous people led this spontaneous demonstration which became a march throughout the Bella Center. Chants such as “NO RIGHTS, NO REDD!” echoed throughout the building.
This is just a taste of what is to come in the weeks that are unfolding here in Copenhagen. The protests today signify just another escalation of international activists inside the Climate negotiations
Today African Civil Society groups met during the COP15 UN Climate Meetings to discuss the implications for Africa of the leaked “Danish text” also known as the ‘Copenhagen Agreement’. It had been rumored for days that a secret text generated by the Danish Presidency, as Chair of the Conference, had been prepared.
Outraged by the content of the text and the fact that the Danish Presidency is abusing its role as Chair of the Conference, the Africans launched a spontaneous march and protest through the middle of the Climate Conference at the Bella Centre. Negotiations are still on-going at the Climate Change Conference, and the Danish text pre-judges their outcome. The “Danish text” includes provision to aim to limit the rise in global temperatures to two degrees, which would mean massive levels of harm to Africa.
Read the rest of this entry »
Cross Posted from Grist.
Well it was opening day of the madness that is COP15: the meeting of the UNFCCC that is supposedly going to decide the fate of the entire world. And what better way to open it than with broad civil society outrage at the egregious lack of democracy in the process.
Here’s the inside scoop: the Danish presidency is desperate for a positive spin on any outcome of the climate negotiations here. That means forcing an outcome by bringing together the rich and powerful nations to broker a deal in private and then to announce it to the rest of the world. There is widespread concern of US-friendly text being “parachuted” into the negotiating documents, at the expense of G77 countries (everyone else). 
We all know that international agreements involve quite a lot of back-room deals and often intimidation. We just usually don’t expect it to come from the facilitators. Obviously this is both antithetical to the UN process but also to the duties of the Danish Government in playing a neutral convening role at the Conference of Parties. It’s not just an attack on democracy, but it amounts to an attack on the rest of the world on behalf of a few powerful interests. It’s the sort of “green room” behavior one would expect from the World Trade Organization, not the United Nations, which has a consensus process designed to make global decisions.
The logic is this – the US needs to be on board to get any deal, so therefore let’s force a watering-down of the process to get the US to sign. Déjà vu? It’s errily like we’re replaying the Kyoto meeting in 1997. Remember how the world watered down the treaty (giving birth to the concept of offsets and the Clean Development Mechanism) so that the US would sign? …and the US never even signed anyway.
Will COP15 be a race to the bottom, hijacked to pander to the United States? Today Raman Mehta from Action Aid India said, “The global community trusted the Danish government to host a fair and transparent process but they have betrayed that trust. Most importantly, they are betraying those who are disproportionately impacted by climate change and whose voices are not being heard. This unfair behavior strikes a blow to all efforts to achieve justice and equity in the climate change negotiations process.”
Civil Society has brought foreward a number of specific concerns:
COPENHAGEN – As climate negotiations open in Copenhagen, civil society organizations around the world issued the following statement strongly criticizing the Danish government for acting in a biased, manipulative and nontransparent manner in its role as President of the Conference of the Parties:
This is really great. Listen and watch to the end, its worth it.
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Crossposted from Grist.
Today in the U.S., climate justice activists turned up the street heat to corporations in the financial and energy sectors most responsible for the climate crisis. Initiated by the Mobilization for Climate Justice and the Climate Pledge of Resistance, the day of action came a week before social movements converge in Copenhagen at the U.N. climate talks on Dec. 7 and on the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle in 1999. Major demonstrations, teach-ins, civil disobedience actions anchored the day of action in nine U.S. cities, supplimented by other smaller actions blooming around the country. 
Civil disobedience also took place at the Chicago Climate Exchange, the first and largest carbon trading institution in North America.
Renowned climate scientist Dr. James Hansen joined protestors in New York in calling for an end to cap and trade and instead implement a simple carbon tax. Dr. Hansen wrote in his book Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity, “The picture has become clear. Our planet, with its remarkable array of life, is in imminent danger of crashing… But we should not give up on the democratic system—quite the contrary. We must fight for the principle of equal justice. Civil resistance may be our best hope.”
Already across the globe in the past month, activists have upped the ante on the climate in the U.K. Australia, Canada and at the U.N. talks in Barcelona where the African delegation walked out and nearly a hundred activists blocked the exits, with the message “Without DRASTIC cuts, there is no EXIT”). Now U.S. activists are joining this growing global resistance by voting with their feet and putting their bodies on the line. In recent months, millions of people around the world have been taking action to protect their communities and the global climate. Shutting down coal power plants and mining sites, blockading oil refineries and marching on the streets of their cities, an increasing number of people are speaking out against climate pollution and calling for urgent action.
The U.S. is home to some of the world’s most egregious corporate climate polluters such as Chevron, British Petroleum (BP) and American Electric Power, along with their financiers, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase. The false solutions promoted by these corporations, like “clean coal”, nuclear energy, bio-fuels and carbon markets will delay urgent emissions reductions, threaten ecosystems and subsidize the construction of more toxic industries in the backyards of the poor. Furthermore, the world’s poor, the working class, indigenous peoples and communities of color are systematically excluded from the U.N. process, yet are the hardest hit by the effects of climate change.
Just as a directly democratic anti-corporate global justice movement emerged from the Seattle protests in 1999 larger and stronger than ever before, now the post-Copenhagen mobilization will see the emergence of an anti-corporate climate justice movement that also incorporates a large coalition of groups, a diverse set of tactics, democratic values and developing world nations ready to bring new demands into the climate talks.
The Mobilization for Climate Justice is calling for:
An inspiring new video from smartMeme with leaders from frontline communities and allies talking about the Copenhagen moment.
Some scary prospects of where people are turning – geoengineering, the false solution that once seemed like science fiction, is actually being taken seriously. Seriously?
Diana Bronson, ETC Group
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. – Albert Einstein
As global climate negotiations in Barcelona enter into the last week of talks before December’s Copenhagen summit, there continues to be more aggravation than agreement amongst negotiators. Despite the litany of warnings about the devastation a failure in Copenhagen will cause – mass migrations, floods, worsening hunger and elimination of entire small island states – the most powerful countries in the world have failed to significantly reduce emissions, let alone commit to new targets or adequate funds to pay for adaptation. Unwilling to muster collective political will to dramatically reduce consumption, wealthy countries are looking for ways to continue business as usual.
The surprising announcement that the US Congressional Committee on Science and Technology will be holding hearings on geoengineering in Washington later this week has some participants in Barcelona wondering if the lack of collective political will on the part of industrialized countries has something to do with Plan B moving a whole lot faster than we thought. Plan B is geoengineering: the intentional, large-scale plans to modify the climate and related systems.
Geoengineering technologies include, for example, schemes to simulate a volcanic eruption by shooting sulphur particles into the stratosphere to reflect the sun’s rays back to outer space. Other technologies whiten clouds to make them more reflective. Some geoengineers propose dumping iron particles in the oceans to feed algae that might soak up CO2. Others want to change hurricane paths and rainfall patterns.
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Cross posted from Grist
African negotiators at the U.N. climate talks in Barcelona just refused to continue formal discussions about all other issues until wealthy countries live up to their legal and moral responsibility to commit to deep emissions reductions. Rich countries (also called “Annex 1 countries”) have ground negotiations to a halt by failing to agree their new targets under the Kyoto Protocol (KP), driving developing countries to put their feet down. This walkout is significant and opens up political space – it means many of the countries in Africa just stopped one half of the UN climate negotiation process until rich countries say how much they will reduce their carbon.
We’re down to the wire: just four negotiating days left before the big agreement in Copenhagen is supposed to go down. Its day one, and we saw just a taste of the breakdowns to come. While rich countries continue to undermine commitments for the Kyoto Protocol (one of two negotiating tracks for Copenhagen which is supposed to be renewed for a second commitment period of Annex 1 targets), the spin has already taken hold: they’re blaming Africa for their own delay-mongering. Oy vey.
In response, movement and civil society organizations held a demonstration at the U.N. building in support of African delegates’ insistence that developed countries commit to new, strong binding targets. Delegates and observers were invited to join a human shield against the killing of Kyoto targets (complete with an Annex 1 grim reaper) and instead urged to promote at least 40% emission reductions with no offsets by 2020.
Kamese Geoffrey of NAPE/ Friends of the Earth Uganda warned, “Rich countries are attempting to dodge their legal and moral responsibilities to reduce emissions. Developing countries and communities have historically had practically no fault in the creation of climate change, yet they will be the first to face the devastating impacts of climate change.”
Many of us have longstanding criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, particularly its market mechanisms. But here’s why Kyoto is important:
Here is the text of the intervention speech the International Youth will deliver in Bangkok at the U.N. today.
—
Delegates, you will remember 6 months ago we asked you how old you will be in 2050?
You seemed to notice, you responded, you bought the t shirt. But this did not translate into action
My name is ___ and I hope to be ____ In the year 2050.
Earlier this week, we declared “no confidence” on the road to Copenhagen.
The process has been hijacked by carbon cowboys looking to profit from this crisis; our future is being held hostage to the self-interested dirty delaying tactics of Annex 1 countries.
We have seen the arrogant betrayal of the Bali Action Plan, with the perverse idea that developing countries should or can somehow act first.
History will judge you.
We witness the US deliberately undermine the negotiations by introducing language to merge the Kyoto Protocol and convention processes, tearing out compliance and top-down target setting.
Other Annex 1 countries hide behind the US to avoid their responsibilities; setting disgracefully low targets; with deceptive offset measures that amount to no real emissions cuts at all.
We will not accept a dirty deal.
cross posted from Grist.
Today marked one of the final days of the Bangkok UN Climate Negotiations. With the end of this intersessional in sight, the International Youth Delegation (IYD) has officially declared “No Confidence” in the road to Copenhagen.
With youth delegates from over 30 countries engaging in the Bangkok process, the IYD cited pathetically weak targets from the North, alarm that a second commitment period in the Kyoto Protocol will not be secured, and a lack of guarantees for protection of Indigenous peoples’ rights and interests, in its Declaration. The current text of the draft climate deal is so weak and so full of “false solutions” (measures like offsetting that actually make the problem worse) it is unacceptable.
Youth delegates representing each continent addressed the U.N. today, detailing the urgency of the crisis as it affects their communities currently, telling stories of their hope and organizing alongside their denunciation of the state of play in the UN Negotiations.
This week the Annex 1 (rich countries), attempted to kill the Kyoto Protocol (KP). We are nearing upon the end of the current KP term, and a lack of renewing it means that the world would lose the few legally binding international climate agreements it has (as insufficient as they are). The excuse is that the United States will not sign, and therefore the whole thing should be scrapped and an entirely new deal can be struck on its own. It is lunacy to think that this will yield a stronger outcome, and the G77 (the rest of the world) countries are furious. We have always known the US wont sign the KP; the world cannot continue to wait for the US to get on board. In Bali, the U.S. already committed to setting comparable targets to other Annex 1 countries, so the world could deal with the U.S. in the LCA (Long Term Cooperative Action).
This all amounts to a shell game: more dirty delaying tactics from self-interested countries who are content to strip away basic attempts at an international agreement (for example “compliance” – meaning that the U.S. would have international oversight of its targets, or “top-down target setting” – meaning the international community sets carbon targets together based on science, rather than each countries independently setting their targets based on what their fossil fuel extraction industries dictate).
Allowing the U.S. to drag the world out of existing legal obligations is disgraceful. These negotiations are going backwards.
Make no mistake: Our future is being held hostage to interests that have consistently thumbed their noses at the international community and their obligations to the rest of the world. This process has been polluted by self-interested corporations and nations looking to profit off of our crisis. They have been pushing false solutions that exacerbate rather than fix the problem. Not only are the targets set by rich countries weak, but they are deceptive. Rather than representing actual emissions reductions, they contain unacceptable proportions of offsets, which do not reduce emissions, and displace the burden back onto the developing countries of the world.
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Think Climate Finance is boring? Think again.
cross posted from Grist.
Remember when the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and International Monetary Fund were constantly making global headlines for their fierce opposition from people’s movements around the world? Well, international Finance Institutions (including the World Bank) are rearing their ugly heads again – this time with the U.N. as their vehicle.
Today, more than 50 social movements, trade unions, environmental groups and NGOs from 17 countries issued a statement at the United Nations in Bangkok, where UNFCCC climate negotiations move into their fifth day.
The groups, which include several large international networks, said that rich countries should acknowledge their historical responsibility and the “ecological and climate debts” they owe to developing countries. “Deep, drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, through domestic measures is part of reparations,” the statement said. “They took much more than their fair share of atmospheric space, and in the process denied the people of developing countries – the people of the South – their rightful share. They must give it back.”
photo: Janet Redman
And they’re right. As colleagues here in Bangkok talk about their newly-homeless families from the floods earlier this week in the Philippines, it is undeniable that the economic prosperity of the North is the gift-that-keeps-on-giving to the South – this time around in the form of devastating climate change. Tom Pickens from Friends of the Earth described it like having a fancy four course meal in an expensive restaurant – and then forcing someone walking by on the street outside to pay.
Reparations for these debts, according to Fabrina Furtado from Jubilee South, also include the “complete restoration of territories and ecosystems, reconstruction of basic infrastructure, recovery of social rights, and the restoration of the well being of the peoples of the South.”
Reparations must come from public sources.
The groups decried alleged attempts by Annex 1 (Northern) countries to “avoid taking full responsibility” for the consequences of their excessive emissions. In their statement, groups expressed strong opposition to giving any role in climate finance or climate programs to the World Bank, regional development banks and other international financial institutions – and emphasized the need for “a new global fund.”
These views are similar to those of the G77 plus China group, a bloc of more than 130 developing countries in the climate negotiations that considers the World Bank inappropriate for channeling developed countries’ financial obligations under the Convention – largely because of its undemocratic and unaccountable governance structure.
The group’s critique of the World Bank and related financial institutions goes even further. Elena Gerebizza of the Italian NGO Campaign for the Reform of the World Bank said, “The World Bank and other international financial institutions are in large part responsible for the current economic, financial and climate crises. We cannot expect them to play a positive role nor to contribute to real solutions.” “On the contrary,” she added, “these institutions have been pushing false solutions, such as the expansion of the carbon market, which increase financial instability and take away space for serious thinking about real solutions for the climate crisis.”
Whew. United States, ready to listen yet?
STATEMENT
Finance for Socioeconomic and Climate Justice
Bangkok, September 28, 2009
We, the undersigned social organizations, movements and networks working towards climate and socioeconomic justice, gathered in Bagnkok for an International Strategy Meeting on Climate and Finance in parallel to the United Nations climate talks, call for:
Reparations Now!
We recognize that each human being has an equal right to ecological and climate space. Climate debt is a part of the larger ecological debt the Global North owes the Global South, accrued through centuries of theft of natural resources and the violation of human rights. Reparation of this ecological debt must include the complete restoration of territories and ecosystems, reconstruction of infrastructure critical to peoples well-being, recovery of social rights and recuperation of local agricultural systems in the Global South. Reparations must also include curtailing rampant consumption and making immediate cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the North. Reparations must be based on the self-determination of all peoples in order to guarantee that no new ecological debts are accrued.
Cross Posted From Grist.
Flooding in the Philippines yesterday displaced over 600,000 people. As if we didn’t need more of an urgent call to solve the climate crisis.
Increased intensity of flooding is among one of the may well-documented impacts of global warming. The implications have hit our organizing here at the UN in Bangkok too – as some activists had to go to support their families amidst crisis.
But Filipino groups are still here in full force, emboldened to call for the solutions their communities need – this morning The Peasant Movement of the Philippines and the National Federation of Peasant Women in the Philippines held a demonstration in front of the United Nations Climate Change Negotiations in Bangkok.
With vivid street theater, the groups called to abandon false solutions to climate change – such as biofuels.
Demonstrators this morning said “Climate change is not only jeopardizing our future but is being used by multi-national and trans-national corporations who are the main contributors to global warming to rake in more profit from our misery…vast tracts of agricultural lands around the world are being controlled and converted by plunderers into cash-crop plantations such as biofuels and other corporate schemes that forcibly drives us out from our land.”
Their calls for climate equity in negotiations were echoed by even more demonstrators today from Jubilee South and many others, calling on rich countries to pay their ecological and climate debt to the rest of the world. Activists from Thailand, Nepal, Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Africa, and Latin America mobilized to push Northern countries to recognize their historical and disproportionate contributions to climate change, and the disproportionate negative impacts suffered by the Global South. This concept of climate debt is increasingly gaining traction among international civil society, flipping on its head the idea of the debt owed by the South to the North from loans from international finance institutions.
As civil society groups call for financing and compensation for the averse affects of climate change for affected peoples, delegates inside the UN continue to debate on our 3rd day of the climate talks. The pressure is on, and the 600,000 people displaced in the last day only add to the urgency.
…and we’re off to a crawl
cross posted from Grist.
Coming right off the heels of the UN General Assembly in New York and the G20 in Pittsburgh, the world has taken its next step on the road to Copenhagen: the Bangkok round of negotiations for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
This morning the Thai Prime Minister opened the session by saying “There is no plan B, if we do not realize plan A, we go straight to plan F, which stands for failure.”
So, no pressure.
With an invigorated sense of skepticism, civil society, governments, and of course business interests are here to try to hammer through obtuse and contradictory text to create something that can be of some use on the table at the Copenhagen meetings this December.
The UN press office was quick to hand me a defensive-sounding media release stating ‘Negotiations set to pick up in Bangkok as a result of New York Climate Change Summit’ – hoping to put a positive spin on the process. Sure, the New York summit yielded lots of big talk about Climate – unfortunately very little in the way of meaningful targets and commitments, as pointed out (to much applause) by a Sudanese delegate this morning.
The reality of the US being able to meaningfully commit is grim, as illustrated by the statement released by John Podesta and Rajendra Pachauri, this Friday. Despite Obama talking a good game (which in itself is a welcome departure from the Bush years), he still failed to put forward any details. Hopes previously pinned on Obama have been deflated by stalled domestic legislation that NASA’s Dr. James Hansen said, if implemented “would do more harm to the environment than nothing at all.”
On the flip side, many people here in Bangkok have been encouraged by China’s announcement at the NY summit that it is increasing commitments on carbon reduction. We all know though, that responsibility to lead with these negotiations lies on the global North to make bolder and serious commitments. India and China are moving, and the classic US approach trying to pin blame on them is increasingly seen as excuse-mongering even to those who may have bought the line before.
From where we stand now, it looks like Copenhagen will be a greenwash. But civil society here in Bangkok is not taking this as a moment to despair but as a higher call to action for just and equitable ways to meet meaningful targets. Peoples movements and activist networks from across the globe are taking this opportunity to build and organize, invigorating local solutions back home, regardless of what ends up on the negotiating table. And so we keep pushing. If we temper our ambition along with our expectations, governments will feel more emboldened to backslide and allow the treaty to be an industry giveaway. Lets keep pressure up.
Here’s an inspiring quickie of organizers in the United States working for community based solutions to the climate crisis:
Rainforest Action Network drops Seventy-Foot Banner Over Niagara Falls to Welcome Prime Minister Harper to the U.S.
Canadian Tar Sands Oil Undermines North America’s Clean Energy Future
See more photos here.
update: video below, and climber interview here.
Before dawn this morning, a small team of climate and Native Rights activists rappelled from the US observation deck at Niagara Falls. Dangling hundreds of feet above the ground, they sent a special welcome message to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ahead of his first official visit to the White House to push dirty Tar Sands oil.
Not that he’s feeling so welcome anyway. Obama limited the meeting to just one hour. While some have called it a slap in the face, Aides say Harper will turn the other cheek. “The economy, and the clean-energy dialogue,” one aide told the Globe and Mail, “will dominate the discussions.” Obama needed to dodge controversy over oil imports from Canada’s tar sands in the midst of the Climate Legislation debate. Harper needed a story to go with his photo-op.
During Harper’s first official trip to meet Obama in the U.S., the two leaders are expected to discuss climate change and energy policy ahead of the upcoming G20 Summit. Canada supplies 19% of U.S. oil imports, more than half of which now comes from the tar sands, making the region the largest single source of U.S. oil imports. The expansion of the tar sands will strip mine an area the size of Florida. Complete with skyrocketing rates of cancer (by 400%!) for First Nations communities living downstream, broken treaties, toxic belching lakes so large you can see them from outer space, churning up ancient boreal forest, destroyed air and water quality, the tar sands have been called the most destructive project on Earth.
Tomorrow’s visit to the U.S. by Prime Minister Harper is the latest attempt by Canadian Federal and Provincial officials to lock in subsidies for 22 new and expanded refinery projects and oil pipelines crisscrossing 28 states, which would transport and process the dirty tar sands oil. Many are concerned that Prime Minister Harper wants to protect the tar sands oil industry from climate regulation, even though it is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.
For the last couple weeks, Van Jones has been demonized by Fox News in a paranoid racist red-baiting witch hunt to continue to 1) scare white Americans into the idea that “their country is being stolen from them” 2) tie Obama to Left radicalism (since they can’t find it anywhere in his policies, they’ll continue to do the guilt-by-association thing).
The initial response from much of the liberal blogosphere was a defensive attempt to distance Van from actual statements he made (yes, Van actually was part of a socialist organization called STORM, yes he did do radical community organizing), in a way that plays into right wing frames as if having a Left background disqualifies someone for office, rather than allows a breadth of political perspective grounded in values of peace and justice. It’s worth noting that despite the unfortunate and hasty but also benign signing of the 911 petition (the Truther’s are in fact wingnuts), Van never said anything that wasn’t true. Beck on the other hand made up all kinds of fantasies.
Of course this isn’t about Van. Its been clear in this experience and in the health care backlash that right wing pseudo “populism” has become a renewed, coherent and compelling force in this country – complete with Orwellean Newspeak (‘Obama is a Racist’, ‘Health Care is Death’, ‘Socialism is Fascism’).
A good reality check on how big some of the fights ahead of us are and how important a coordinated and thoughtful Left is. It has interesting implications for those pursuing an ‘inside/outside’ strategy in confirming the long long history in this country of the Establishment left jettisoning anyone they think is too progressive (aka delegitimizing) to be palatable…whereas the Right goes as far right as it wants to.
Have you noticed how people on the right say all sorts of foul shit and when they are called on it, they just OWN it and are like WHAT? yeah I said it WHAT! and then it goes away?
I don’t know what happened inside the White House, but I do naively wish the administration (or the Liberal institutions) had the courage to say yes, this is what we believe and in fact, this is a positive vision that we’re organizing around. But of course, they don’t. By this stammering and backpeddaling, it confirms to the American people: yes, you are right to be afraid of these ideas, they are scary. Its a losing strategy that validates all of the crazy paranoia that is skyrocketing across the country right now. It emboldens the extreme Right to go even further (you know, when we run campaigns, and our targets respond, we always say ‘look, its working! lets keep going!’ – this can only have the same effect for Glenn’s followers.)
Progressives of all stripes would do well to fortify themselves with the knowledge that we have BIG BIG fights ahead of us, and the Right will play as dirty and deceptive as possible. They have much larger megaphones, and the luxury of playing into deep seated national mythologies and origin stories of this country.
I think David Roberts’ Thoughts on Van Jones’ Resignation piece on Grist offers some useful thoughts that I’ll share here:
Van Jones had to resign. It became inevitable when Gibbs offered no support.
Much of the blame for this incident lies squarely on the White House. The information used against Jones was freely available on the web. All it took was a search. I thought by hiring Jones they intended to take a chance on a real left progressive, but now it appears they were simply caught flat-footed. Either Valerie Jarrett—Jones’ champion in the upper echelons of the administration—didn’t know much about him or didn’t widely share what she knew. They certainly seemed disinclined to mount a vigorous defense with Glenn Beck gnoshing on his favorite new chew toy and the health care reform battle about to heat up again. No distractions.
For the record, Jones isn’t a truther. Five years ago, at the end of a busy paternity leave, he was asked to support the calls of 9/11 families for further investigation of the attacks (reflecting the concerns of millions of Americans). He agreed and his name ended up on a petition that contained language he didn’t support. Three others who signed the petition have also come forward to say they were deceived about its final contents. But the truth of it hardly matters at this point. Jones has always spoken freely, not in the clipped, narrow confines permitted of those who aspire to public office. He talks real talk, in colorful, provocative language. There’s plenty in his copious past writing and speaking that can be demagogued. This isn’t a civic discussion among people who care who Van Jones really is or what he really believes, after all. It’s a head hunt.
On substantive grounds, the resignation is not that significant. Part of the absurdity of all this is that Jones was basically a low-level functionary. By yesterday the dimwit conservative hack Dick Morris had him “in charge of running the cap-and-trade legislation”—ignorant on too many levels to catalog—but I doubt if Jones has ever so much as been in a meeting with Obama. By all accounts he was frustrated by the difficulty of getting even the smallest things done from the bottom of a massive bureaucracy. Even if he’d had the hidden intentions Beck and his pant-wetting audience attribute to every black liberal, he couldn’t have done anything about it.
But policy, reality, that’s not what bottom-feeders like Beck care about. The right governed the country for eight years and ran it into a ditch. Conservatives have no plausible health care solution, no climate solution. They have nothing to offer in response to the nation’s pressing problems. What they have is affect. They have the amygdala, the fight-or-flight reflex. They have deep threads of racism, fear, and resentment.
In other words, they don’t care what Van Jones does, they care what he is. Beck peddles a message that’s been around since America was born: They’re taking your country away. They—the non-white races, the immigrants, the urbanites, the communists, the elites—are stealing the country from nice, simple white Christians. They’re taking what rightfully belongs to us, to Real Americans.
I finally got a haircut after almost a decade.
It was last minute spokesperson prep for this action.
I wasn’t planning on posting this video, since its personal (aka not professional) and the most exhibitionist and scandalous thing of me on the internet, but a friend convinced me that 1) there is nothing professional about this blog 2) Its not like this blog isn’t all self promoting anyway.
I originally posted this on itsgettinghotinhere. We’re still reeling from our success yesterday.
During rush-hour commute this morning, two Indigenous Canadian women – Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, and Heather Milton-Lightening – scaled flagpoles in front of the main entrance of Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC’s) headquarters in Toronto, dropping a banner reading “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com” – appealing to the bank to pull its massive investments in Alberta tar sands projects. Supported by RAN, the Ruckus Society, and their Indigenous People’s Power Project, they were joined by dozens of Toronto RAN activists, swarming entrances to ensure every RBC employee heard our appeal Mrs. Janet Nixon, the wife of RBC CEO Gordon Nixon, to lend her strong and influential voice to those fighting to protect Canada’s clean water and respect Indigenous rights by pushing RBC to stop bankrolling the tar sands. They handed out flyers, held banners, and even circled the building on bikes with “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com” flags.
RBC is the ATM of the Tar Sands.
They are a leading investor in what has been called the dirtiest project on Earth and is one of the greatest social and ecological injustices of our time. Unless they’re stopped by grassroots pressure, oil companies will transform a boreal forest the size of Florida into an industrial sacrifice zone – complete with lakes full of toxic waste that are so big that you can see them from outer space. Tar sands projects poison First Nations Communities, pollute precious water resources, kill wildlife, and are the single biggest contributor to global warming from Canada.
![3765905048_1014af8f90[1]](http://understory.ran.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/3765905048_1014af8f901.jpg)
At the same time as the banner was being unfurled, thousands of RAN supporters and allies began emailing a video to key RBC executives – in which RAN’s Michael Brune appeals to Mrs. Nixon to help RBC offer leadership by withdrawing its funding for the tar sands. (If you haven’t participated in this online action yet, it’s not too late! Click here to view the video and email it to RBC executives.)
You can also view the video on YouTube (be sure to go to PleaseHelpUsMrsNixon.com and take action when you’re done watching):
Check out ongoing news coverage that is just starting, from Bloomberg, CBC, Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, Canadian Press, Daily Kos, Financial Post, Canada.com, Brandon Sun, Stockhouse, KBS Radio, New Brunswick Business Journal, AM 1150, Canadian Business, Vancouver Sun, and much more.
See lots of photos of the action here.
I’ve been sitting transfixed by music videos directed by Nabil Elderkin. Nabil brings conscious music to life in such evocative and emotive ways…I am at a loss for words. See music videos below for K’naan, Kanye West, Rise Against, SEAL, and Common.
