Tag Archives: anti-capitalism

Pablo Salon: How to overcome the climate crisis?

By Pablo Salon, March 15, 2013. Source: Climate Space 2013

logo_finall_ok_1There is no single answer, no single campaign nor single approach.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a level that avoids catastrophe, we need to:

  • Leave more than two-thirds of the fossil fuel reserves under the soil;
  • Stop the exploitation of tar sands, shale gas and coal;
  • Support small, local, peasant and indigenous community farming while we dismantle big agribusiness that deforests and heats the planet;
  • Promote local production and consumption of products, reducing the free trade of goods that send millions of tons of CO2 while they travel around the world;
  • Stop extractive industries from further destroying nature and contaminating our atmosphere and our land;
  • Increase significantly public transport to reduce the unsustainable “car way of life”;
  • Reduce the emissions of warfare by promoting genuine peace and dismantling the military and war industry and infrastructure.

In other words we need to come out of the endless growth paradigm that is the basis of the capitalist system, and seek for a new kind of society that is grounded on care for each other and nature. A society that seeks happiness for all and not profit for a few. A society based on a different concept of prosperity and well-being. A bio-society for life that includes humans and nature.

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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Indigenous Peoples, REDD, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Solutions, UNFCCC

Rio+20: Impressions from the Peoples’ Summit: forging a global social movement

By Avery Pittman, for Climate Connections

Henry Saragih, General Coordinator for La Via Campesina, and Alberto Gomez, from La Via Campesina Mexico listen as former Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations and director of Focus on the Global South talks about the need for a unified social movement strategy to challenge the green economy. Photo: Will Bennington for GJEP

June 21, 2012 – Rio de Janeiro – On the second day of UN Rio+20 “Earth Summit” negotiations, an hour away at the People’s Summit in downtown Rio, a crowd gathered to discuss moving forward as a global movement against the forces of the green economy. A mic was passed around the listening crowd, sitting in a ring of chairs three rows deep. There were bleachers and a stage at the venue, but the organizers of the event insisted that everyone be able to see each other and sit as equals. To the audience, Pablo Solon of Focus on the Global South posed the question “what can we do together, as social movements, after the Peoples Summit?”

Leaders and members from various social movements sat among the inner ring of chairs. The gathering was intimate and diverse, but the message was clear: together, social movements must deepen an analysis of the interconnections of oppression and create a road map to effectively and intentionally counter the logic of capitalism that commercializes nature.
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Filed under Climate Change, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Rio+20

The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

COP-15. Copenhagen

We are in the Belly of the Beast surrounded by lemmings in power suits. The masses have drank the kool aid. The good majority of humans are deliberating over the most inconsequential details of commas and word placement in the “climate” agreement. These documents are written by the same people (mostly men) who have coerced us into believing that everything is under control and we can maintain the way we are living… These agreements are going to decide where we choose to listen to Mother Earth or destroy her.
The Convention of Parties- 15 determines the future of the planet—however these negotiations only fan the fire of the global economic system. These talks systematically and intentionally exclude billions of people who are not represented by governments or heads of state. The impacts of neoliberalism, financial institutions, corporate CEOS reverberates and permeates on each of our lives, pillages our Mother Earth and the future of humanity.
The plethora of crises we face is undermined by the unfettered growth and workings of the free market. We have been taught that the market is the only fair and democratic allocation of goods and services; some are palpable enough to believe that the government is doing all of us a service with policies that solely benefit a select few. Who are the select few? They are organized, they are greedy and they have an agenda.
Our climate is not negotiating. It is not interested in what we are going to do in 2050, even with good intentions and “low carbon development technologies”. The climate is not bargaining and it cannot be paid off or subsidized. Climate change is happening and it is going to get worse. We cannot even fathom the magnitude of climatic disasters.
They are bargaining with our children’s and their children’s lives. They have tried to convince us that that we aren’t going to have ecosystems collapsing within the next 20 years. This is depressing. I know.
Wait, we don’t have to let this happen. They will never stop thinking of everything in terms of capital and monetary value, even if they know these things kill people and make people sick.
We cannot let this continue. IT HAS TO END.
We need to remind our governments and delegates that they cannot bargain with a finite planet that cannot be traded, no matter how nice the package. We need to say these messages to the corporate-backed governments and delegations; say them loudly and so that can understand clearly that we mean business here – and not their kind of business.The tables are turning, WE ARE ORGANIZED.
I implore you to join us. In any way you’d like. We are all in this together.
Sigue luchando, sigue tamando.

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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Copenhagen/COP-15