Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network was this week’s guest for our Earth Watch interview segment on the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK in Los Angeles. Tom addressed the issues for Indigenous Peoples around the UN Climate COP in Warsaw. Listen below:
Category Archives: UN
Tom Goldtooth of Indigenous Environmental Network KPFK Interview
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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Coal, Corporate Globalization, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Natural Disasters, UNFCCC
Friends of the Earth International strongly denounces Japan’s inaction on climate
WARSAW, POLAND, November 15, 2013 — Friends of the Earth International today strongly denounced the Japanese government which stated at the UN climate talks that it is breaking its promises to reduce climate change-causing greenhouse gases. [1]
Japan is the world’s fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
“While the planet is hurtling towards catastrophic climate change, and thousands are dead due to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, Japan announced it will not reduce its carbon emissions as much as previously promised. This Japanese announcement flies in the face of the scientific evidence recently released by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change,” said Dipti Bhatnagar, International Coordinator of the Climate Justice & Energy programme, Friends of the Earth International.
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Filed under Climate Change, Energy, Pollution, UNFCCC
Audio: Will Typhoon Haiyan Affect the Debate on Global Climate Change?
Note: Anne Petermann, Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project, was featured in a press release by the Institute for Public Accuracy on the link between Typhoon Haiyan, climate change, climate justice and the upcoming UN climate conference in Poland. The link below is to one of the interviews she gave.
–the GJEP Team
Released on Nov 12, 2013
The typhoon that laid waste to parts of the Philippines last week struck just before the 19th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change got underway in Warsaw, Poland on Monday. But while there is general agreement that global climate change is a major factor in the increasing number and intensity of storms worldwide, there continues to be little progress toward limiting the emission of greenhouse gasses. We speak with Anne Peterman, executive director of the Global Justice Ecology Project.
To listen to the show, go to Left Voices
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Filed under Climate Change, False Solutions to Climate Change, Natural Disasters, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, UNFCCC
Statement on the UN Climate Conference in Warsaw by Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director, Indigenous Environmental Network
Tom Goldtooth, IEN
The United Nations climate meetings involve the big powers of the United States and other industrialized “developed” countries. Lurking in the background are the financial sectors and investors of capital often having meetings in 4-5 star hotels.
Everything I have seen from the industrialized countries (including G20 countries) is false solutions towards addressing climate change. They have been playing a game of chess with climate.
As articulated at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in 2010 in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the root cause of climate change is capitalism. IEN had a delegation in Cochabamba actively involved in the outcome documents. The problem is countries will continue to drill, dig, and burn up every drop of oil, gas, and coal; no matter how expensive it is, till it runs out globally.
After fossil fuel resources are depleted, the world will move into a global bio-energy and bio-economy (plants, energy crops, trees, algae, etc.). To do this, they need full access to land (and water), with no restrictions – worldwide. Everyone’s rights to land and water will be diminished.
The issues of access to and political power games over Energy and Water will be the battleground for our next generation. It will be over the Privatization of Nature – of Mother Earth. We will witness more deregulation of corporate activity, more privatization and commodification of the natural “commons”. They have given themselves rights to have Dominion over Nature.
What will it take to turn this around?
Many are grappling with this question. But, I believe a mass movement globally is needed to resist this insanity. But, it also involves a spiritual awakening. As I have said many times, the people of the world must re-evaluate what their relationship is to the sacredness of Mother Earth.
As Indigenous Peoples, those that follow our teachings, we know what our responsibilities are to the Natural Laws of Mother Earth. But the industrialized man, industrialized societies do not know this. IEN has spoken to this for over 22 years!
The modern world of capitalism and its world of corporate schizophrenia are already co-opting our Indigenous leadership with false solutions via benefit-sharing scenarios, or to be nice “Indians” and just share our traditional knowledge for adaptation to climate change; rather than our participation demanding real change and action.
Real binding commitments and real actions to reduce emissions at source must be the major path in these negotiations. But, this is not the agenda in Warsaw at this time. This is why the tar sands in Canada is ground zero in Turtle Island – North America to fighting for climate justice; for the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and for a new colonial paradigm (not ours, but their system) that moves away from a Property Rights regime, towards a system that recognizes Earth Jurisprudence.
–Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of Indigenous Environmental Network and member of the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change, the Indigenous caucus within the UNFCCC
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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Oil, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, UNFCCC
Typhoon Hiayan “Demonstrating How Global South Pays Price for Emissions Historically from North”
PM Friday, November 8, 2013
During the last major climate conference in 2012 in Doha, Tetet Lauron, a delegate from the Philippines, spoke of the devastating effects of Typhoon Bopha that hit the Philippines during that conference, killing hundreds. She said then: “I am Tetet. I am a citizen of the world. This is not an equal nor equitable or world — and I’ve had enough! To the wealthy, industrialized countries who are bracking and deleting away the survival of the people of the developing world [a reference to the rich nations’ tactics during negotiations over text]: You’ve used up more than the lion’s share of the world’s resources and you are historically the world’s largest polluters. We want you to commit — and honor those commitments. …” See below:
ANNE PETERMANN, globalecology@gmavt.net, @Climatejustice1
Petermann is executive director of the Global Justice Ecology Project, which runs theclimate-connections.org blog.
She said today: “With Typhoon Hiayan ripping through the Philippines, we are once again staring climate catastrophe square in the face. This typhoon, with winds up to 230 mph is being called the strongest cyclone ever to make landfall. But it is likely just the beginning.
“The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this past September was once again clear in its warning that a warming globe means more unstable weather. The waters of the Pacific that fed this typhoon were unusually warm, lending tremendous energy to the storm.
“Typhoon Haiyan is ravaging the Philippines only a few days before the opening of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Warsaw, Poland on Nov. 11, where once again it is predicted that no concrete action to limit climate change emissions will take place.
“But this storm should be a wake up call to the UN negotiators in Warsaw regarding the concrete impacts of their decades of inaction.
“Typhoon Haiyan is once again demonstrating how countries in the Global South sit directly in the path of the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions historically put out by the Global North.
“We are trying to reach our colleague, Tetet Lauron, of the Peoples’ Movement on Climate Change, who is based in Manila for first hand word of this storm, but so far phone calls are not going through.”
Also see Institute for Public Accuracy news release from 2012 Doha conference: “Doha Deal will Result in “Unprecedented Ecological and Social Collapse.’”
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Natural Disasters, Pollution, UNFCCC
