Note: Nope, that headline is not from GJEP. In fact it’s the title of one of the videos shot by the Media Co-op in Montreal during the Durban meetings of the UN climate negotiations. Their Canadian network spans: The Dominion • Halifax • Vancouver • Montreal • Toronto. There is a lot of controversy surrounding the action this video documents, including GJEP’s Anne Petermann’s scathing post on Friday “Showdown at the Durban Disaster: Challenging the ‘Big Green’ Patriarchy.” GJEP and Anne are receiving many comments and emails, both pro and con on Anne’s article. To those who disagree with Anne’s analysis: please watch this. To everyone else, let’s have a laugh, albeit a sad one, and resolve to up the ante for the people and the planet with concrete, meaningful action and analysis, and make Climate Justice! more than just two words to chant. After Copenhagen COP 15, many of us lost a long time friend and comrade, Dennis Brutus: poet, scholar and anti-apartheid activist. If Dennis was still physically present, I believe he would have linked arms with Anne and Keith; Dennis knew what struggle meant. For more Media Co-op coverage of Durban, please go to http://mediacoop.ca/durban. -Orin Langelle for the GJEP Team
Tag Archives: Occupy COP 17
Video: Climate Justice Outcry! Dudes co-opt COP 17 final march
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First Occupy COP 17 UN Climate Conference General Assembly Held Today in Durban (photos and article)
#OccupyCop17: Climate Justice General Assembly
All photos by Orin Langelle/GJEP
Durban, South Africa—On Monday, November 28th, as representative from 192 nation-states begin their talks, Occupy COP 17 met this morning in a general assembly. Another assembly will be held tomorrow after a rally demanding climate justice and saying no to false solutions.
Kevin Buckland from 350.org makes a point
The following a article is cross-posted from Occupy COP 17
Governments of the world are, for the 17th time, assembling to discuss how we react on an international scale to a changing climate. During these last 16 years a sane response to an unsustainable global culture has not been found.
Inside their assembly and inside their declarations the needs of the 99% are not being heard. Private corporations are occupying our seats in the UN climate talks and governments corrupted by corporate influence are claiming to represent our needs. They are abusing and pillaging the consensus process, once put in place to ensure even the smallest and most vulnerable had a say.
Patrick Bond, political economist and senior professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Development Studies in Durban, talks to reporters
We, as a planet, have been shown we can no longer rely on the same structures that have allowed for famines, floods, hurricanes and massacres to escalate relentlessly. There is a historic responsibility, and a global necessity for action.
Pablo Solón, former Ambassador to the UN from the Plurinational State of Bolivia, talks to a journalist
Here in Durban, where Nelson Mandela cast his first vote and Gandhi held his first public meeting, we’re putting out an invitation to anyone who wishes to have their voice heard: to join a dialogue of how we must react to ensure the present culture of 1% of the worlds population does no injustice to the future of the 99%.
Ivonne Yanez from Ecuador is part of the keep the oil underground and Yasuni/itt. She is a campaign member of OilWatch International
This is what democracy looks like.
Consensus reached for tomorrow's general assembly
It is time our voices were heard.
It’s time to #OccupyCop17
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Occupy movement comes to Cop 17–News from UN climate convention in Durban
Inspired by the Occupy Wall St. movement, protesters calling for “climate justice” are set to gather at the opening of UN climate talks in Durban organisers say.
Note: GJEP is on the ground in Durban, South Africa and, as you can see from some of our previous posts, we have started reportage of what is happening so far. We will continue to do so through the next two weeks.
Recently we posted Climate change: vulnerable countries consider ‘occupying’ Durban talks by The Guardian’s John Vidal. Well, the Occupy movement seems to be really on its way here. Before the next article, our colleague and friend, Patrick Bond posted on one of the listservs here, “…the Durban police will smile and stand idly by, it has been confirmed – they’re not savages like in NY and California.” -The GJEP Team
Sapa-AFP | 27 November, 2011 10:57
“A meeting at the ‘Speaker’s Corner’ will be called, an assembly,” Patrick Bond, a professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, told AFP, referring to a spot near the venue of the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
“Negotiations have begun with the city on an authorised protest space,” said Bond, who is associated with the largely youth-driven initiative.
A website dedicated to “Occupy COP17” echoed the frustration of many poorer nations already facing climate impacts with the slow pace and low ambition of the talks.
“Inside their assembly and inside their declarations the needs of the 99 percent are not being heard,” reads a declaration on a the site.
“Private corporations are occupying our seats in the UN climate talks and governments corrupted by corporate influence are claiming to represent our needs.”
On Friday, South Africa’s police minister said his country would deploy 2,500 officers to the UN climate talks starting this week.
“Police will not tolerate criminal acts that are disguised as demonstrations, which in some cases include destruction of property and intimidations,” said Nathi Mthethwa.
The government has given the nod to a civil society march next Saturday, but the minister made no mention of the Occupy event.
The possibility of an “Occupy COP17” protest was raised earlier this month by former Costa Rican president Jose Maria Figueres at the Climate Vulnerable Forum in Bangladesh.
“With respect to climate maybe we need an Occupy Durban,” he told OneWorld TV.
Such a action could take the form of “a sit-in by the delegations of those countries that are most affected by climate change,” he said.
Some climate-vulnerable states have slammed recent proposals from wealthy nations that a legally-binding climate pact can wait until the end of this decade.
Such proposals are “both environmentally reckless and politically irresponsible,” Joseph Gilbert, Grenada’s environment minister, said several weeks ago on behalf of the 42-nation Association of Small Island States (AOSIS).
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OCCUPY COP 17! [in Durban, South Africa]
Note: COP-17 refers to the 17th Conference of the Parties of the UN Climate Convention, which this year will be held from November 28 through December 9, 2011. Global Justice Ecology Project will be in Durban and blogging daily from both the official UN events on the inside of the conference and from the alternative activities–such as Occupy COP 17–on the outside.
–The GJEP Team
Cross-Posted from Watts Up With That on November 1, 2011
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Anyone concerned about the huge influence of Wall Street on our lives should definitely be protesting the influence of Wall Street on the upcoming climate conference in Durban, South Africa. Durban is the latest incarnation of the occasional IPCC celebration. I’m not sure what it celebrates, perhaps they are celebrating being given prepaid tickets and receiving a salary plus a per diem to fly halfway round the world to a lovely remote spot to listen to people talk about wasting fossil fuel.
I know I’d celebrate if some one paid me to do that. In any case, the last party was in Cancun, and the party before that in Copenhagen. The hard life of the climate bureaucrat. The web site for the party is here, so you can see what your taxes are paying for.
This image illustrates the change in climate that the participants in the Durban COP 17–CMP 7 will be forced to endure. The “17″ means that this is the seventeenth time they’ve had this party, or as they call it, this “Conference of Parties”. Seventeen. Parties. The majority of the participants will be moving from late fall/early winter to late spring/early summer in Durban. I doubt that there will be many complaints about the warming involved in that change of seasons, despite the fact that it will be more than the dreaded 2°C tipping point of warming..
So what is Wall Street’s take on the Durban CO2 conference? What do the bankers say about the proposed extension of Kyoto? Here’s one man’s take, from Reuters :
“Parties must take the opportunity in Durban to send strong signals to the carbon market regarding their commitment to its continuation and future development,” said Jose Tumkaya, chief operating officer at UKemissions-reduction project developer Ecosecurities, a JP Morgan-owned firm. SOURCE
So we have a carbon offset project developer. Said carbon reduction person makes money from reducing carbon. Banks like money. They bought up the carbon offset project development firm. It is now owned by JP Morgan.
And now, being owned by JP Morgan, and thus being Very Important People (ex officio), they get interviewed by the media to give us their impartial view of the situation:
“Negotiators should be concerned about the historic low carbon prices as they do reflect, to some degree, a lack of confidence in the long-term commitment to existing emission reduction targets, as well as continued uncertainty with regards to a future international agreement,” he said.
Be concerned, be very, very concerned …
Ah, well. The bankers are pleading for the negotiators to come up with something, anything, to keep their Rumplestiltskin machine spinning carbon into money.
So we’ve got the banks against us … gonna be a long fight. This is Wall Street at its worst, looking to keep the carbon hype afloat and pushing to keep those sweet carbon bucks rolling in.
Where are the OCCUPY! folks when we need them? I say bring on the tents and the undercooked bulgur wheat, let’s OCCUPY COP 17–CMP 7!
w.
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