COP 17 has already started in practice…
We are all here. The Good the bad and the ugly…
Battle lines are drawn and the forces of good and evil arrayed on the plains of Durban facing each other.
But much like the old battles of Shaka Zulu the result is almost pre-ordained.
And with only days to go before the official start of the big round of climate change talks in Durban SA, the stage is now set for a clash between activists and the powerful corporate interests wanting to derail these talks again.
And also a minor clash is brewing between the various national blocks that have some sort f climate change policy, and those climate skeptics, battling it out over the shape of any new ineffective and unequal to the task, UN global warming treaty.
The stakes could not be higher.
Scientists say that the window for keeping the world’s temperature rise within a tolerable 2C limit is closing rapidly, yet despite the recession global carbon dioxide emissions rose by a record-breaking amount last year. And we are looking at 5 degrees of global warming within decades. For this reason alone, the climate negotiators and activists alike, recognize that in order to have any impact, countries must converge quickly on an agreement to reduce global CO2 emissions – within the next five years at the latest.
And the media, the pundits, the analysts are all calling it a contest between the haves and the have nots. A competition as of who will pollute the most and enjoy the attendant economic growth benefits from the carbon economic order. But to see this simply as a battle between developed and developing countries, is only a product of misleading analysis and it leads to missing the bigger picture. Because the big picture of Climate and Economic Politics is of shifting geopolitical and environmental realities in today’s complex world. A world where power gravitates to those who use it for evil instead of good. So this Durban conference issue is not about rich versus poor as we have been pitted in this unjust cage fight, but rather it is about the freaking corporates vs the citizens and the very public they depend upon for their brand survival and yet so easily choose to delude and debase. Durban will be remembered as a confrontation between the strong corporate brands and the weak consumers, between those responsible for the catastrophe and those most vulnerable.
Yet there is no leadership here. None… And if the moral and ethical leadership is made up of the many dimensions to leadership for the benefit of the people who one serves we have no way but to act truthfully for all our principles. One of those is the ethical dimension, which often remains unacknowledged until circumstances conspire to bring it into full public view. And that is what we see from all the corporate and country ministers and small time leaders arriving in Durban. A complete lack of ethical leadership principles. And if you hear our friend and EP elder Desmond Tutu speaking about leadership, he says that: ”If you are neutral or cover up in situations of clear injustice, you have chosen the side of evil.”
Because we all know that without the protection of binding international environmental law, the weaker nations and the vulnerable Peoples who are the least responsible for this global greenhouse, will surely suffer greatly and lose their livelihood and in some cases their lives. Yet the same holds true for the consumers and the citizens of nations with rich passports due to accident of DNA having been born within national borders of well developed countries. They feel it too, because they will face the very same climate negative effects soonest. And they are starting to get it.
This is why we are here protesting in Durban because a new legally binding, ambitious treaty is the one central demand of all of us and of our Leadership principle. For the first world activists and vulnerable nations’ activists alike. Climate campers from South Africa hang with Bangladeshis, and come stand with others form the least developed African countries, like Ethiopia, Tanzania and Rwanda, and from the small island states such as the Maldives, Mauritius and the Cook islands and all the low lying atoll and coral islands the world over. These national activists his COP process has ever seen. And along with the First Peoples is the youth of South Africa and young people from all over the world who have been convened by the Environmental Parliament to create the most visible demos this COP process has ever seen. and we have the right targets because they all know all too well, that letting the biggest corporate and national polluters decide the rules of the road for the climate future, will compromise their fundamental right to survival. And they are therefore preparing for a showdown in Durban, remembering Copenhagen and Cancun where humanity’s existential crisis and a treaty for the survival of our civilization was turned to a corporate joke at the Corporate Masters of the World saving the planet parties hat sunk the process.
It’s a pity because when the climate system conference of the parties was first set up by the UN back in the late 1980s, the industrialised world contributed by far the most global greenhouse gases and the emphasis was on addressing this Climate Debt. Yet now all this has been forgotten and the 1992 Climate Convention and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol envisioned Carbon emission curbs for the biggest developed rich emitters only. And this didn’t work since the biggest one the US never signed n to that… Yet today, it’s coming from the other end, because the same holds true only the greatest emissions growth is coming from developing world countries. Somehow the developed country emissions have declined by 6% since 1990, while the majority of new and overall greenhouse gases and CO2 pollution now comes from the developing world – in particular China, India, Brazil and South Africa. The point is not to criticise these countries, nor to undermine their legitimate rights to development but to help them see the folly of their ways… Because although China, India and Brazil are greening their economies, their Power & Utility industry is based on coal burning and that alone hurts us all. To add injury to the wound, these countries are loath to make any meaningful commitments on the international stage that might constrain their fossil fuel energy sources, and will be resisting the adoption of any legally binding targets too.
Instead, China, India and the more powerful members of the developing world are still insisting that the only outcome from Durban that matters is another round of the Kyoto Protocol for industrialised countries only. But for the global Climate this is nonsense, because with the US on the sidelines and the recent denial of Japan, Russia and Canada — Kyoto covers less than 15% of global emissions. That sucks. And the sad truth is that Kyoto is a failure and still is being used as a negotiating ploy to delay the eventual adoption of a truly worldwide treaty on carbon emissions.
This is the truth that you are not likely to hear in Durban this year. And still this truth is the only way to understand and then go on and comprehensively tackle climate change. So what deal are we hoping to find? Maybe use somethng from the past?
How about reviving a ghost treaty and see if it suits. Because we have one such treaty and that treaty is the Copenhagen Accord but only if the big guys all sign up to binding emission reduction targets.
So these are the real battle lines of Durban:
On one side are the Business lobbies, the Corporate polluters, the big Carbon economies, the major CO2 emitting countries both developed and developing, and in essence all those who have in common a clear visceral opposition to any legally binding new climate treaty. China, India, the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and South Africa and all the multinational corporate polluters along with the fossil fuel emitters and businesses have found that pretending to be saving the planet through unashamed greenwashing is far better than getting the people the climate protection, the safety and security they deserve.
On the other side stands an alliance of young activists and a growing informal alliance of all climate camp groups and the representatives of the marginal equatorial countries and the vulnerable low lying countries. The activist Peoples from all over the world and the many countries, such as the small island states, some of the European Union countries like Norway, several progressive Latin American nations like Colombia, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Venezuela and Chile, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland, who have been keeping the flame alive for some form of meaningful progress towards a binding climate deal. These activists and the progressive countries now come in a coalition, pointing out that a treaty implemented after 2020 will be too late to save the world from the threat of global warming and instead want a firm 2012 timeline, with ambitious action.
Yet as you might recall from Bali, Bonn, from Cancun, from Copenhagen and the Potsdam rounds of negotiations before this, nobody’s listening to them…
So stay tuned to see how this is going to play out.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Whether this informal group of climate activists and progressive nations can survive the strong-arm tactics of the powerful nations and excel into the filed of battle, will be the real story of Durban.
And it would be a fair fight but that’s before the corporates and the carbon business lobbies enter into the fray tilting the balance against any fair deal. Because once they push the levers of the unequal equation, the corporates and the heavy handed business lobby who are responsible for the majority of emissions and who have been keenly focused on taking over the debate and preventing any international climate deal at all from being negotiated and agreed upon, can easily tip the balance and kill any deal from ever surfacing. They have great help in doing this by blindsiding the official negotiators with their branded greenwashing and their constant PR and corporate sponsorships of the official bodies.
And in Durban the focus of their incessant Greenwashing is to mislead public policy officials and citizens alike and thus prevent all nations from acting decisively and instituting international policies to combat climate change. This is their brand fest, World Climate taking place next weekend.
And it seems the dirty polluters are winning because the whole UN process has been co-opted and the chiefs of thee corporate polluters have been endorsed as the good guys, instead of the baddies and unreformed greenwashers they are.
And for those of you who hope the corporations and the major brands are going to bring us the solution to this problem, or salvation, let me remind you of Marie Antoinette and her good intentions: “Let them eat cake…”
And with so many Marie Antoinettes holding a Love Fest of Saving the World on the weekend of the 3rd and 4th in Durban, you will be well advised to picket them, mock them, demo against and pie them in the face, just in order to remind them there is also a keen public that is the guardian of the process and the activist community that beholds the principles of our environmental struggle.
Maybe an occupy Durban force will emerge and take over the venue for a World Climate camp sit in, instead of the Corporate party pretending to be saving the planet.
That will make a nice statement after all… and introduce the much needed debate into the conversation that has been simple orthodox Greenwash corporate dogma.
Killing off all chances for a Durban deal is pure evil.
And we need to face such evil head on – lest we allow those that find profit from practicing such vile and evil cruelty on their own people – leading us.
This freaking process is so unreal, it beggars belief.
