Put a ring on it

Some more... composed thoughts on my experiences at the COP15 and the Copenhagen Accord soon. But for now, a little moment of wonder. Check out this amazing video imagining what our world would be like if the Earth had rings like Saturn's. Just thinking about how sunlight would reflect off the rings even at night (just like the Moon) reminds me of this Isaac Asimov story about a world with a whole number of suns that never experienced darkness. It's interesting to think how it would have influenced the way we see the world to have these things up there. Just food for thought.

Obama the cowboy rams through a sham deal for the rest of the world to sign their names to

[Cross-posted to Project Survival Media]

So Obama just held a press conference announcing the US, China, India and South Africa (possibly Brazil?) are going to ram through a final climate text. Bill McKibben, founder of the 350 campaign, looked extremely upset as he walked through the room when it was announced. I asked him what he thought. He said,

“I think we’ve just seen the end of the UN.”

This New York Times article scoops how Obama stormed West Wing-style into what was apparently a private meeting between the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian leaders, asking that they stop negotiating in secret. Then together they had a secret meeting to decide for the other 189 countries what they’d be signing in Copenhagen.

Apparently the temperature rise target is down to 2 degrees. Which would be great. But the US is not committing to any higher mitigation targets, and Obama openly admitted they do not meet what the science tells us we need to do. He congratulated himself on helping seal in the “emerging countries,” even though Brazil, China, and India went into this process saying they were willing to tackle this problem as long as the US led the way. And he made no mention of doing anything more than the fundraising campaign he and Secretary Clinton announced they’d do to raise $100 billion for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries.

But more than that, he’s shown that he really is just another American cowboy. The current stage of these negotiations has been going on for two years, and there’s a reason the tiniest and least powerful countries in the world were willing to sign onto this process. Presumably, all of their voices were going to be heard (then again, presumably so were civil society’s). Now he’s declared, completely outside of this process (though in the same building) that none of these negotiations really matter, because the real decisions needed to be made by the big boys. No more secret meetings? Tell me Kiribati and Tuvalu were in that room. Or even consulted about the text these countries agreed on.

There are a lot of uncertain things about what this text even means, since it’s not going to be legally binding. I’m still trying to gather people’s reactions here at the Fresh Air Centre to understand it better. It may have a UNFCCC letterhead, but it will essentially be a document written without the consultation of almost any country in the global south, without the EU (bizarrely), without the President of the COP15 negotiations.

This is not an agreement to be proud of. And it seems like we’ve just witnessed the rug being pulled out from underneath the UN one of the most important issues it’s ever been a forum to address. The US has undermined the world’s most credible common negotiating table in a brand new way, and has rammed through a treaty that will sign some of the parties here onto catastrophe — or disappearance.

The video of Obama’s announcement, from theuptake.org:

The longest day

Today is (officially) the last day of the COP15 conference here in Copenhagen. The day Obama arrived. The day our leaders were supposed to "seal the deal."

It's been a day of disappointment.

I woke up a bit early this morning to head down to Bella Center with this guy Senan who's also been working for Project Survival Media. We joined a group of people shaving their heads to show how ashamed we are of how bad the climate agreement is right now. It was so cold I started getting dizzy, and it was hard to hold the razor between my hands I was shivering so much. But if there's one day when you can really say you've just got to toughen up because we're trying to save the world, this was it.

Getty Images has a couple pictures of the event, and I know Democracy Now was there interviewing people, but someone asked me afterward what the point was. I had to think about it. I have an ambivalent relationship with activism, because I only like participating in events that send a clear message, or that have a reasonable chance of making an impact. I don't know if sitting down with a sign that said "A Canadian looking for a leader I can be proud of" beside the ones saying "Climate Shame" has had an impact on anything going on inside the Bella Center today. But I do know this.

I know I can't sit by the sidelines anymore and hope someone else is going to take care of this problem. Tara Rowe from WWF gave a little briefing here today on the negotiations, and she really summed up a lot of everyone's feeling in the city today. There are over a hundred heads of state here right now in this "bloody grey and snowy city," as she put it, and haven't been able to muster up anything close to the kind of deal we need to arrest our emissions and stop these climate changes from getting totally out of control. Over a hundred heads of state. Mr. Yes We Can himself is here.

But neither he nor Hillary offered anything new in the past two days. His speech was completely underwhelming. Not only is the US commitment to 3 or 4 percent reductions by 2020 (from the real baseline year, 1990) a world away from the 25-40 percent reductions industrialized countries need to make, but both Obama and Secretary Clinton took their opportunity up on the COP15 podium to offer an ultimatum of all things. They've both talked about contributing to a $100 billion fund for climate change mitigation and adaptation in southern countries by 2020. But that would just be a contribution among those from many other states, as well as private sources. And they added the caveat that unless they got everything they wanted, they'd walk away from the table. Chiefly this means China would need to agree to the kind of accountability mechanism the US wants to track the spending of that money.

Speaking to a woman from the Brazilian delegation today in a convenience store, it was interesting to hear that she agreed that countries in the south need to be part of some independent accountability measures to track the climate spending. Otherwise, she said, the money was likely to go the wrong places - in Brazil, for example, to slip through the cracks of corruption. (And then she bought some orange juice).

But that's not the biggest issue. Emissions reductions, mostly from industrialized countries, need to be vastly deeper. We need to get atmospheric CO2 back down to 350 ppm. If Obama, working late into the night with negotiators can't do it, if President Nasheed and the rest of the small island states can't do it, if leaders from all around Africa, Europe, South America, and everywhere else can't do it... "If this is leadership," as Tara Rowe said, "then our leadership lies elsewhere."

I know I can't stand by the sidelines while our Environment Minister goes up the COP15 podium after Fiji's leaders and say with a straight face that an affordable deal is more important to us than their existence. How can it be that this many of our highest-level representatives, in the offices with the most power in the world, can't rise up to the greatest challenge of our time? This is, really, about all of our survival.

So all we can do right now is stand outside with torches to spell 350, like we did tonight, and remind them of the most important number to put in this text. And stand in solidarity with the climate fasters. And not let our leaders think for a moment they'll get patted on the back if they stand for a photo-op around a document that promises anything less than fair, ambitious and binding action to address the climate crisis.

We're being told the UN has asked negotiators to prepare for a stay into the rest of the weekend. Obama's holding a press conference in a few minutes. And we're waiting.

Missing 350: Signing up for a catastrophe

Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed speaking to a crowd in Copenhagen this week

I've been sitting all day in an amazing media hub (and bar) that tcktcktck has set up here called the Fresh Air Centre, watching journalists and bloggers and UN spokespeople come in and out. I've been editing stories for Project Survival Media and youthclimate.org, trying to get the word out about the events we've been locked out of inside the Bella Center. And I was sitting here when someone announced a report had leaked from the UN that says the current commitments are going to put us on track for 3 degrees global temperature rise, and 550 ppm of CO2.

It's hard to explain how much of a disaster it could be if this is the agreement the leaders sign tomorrow. An NGO delegate from Peru (I think, although it might have been somewhere else in the Andes) sat in here today telling us about the flooding the mountainous regions are receiving from the melting glaciers. And how people's entire livelihoods are threatened by the rapid disappearing of their water source. This morning I read an interview with two kids from Nunavut, where Arctic temperatures are rising twice as fast as the global average, and they talked about how permafrost melt in their town has been so bad it's destroyed the only bridge connecting its two sides. And of course there's President Nasheed.

Mohamed Nasheed, the president of Maldives, has emerged as one of the true heroes of this conference. The countries arguing for targets based on science and justice here have, not surprisingly, been all from the global south. Not surprising, because while they're responsible for a fraction of the mess we're in, they're suffering, and are going to suffer, the overwhelming majority of the effects. Nasheed has been part of the 350 movement to bring back atmospheric CO2 levels to 350 parts per million, to keep nations like his from literally disappearing. If there are two things you do today, you need to 1) watch the video above and 2) call your MP, and tell them how angry and embarrassed you are that Canada is not doing its part to meet this goal. You can find the text of his talk here

He talks about being in prison four years ago, fighting for his country's independence. He talks about how there were times when he felt like the doubters were right, that they would never be free. And how while the dictatorship "had the guns, bombs and tanks... we had no weapons other than the power of our words." That's what they have now. (And the moral authority of committing to becoming the first carbon-neutral nation in a decade). It is so important that they win. If sea level rise doesn't completely drown out the Maldives, ocean flooding might still ruin their freshwater sources. Someone from Bangladesh asked him today what he thought about his people needing to migrate. He said,“In terms of migration… I can move. But you can’t take all the butterflies. You can’t take the language, you can’t take the culture, you can’t take the songs, you can’t take the colour and you can’t take everything that is you."

Now you know why it matters that the draft agreement commits to completely insufficient goals. It's great that the US is going to contribute to a $100 billion climate mitigation and adaptation fund by 2020, even if the standoff with China over transparent spending of this money is a distraction here. I was so happy when I heard Hillary say that this morning. But it's nowhere near enough. According to the Guardian, the UK-commissioned Stern review says these kind of targets mean up to 170 million more people become vulnerable to severe coastal flooding, and over half a billion more at risk of hunger. It's important that tomorrow our leaders agree not to sign onto a bad deal. I'm convinced now. A bad deal tomorrow, locking us into these kinds of targets, is worse than a good deal in six months or a year.

It's important to seal the deal. But not this one. We need to talk about what comes after Copenhagen. We need to keep the momentum going.

Shut out, smacked down

So this is a reposting of a story I wrote for projectsurvivalmedia.org today. Check out what's been going on. There's a great blog on it on the Toronto Star website too.

Groups take to the streets to protest exclusion from COP15

Walking towards the Bella Center

Tensions were rising inside and outside the Bella Center in Copenhagen today, with a demonstration and sit-in to protest the exclusion of developing countries and civil society from COP15 climate negotiations. Demonstrators marched on the conference center, where high-level talks are now beginning, demanding “no decisions about us without us.” They were planning to meet with hundreds of delegates from inside the talks to hold a “People’s Assembly” together outside. Organizers said they were aiming to come up with alternative agreements to those being discussed by negotiators, which many feel are neither ambitious nor inclusive enough. Instead, two NGOs arrived this morning and found their accreditation revoked, leading them to stage a pretty dramatic sit-in.

Protesters were accompanied by police along the march to the Bella Center, but we were warned we’d be arrested if we tried to enter. And they weren’t joking. When the crowd pushed forward, police started spraying pepper spray at everyone. I admit, I backed off before the push. It was pretty incredible to see everyone agree to non-violence and non-confrontation beforehand, but I wasn’t willing to spend a night in jail. When people within the crowd tried to back up, they were beaten with batons from both directions, and several people were arrested and hoisted into vans. At least one person was beaten down after climbing a van. The last I saw, things were at a standoff, with police waiting on either side of the hundreds of protesters that still remained after a foiled attempt to cross the stream in front of the center with an inflatable raft.

Treehugger has reported that as we were seeing this outside, Friends of the Earth leader Nnimmo Bassey was leading a sit-in in the entrance lobby of the center to protest the revoking of accreditation for his group and Avaaz. No clear explanation has been offered for the revocation, though UN officials reportedly alternately said they presented a security risk and that there was no room.

But it’s important that the meaning of today’s events don’t get lost. As the negotiations move into their final days, many have been frustrated by the huge reductions in the number of badges the UN is giving out to participate inside. As a member of one of the civil society groups frustrated by the move, I joined the march of between 2 and 3000 people one journalist estimated the crowd at. Through thick wet flakes of snow, organizers from the Climate Justice Network and Climate Justice Action groups joined representatives of the Via Campesina landless workers movement to demand their voices be heard, under the banner “Reclaim Power.”

There are definite parallels between the groups’ grievances. Sharon Tan, a youth observer attending with a group named Syinc from Singapore, camped out all through Monday and into Tuesday night without being let in. She says the presence of young civil society members is important for both them and negotiators. “When we attended the plenary last week,” she says, “at least we were aware of developments. My purpose here is mainly for public education back home. But being able to take part in actions on the side in the center helps remind everyone who they’re there for.”

Many countries’ representatives are also feeling like their voices are being ignored. Industrialized countries have not shown a willingness to commit to the deep emissions cuts being demanded by developing nations. Developing countries have shown support for the $10 billion fast-track financing for climate change mitigation and adaption in the, but say it falls far short of the climate debt owed to them by the industrialized countries who have been responsible for most of the carbon emissions contributing to climate change. Small island nations like the Maldives, threatened with being submerged by sea level rise, have been especially vocal in stating that these issues are a matter of survival.

As heads of state and ministers begin to arrive from over 120 countries, it remains to be seen how the gulf between the many different positions being discussed will be resolved.

The Gap

So from what I can tell, here's why these talks are probably not going to result in a 'sealed deal':

The gap.

The huge, gaping, seemingly insurmountable gap between what the countries in the north are willing to offer and what countries in the south are demanding. Yes, Europe is offering much deeper cuts than Canada and the US, and they're using the 1990 benchmark, instead of the ridiculous 2006 one we're floating around. Yes, the EU is talking about a $10 billio

n a year climate mitigation and adaptation fund for poorer countries. It's not enough, though. Not even close.

This morning I used the Google group for a youth coalition called YOUNGO to find a meeting I could jump in on to get my bearings here. I ended up getting assigned a role as editor of articles and blog posts coming in from youth around the city, in and outside of Bella Center, where all the action is. As heads of state and the really high-level ministers show up, civil society groups are being shut out of the conference. Over the next few days, the number of badges given out to NGOs and other observers is going to go down from 7000 to 1000 to 90. So we're doing our best to get through to the negotiators through other means.

Incredibly, Naomi Klein dropped by to give a pep talk and information session to the group of about 100 of us that were there this morning. I tried really hard, and just managed, to avoid saying I'd read one of her books in class. She said she's been spending a lot of time talking to leaders from the south, and she pointed out that our allies right now, the people fighting for the emissions targets that have a good chance of keeping us away from truly disastrous climate change, are not our own governments in the north. They're not the ones committing to the 45% CO2 equivalent emissions cuts from 1990 levels by 2020 that climate scientists say are necessary to avoid a global temperature rise of 2 degrees.

Klein said the negotiations right now are being driven by the slow, technocratic momentum these kinds of meetings tend to have, which is not going to be conducive to the kind of bold agreement we need. And when I asked her if the scientific consensus about the impacts of our emissions is coming up in the talks, she said it certainly isn't for countries like ours.

Ultimately, she seemed to think the gap in these talks is so wide, especially in the climate debt demands countries from the south are making ($400 billion on top of 5% of our GNP is what the African Group is demanding), that our leaders are not going to have a solid document ready to sign by Friday. Klein said an ambassador from Ecuador felt like he was in the Matrix - that there were all the appearances that the developing countries are part of the negotiators, but that they're being totally disregarded. She said what is realistic right now, the best option, is to demand that our leaders don't sign a bad deal just to get a deal done. And to get them to commit to making a real deal by next year.

In that vein, tomorrow is going to be a huge day. Via Campesina, the amazing international landless worker's movement, is leading a huge peaceful march of Southern delegates towards the Bella Center, to express their frustration at being left out. There, they're going to be met by a large group (much larger than Monday's) of delegates walking out of the talks. And together, they're going to hold a People's Assembly to discuss a real deal. This is going to be happening alongside at least one other march that hasn't gotten permission from the police, and that might turn violent. Klein said for the first time she's seen in a decade though, anarchist groups have agreed to commit to non-violent principles here to avoid upstaging the other messages. It's amazing the kinds of things happening to get a good deal out of this meeting, guys.

And I'll be marching in solidarity with the Via Campesina guys, of course, before heading to our youth headquarters to work on stories for the rest of the week. Wish me luck.

Hopenhagen

Archbishop Desmond Tutuu addressing crowds in Copenhagen (photo by Pamela Juhl)

So I've just arrived in Copenhagen. I feel a little adrift here, but I'm hoping to do what I can to help lobby our leaders to agree to a really ambitious agreement. Until a couple of weeks ago, I didn't think I'd be able to come at all, and when I did finally book my ticket, it took a while to connect with an organization that I could tag along with. So I've been hooked up with Taking It Global, who are part of a broader youth coalition lobbying here called YOUNGO, and I'm still trying to figure everything out.

Getting off the plane today was kind of exhilerating. I was too wiped from leaving Ghana to join in today (and of course, had to spend some time visiting my great aunt Jenny here), but it the whole city seems swept up in the conference. There are COP15 signs everywhere, and a lot of signs for this 'Hopenhagen' series of events to mobilize people. There was a concert the other night that Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke at, and the clips were amazing. He peered out at the crowds from behind a scarf and those famous little glasses, and smiled, 'We don't want to develop the way you have! Helloooooo rich people! We need help! Just a liiiittle sum to do it -- of $150 billion.'

The crowd laughed, but he was basically getting out in the open one of the big reasons the group of developing countries called the G77 apparently walked out today - that they want much much bigger commitments of aid from rich industrialized countries, and much more drastic emissions cuts than we've been willing to sign onto so far.

Someone sent out a press release today pretending to represent the Canadian government, and a couple news outlets like the Wall Street Journal picked it up without realizing it was a hoax. The Ugandan delegation actually responded to the fake release with a huge amount of enthusiasm, because it seemed like Canada was finally willing to make a bold about-face and offer real CO2 emissions cuts (of 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, rather than an insultingly small amount from 2006 levels) and more than $10 billion a year in aid to help developing countries adapt to the effects of climate change. And moreover, the fakesters said Canada was finally accepting the concept of climate debt: that we have a serious debt to pay as major carbon emitters for the damage we're inflicting, especially on countries in the South that are being hit worse and have fewer resources to adapt.

The sad part is that this is exactly the kind of change Canada needs to adopt, and in all likelihood completely unrealistic from our representatives. Environment Minister Jim Prentice, and our entire environmental policy, seem dead set against taking the climate crisis seriously. Last week Prentice said Canada wouldn't be swept up in the 'hype' of Copenhagen. And as Aiden Abrams said (a brilliant guy from Taking It Global I hope to meet tomorrow), we're not only not leading on this issue, it would be a stretch to say we're even following.

But you know what? Change is happening anyway. Bangladeshi climate scientist Saleemul Huq had a great editorial in the Guardian today that gives me a huge amount of hope. Looking at the huge protests on the weekend, he said:

...Now in Copenhagen in December 2009, I believe we have reached a tipping point. I truly believe that Copenhagen will be remembered in years to come, not for what happens on 18 December when world leaders meet here, but for what just happened on 12 December when tens of thousands of people took the streets to call for strong, ambitious action on climate change.

This marked the day that people from all walks of life all over the world seized the initiative from our so-called leaders. Regardless of the words these presidents and prime ministers decide in a "protocol" or "agreement" next week, it is the people of
the world who have put the writing on the wall. The leaders who choose to read those words will take us forward. Those who ignore them will be swept away by the tide of history.

Saturday marked the point when a large part of the world rose up as one to tackle a truly global challenge. Although there may be temporary setbacks (such as a less-than-ambitious deal next week) the tide has already turned. It cannot be turned back.

I hope he's right. The EU is moving in the right direction. The US is moving forward. More soon.

Everybody's going to Denmark

I almost take it for granted that my own country is going to be an embarrassment at this conference, but Canada aside, I'm excited and mildly optimistic about what's going to come out of Copenhagen this month. I didn't think I'd be able to afford it until a couple weeks ago, but now I'm actually going to be there for the last week. And while I'm scrambling to figure out how to get in, I am trying to remember why I wanted to go in the first place.

Next semester, I'm hoping to intern with an NGO here in Ghana called Abibiman Foundation. They do some pretty wicked climate lobbying work, from what I can tell, and they let me read a really interesting -- and kind of heart-breaking -- document they helped produce. This October, along with a whole bunch of other development organizations, they visited villages and cities around the country doing something they called Climate Justice Hearings, finding out the impacts of climate change on people's lives in all these places. The final report was presented to the Ghanaian government to help them pull together a clear position for the talks this year.

They visited communities in the region I'm actually in right now, up north. A lot of the concerns expressed by people in cities, towns, and villages up here are similar: existing problems are being made worse by a drier, hotter growing season, more intense and unmanageable rains when they do come, and more common flooding when the dams overflow up north in Burkina Faso.

I spent the last three days researching water and sanitation with my class in a tiny village called Kukua, talking to NGOs, the district government team in charge of water and sanitation projects, community members, schoolkids, teachers... People there have an incredibly difficult time getting water not just for drinking, but for washing, cooking, tending to their animals (oh my god, donkeys are so dumb), you name it. There are wells, but they dry up in the hot, dry Harmattan season (just beginning now).

A woman in Kukua drawing us a calendar to show water sources in different seasons

A couple of government-associated projects have helped them get boreholes with handpumps, but kids still told us there's no water anywhere near the school. In the rainy seasons, they harvest rainwater and store it in a big black plastic Polytank, but the teachers rely on students to bring buckets of water from home. And when everybody pours their buckets together, all it takes is one bucket with a weird colour or smell, or sand in it, to affect the quality of all the rest.

So then today, I'm reading through this report on my computer, and I come across testimonies from kids in a village called Tumu, northwest of here. Imagine a community facing a situation like Kukua's already, and then it gets worse as the climate changes. Tumu has been hit hard by flooding from Burkina Faso in the past few years. So the community said that even as wells get drier and drier, they've been getting polluted by high floodwaters in the rainy season, which have also washed away people's homes...

One kid said:

"The impacts of climate change are not farfetched. We, children and pupils in Tumu suffer the worse effects of climate change. We have to carry water from long distances and sometimes service our parent’s farms and animals before attending school. We have to struggle to pass the same exams we sit with our colleagues who have better condition of living and learning. This is unfair and unjust”

And I guess, to put it simply, the feeling I have reading this is a part of why I want to go. More later.

Motherfrakkin treehuggers

Have you ever heard someone use the word treehugger as an insult? 'Ah, they're just a bunch of treehuggers,' as in, 'granola types who watched Bambi too many times and love hugging fluffy cuddly flowers.' (Can you cuddle a flower? None of the ones in my garden seemed very conducive to that).

The funny thing is, if you've ever heard of where the word comes from, you'll realize that treehuggers are totally badass. And it complicates the idea that environmental activists are always fighting for a world where no human every touches a tree.

The Chipko movement started in India in the 1970s, in regions in the Upper Himalayas where communities were constantly being given the short end of the stick and denied their traditional forestry rights by the national Forest Department. The region had started to get more accessible to commercial logging, and people began getting frustrated as the government awarded major contracts to these large loggers and denied them access to smaller amounts of trees in their own homelands. Deforestation and land degradation were becoming serious issues.

The most famous incident I know about, where the idea of a modern treehugger was really born, was in a village called Reni, in 1974. There had already been a number of nonviolent protests in the region over huge contracts being given out. The government announced it was going to allow the removal of 2500 trees near the village, and tempers were high between them and the villagers, who'd joined a group of Gandhian activists stirring up opposition throughout the region. Then in March, the government convinced the men to come to a bogus meeting in another village while the logging trucks moved in. When the women found out, they ran out to convince the loggers to stop. And when that didn't work, they put their bodies between the axes and the trees.

And they won.

I don't know if I'd have the guts to do what those women did. But I'd be proud to be called a treehugger any day.

Something to talk about

So this is my new blog. Chances are, if you're reading this, you've read one of my others -- Money Undressed or The Point. The thing is, I struggle to write blogs and do podcasts because I don't like blogging about my life, I have a kind of rambly writing style, and I have trouble updating on any sort of regular schedule.

But I have a lot to write about, and although I'm in Ghana at the moment and blogging is even more challenging than back in Canada (case in point, the power went on and off here during the last paragraph), I'd like to start sharing it again. So my gimmick this time is to trick myself into writing by focusing on 'environmental' stuff. Which is the neat word people generally use to encompass stuff that includes the other photosynthesizing, stampeding, mineralizing folks we live with on this planet. I'm interested in them. I hope you are too.

So here goes. Another grand experiment. Thanks for sticking around.