{"id":147949,"date":"2010-01-07T01:27:07","date_gmt":"2010-01-07T06:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seattleglobaljustice.org\/?p=521"},"modified":"2010-01-07T01:27:07","modified_gmt":"2010-01-07T06:27:07","slug":"our-world-leaders-went-to-copenhagen-and-all-we-got-was-this-lousy-climate-agreement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/147949","title":{"rendered":"Our world leaders went to Copenhagen, and all we got was this lousy climate agreement"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Council of Parties 15 (COP15) UN Climate Change Conference was reminiscent of many alphabet soup economic summits: World Heads of State came together in a mid-sized city to discuss pressing issues of the day, a clamoring from marginalized civil society organizations for a stronger voice (or from being barred entry), met with mass demonstrations from diverse perspectives.\u00a0 And similar to recent WTO meetings, the COP15 exposed the same tension between interests and demands from countries of the Global North and South.\u00a0 A major difference was the intent to address the climate crisis and our endangered planet; the tens of thousands of people outside the meetings were there to challenge our world leaders to go further in their commitments and asking for more from the deliberations (while also demanding a “seat at the table”), rather than attempting to break up the talks a la WTO, World Bank, or IMF.<\/p>\n

People’s cautious hope for a global, binding agreement and commitment to cooling the warming planet was justified, but unfulfilled.\u00a0 Negotiations early in the talks stalled, and a scramble later from presidents and prime ministers came up empty.\u00a0 No binding agreement was reached, delaying any enforcable or standardized way to address climate change until later talks (though President Obama and other US lawmakers lauded a “good first step” towards an agreement).\u00a0 Some of the biggest polluters such as China and India were looked at as culprits<\/a> by some First World countries, especially as China refused to open up to any external oversight.<\/p>\n

Yet as these countries continue to develop and increase their footprint through growth of both population and industrial technology, the debt owed to the developing countries for the past decades of carbon emissions, and the worst per capita polluters resistance to regulations, contributed to a WTO-reminiscent rift between First and Third worlds.\u00a0 The main notable commitment negotiators could agree upon was that the science requires us to (somehow) prevent a global temperature rise of more than 2 degrees – which representatives from island nations said could almost completely destroy them<\/a>.\u00a0 World leaders jockeyed for an economic advantage by trying to be sure that the agreement wouldn’t hurt the bottom line – putting us and the earth at an extreme disadvantage.\u00a0 Though some funding was committed to help developing countries install clean energy and cut emissions, those countries also say it’s nowhere near enough.\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n

Some reactions<\/a> from environmental NGOs and activists such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, World Development Movement, Bill McKibben, and climate scientest Jim Hansen saw the talks as a failure, while World Wildlife Fund, National Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club were glad to see one step in the right direction.\u00a0 Out in the streets, some of the largest demonstrations of the decade took place, along with an alternate Klimaforum09 featuring 50,000 activists and speakers such as Vandana Shiva and Naomi Klein.\u00a0 The Yes Men were in action<\/a> as well, exposing the truth about Canada’s dangerous environmental policies.\u00a0 “Climate Justice” was certainly the rallying cry outside the talks, perhaps emboldening negotiators and activists from developing nations on the inside, and marking the “emergence” of the Climate Justice Movement.\u00a0 North-South coalitions engaged in non-violent direct action<\/a> in a Reclaim Power! demonstration, and many different actions took place during the weeks of the talks.\u00a0 On some days, issues such as agriculture, borders, farmers’ rights, and reparations for climate debt became the focus<\/a>.\u00a0 Police reaction also became a problem, with raids on activist houses before demonstrations, violent suppression of marches and rallies, and 968 people detained at one December 12th action.\u00a0 For continued coverage and support of the demonstrations, check out http:\/\/www.climate-justice-action.org\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Council of Parties 15 (COP15) UN Climate Change Conference was reminiscent of many alphabet soup economic summits: World Heads of State came together in a mid-sized city to discuss pressing issues of the day, a clamoring from marginalized civil society organizations for a stronger voice (or from being barred entry), met with mass demonstrations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}