Holyrood 350 — H35O

That was an even more mis­er­able result than expected for those of us who at least thought the politi­cians would agree on unfair, unam­bi­tious, inad­e­quate but at least legally bind­ing emis­sion cut­ting tar­gets. For those who expected noth­ing of them, their expec­ta­tions are fulfilled.

For us all, after a mis­er­able Copen­hagen: What next?

The sug­ges­tion here is that we have to be unre­al­is­tic. The abo­li­tion­ists were told it was com­pletely unre­al­is­tic to expect an end to slav­ery, the eco­nomic sys­tem was built on it, the pow­er­ful would never agree, it was in human nature, etc — the abo­li­tion­ists didn’t play those games, slav­ery was wrong.

If being real­is­tic means abid­ing by the cor­po­rate power con­trol­ling gov­ern­ments, con­trol­ling the media and our sense of what is humanly pos­si­ble, then we need to be com­pletely, imag­i­na­tively, insis­tently unre­al­is­tic — in a way that can bring about a com­pletely dif­fer­ent reality.

Soci­eties have always changed, change is who we are — the only cer­tainty about human nature is our abil­ity to cre­ate (whether we cre­ate heaven, hell or some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent is up to us), the only cer­tainty we can hold onto in life is uncer­tainty itself — and that is good news!

Peo­ple know the bankers have taken our money and run, they sense gov­ern­ing politi­cians refusal to face up to this, to act fairly, with imag­i­na­tion and in a way which cre­ates a fair local, national and global soci­ety out of the abun­dance around us.

This is a moment to seize (because there will not be a bet­ter one).

So, 4 ini­tial suggestions:

1. A CLIMATE COURT OF JUSTICE:
this is Eve Morales call for “an inter­na­tional cli­mate court of jus­tice to pros­e­cute coun­tries for cli­mate “crimes.” (see the rel­e­vant 3 para­graphs from Albert Beales blog below) — in effect, a judi­ciary; [JK sug­ges­tion would be to focus this on cor­po­ra­tions as much as coun­tries, and to focus boy­cotts on cor­po­ra­tions — gov­ern­ing politi­cians are shooed in and out by corporations].

2. A PEOPLES PARLIAMENT FOR THE PLANET:
draw­ing on Stel­lan Vinthagen’s pro­posal to estab­lish a Panel on Cli­mate Jus­tice (see below) — in effect, a leg­is­la­ture or, bet­ter, a pro­poser; [JK sug­ges­tion would be to trans­form this from an aca­d­e­mic panel into an activists par­lia­ment — ‘activist’ in the widest sense].

3. AN ENCIRCLEMENT OF THE LEADERS:
draw­ing on Lille­more Thy­berg and Eva Schonveld’s pro­posal that the next Cli­mate Sum­mit is sur­rounded and ‘lead­ers’ are not allowed to leave until they reach an agree­ment that saves the cli­mate and humans, which nec­es­sar­ily would involve cor­po­ra­tions and most politi­cians being made to relin­quish their power (see Stellan’s para­graphs below). [JK sug­ges­tion: this is in effect a gath­er­ing of the peo­ples par­lia­ment first in Bonn in June 2010 then in Mex­ico in Novem­ber 2010 — in effect, a people’s action].

4. A DISENGAGEMENT FROM CORPORATIONS, AND RAPIDLY REBUILDING COMMUNITY:
draw­ing on Kevin Mason’s ideas (see below) we need to not just deal with the so-called ‘lead­ers’ (as above) but build local trans-local alter­na­tives to defuse the power of the cor­po­ra­tions dri­ving cli­mate change, and return power to peo­ple. These actions take dif­fer­ent forms depend­ing on where you are located: so for some it may focus more on build­ing boy­cott cam­paigns, for oth­ers more on build­ing alliances between the global north and south, between those peo­ple being crushed by this eco­nomic sys­tem and those des­per­ate to stop the destruc­tion of eco-systems, for oth­ers build­ing Tran­si­tion ini­tia­tives, eco-villages, and more — in effect, recog­nis­ing our­selves as a peo­ple. [JK sug­ges­tion: as the eco­nomic melt­down and energy cri­sis inten­si­fies, this will need to focus on cre­at­ing safety and sur­vival, not only for those suf­fer­ing now but for the rapidly expand­ing cir­cle of those mar­gin­alised by the sup­pos­edly trickle-down but actu­ally dragging-wealth-up-to-the-top model].

Ok, those are a few sug­ges­tions. This is a moment we (we mean­ing humans as a whole, not some seg­ment) need to seize to return our­selves our future and so return the present to those whose present is being destroyed as we speak.

Be sup­pos­edly ‘unre­al­is­tic’, and seek to trans­form the human world.

Or be real­is­tic, and watch as we drag the non-human world down with us.

In sol­i­dar­ity, in despair, and in grat­i­tude for all those who insist on act­ing NOW.

re 1. A CLIMATE COURT OF JUSTICE: (http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=577&Itemid=1)
ALBERT BEALE: “Boli­vian Pres­i­dent Evo Morales called on the world lead­ers to raise their ambi­tions rad­i­cally and hold tem­per­a­ture increases over the next cen­tury to just 1C. In the most provoca­tive state­ment yet made at the cli­mate sum­mit, Morales demanded rich coun­tries pay cli­mate change repa­ra­tions and pro­posed an inter­na­tional cli­mate court of jus­tice to pros­e­cute coun­tries for cli­mate “crimes.”

“Our objec­tive is to save human­ity and not just half of human­ity. We are here to save mother earth. Our objec­tive is to reduce cli­mate change to [under] 1C. [Above this] many islands will dis­ap­pear and Africa will suf­fer a holo­caust,” he said.

“This came the same day that the United States announced it would accept the pro­posal Morales advanced more than two years ago, of pay­ing Bolivia and other coun­tries to keep their forests stand­ing and their resources in the ground. At the time, Morales’ pro­posal was scoffed at as totally out­ra­geous. The time may come when cli­mate crimes are also not con­sid­ered out­side the bounds of legal process. Are you lis­ten­ing, Barack?”
re 2. A PEOPLES PARLIAMENT FOR THE PLANET

STELLAN VINTHAGEN: “We need a Panel on Cli­mate Jus­tice (or a Panel on Social Change…): a global coop­er­a­tion between schol­ars from polit­i­cal sci­ence, soci­ol­ogy, anthro­pol­ogy, eth­nol­ogy, inter­na­tional polit­i­cal econ­omy, gen­der stud­ies, devel­op­ment stud­ies, phi­los­o­phy, etc. — who are pre­pared to develop (1) a polit­i­cal model of how to orga­nize our soci­eties dif­fer­ently, and (2) a polit­i­cal strat­egy of how we make that dif­fer­ent world pos­si­ble.”
re: 3. AN ENCIRCLEMENT OF THE LEADERS

STELLAN VINTHAGEN: “Strat­egy pro­posal for the next Cli­mate Sum­mit: “The Pope model”, built on how the car­di­nals’ elect the new Pope: Lock them in until they agree on a rad­i­cal Cli­mate Treaty that is good enough for human survival.

“We sug­gest that we for­mu­late a draft of The People’s Cli­mate Char­ter with our fun­da­men­tal demands, give it to the politi­cians before the meet­ing, and then lock them in through mas­sive demon­stra­tions with one mil­lion peo­ple mak­ing a circle-blockade around the con­fer­ence area. We don’t let them out until they have for­mu­lated a deal and signed it, in the same way as dur­ing the papal elec­tion in Rome. As in Rome, peo­ple will be wait­ing out­side the church in antic­i­pa­tion of an agree­ment. And, we will let no one out until the deal is done. The politi­cians are sup­pose to show when there is a deal, like when the agree­ment of a new pope is announced through white smoke from a small chim­ney at the Sis­tine Chapel. In a sim­i­lar way our impris­oned politi­cians need to send out a sig­nal when they have a deal. When the politi­cians at the con­fer­ence area have reached an agree­ment, we demand that it is copied, dis­trib­uted and read out load for the wait­ing crowd. If we are not accept­ing the deal we don’t let them out. Then they have to try again…

“This is a strat­egy that should be pos­si­ble to attract all kinds of groups. This strat­egy demands, if it is going to work, the coop­er­a­tion between all move­ments, NGOs and groups in order to cre­ate enough of mas­sive par­tic­i­pa­tion. It is only through our num­bers we would make this happen.”

re 4. DISENGAGEMENT FROM CORPORATIONS, REBUILDING COMMUNITY:

KELVIN MASON: “CJA is look­ing for feed­back [on the civil soci­ety actions in Copen­hagen — Cli­mate Jus­tice Action http://www.climate-justice-action.org]. Per­haps, although our resis­tance is always cre­ative and emo­tion­ally pow­er­ful, for COP16 in Mex­ico we should con­sider more rad­i­cally chang­ing real­ity? As crises deepen, which they will, fol­low­ing the cir­cus of cap­i­tal­ism and its road-show of pseudo democ­racy around the world becomes increas­ingly unpro­duc­tive. Draw­ing on all our knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence, maybe we should go to any­where but Mex­ico. If we mobilised 100,000 peo­ple to act more locally in trans-local sol­i­dar­ity, to pro­vide much needed help to eco-villages, social cen­tres, low-impact devel­op­ments, refugee camps, and other projects that could stand out as good exam­ples of just envi­ron­men­tal and social prac­tice, well, what a won­der­ful world it could be.”