All the main parties are caught up in the logic of corporations; all are caught in the mind-set of there being no alternative. There is.

Staring us in the face, we have two clear alternatives:

(i)             Continuing a process in which corporations are legally obliged to maximise profits for shareholders through externalising the social and ecological costs – a process which devastates communities and ecologies across the world; or

(ii)            Deciding we’ve had enough, that its time for corporations to internalise those costs rather than avoid their responsibilities, including – in many cases – the responsibility to pay their taxes.

Looming over every blog post, Christmas roast, morning toast, over every child being walked to school, debates on independence, who does the dishes, whether this relationship is working or not – looming over everything – whether we acknowledge it or not — is the gathering Tsunami of ecological devastation: soil, forest, water, oceans, and especially climate.

According to the science, we have little time left to slow and stop the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere leading to runaway feedback loops that will mean climate chaos is upon us whatever we do. According to those who are supposed to be savvy, we are not supposed to mention this because it will upset people and put them off.

Clive Hamilton’s recent review of the climate science does more than mention it: he finds that climate science has consistently proved its earlier predictions far more optimistic than they should have been. He writes that:

“The conclusion that, even if we act promptly and resolutely, the world is on a path to reach 650 ppm is almost too frightening to accept. That levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will be associated with warming of about 4°C by the end of this century, well above the temperature associated with tipping points that would trigger further warming. So it seems that even with the most optimistic set of assumptions – the ending of deforestation, a halving of emissions associated with food production, global emissions peaking in 2020 and then falling by 3 per cent a year for a few decades – we have no chance of preventing emissions rising well above a number of critical tipping points that will spark uncontrollable climate change. The Earth’s climate would enter a chaotic era lasting thousands of years before natural processes eventually establish some form of equilibrium. Whether human beings would still be a force on the planet, or even survive, is a moot point.” (Clive Hamilton 2010: 21–22. Requiem for a species: why we resist the truth about climate change. London: Earthscan)

At the same time, looming over the UK is the threat of cuts that will hit the poor hardest, while large corporations are allowed to avoid paying the taxes the rest of us would be in court for not paying. Over at the Big Green Scotland Blog, it is politicians like Nick Clegg who have been voted ‘Dick of the Year’; the bankers have vanished from the scene. The politicians play their part as lightning rods for public discontent, allowing the corporates to continue largely unseen.

Hamilton’s conclusion that ‘we have no chance of preventing emissions rising above a number of critical tipping points’ is only true if we continue to operate from within the dominant corporate logic. If we decide to act from outside that logic, and decide to care about what is happening to other species and other people right now, we can still stop just short of those irreversible tipping points, and in the process we’ll be making a better world.

How do we kick start a process that ensures greater wealth for the poor, reins in corporations, and means that Scotland is not simply setting world-beating targets for CO2 reductions, but is actually acting on those targets and rapidly reducing emissions now?

Well, why have a Parliament if we don’t use it to make possible what would be impossible without it? People talk a lot about the powers and processes of the Parliament – but the key issue is what is it for, how can it make a real and radical difference not only to Scotland but to the world?

If the UK/ EU/ UN decides to make the structural changes needed to stop the processes driving climate change, then brilliant, but as someone said at a meeting Mike Small organised: the closer you get to the centres of power the harder it is to make creative radical changes because those with the power are making sure they don’t lose it. The Scottish Parliament level is close enough for us to have a hope of having an impact, and is globally visible enough to inspire others to act likewise.

So what should we be demanding Parliament does?

In the run up to the election, a whole range of people (under the Holyrood 350 umbrella), people who are actively working to reduce our communities carbon emissions and in many cases working to rebuild our local economies and to prepare for a world in which oil will be scarce, will be heading to Parliament on March 17^th to thank the Government and MSPs for not only setting ambitious emissions reduction targets, but for establishing the Climate Challenge Fund to support communities to establish their own ways of taking action. We’ll be asking all parties to commit to continuing and expanding that support for communities the length and breadth of Scotland, especially in marginalised and deprived areas.

We are also asking the Government and MSPs of all parties to make changes so that the structures of the economy stop getting in our way. Using a logic they are familiar with — the logic of the free marketeers who want the state to role back so the supposed free Market can flourish — we are asking for Government to get out of the way where that helps communities to flourish, and to step forward boldly when needed, in order to stop the economy getting in the way of community action.

One of the key ways the structure of the economy gets in the way of community action and action on climate change, is that it does not internalise the exponential cost to the climate of using finite ‘cheap’ fossil fuels. The cheapness of these fuels means companies have to use them to stay in the game, and means that game can involve flying produce from across the world and sabotaging local production.

There is a simple policy which can revolutionise this whole situation, and which we could be asking all parties to commit to introducing after the May election. You may already know it – it’s called Cap and Share.
The pre-eminent climate scientist, Jim Hansen, recently wrote that we will inevitably continue to use whatever fuel is cheapest and that if we are going to halt climate change before it becomes unstoppable, then we need to make fossil fuels expensive. He writes that Caps by themselves are meaningless (simply saying we will cap emissions means nothing) and that making fossil fuels expensive in a way which redistributes the rise in prices directly to the public is the key. In other words the key is to introduce a ‘Cap and Share’ type system.

Jim Hansen writes:

“A steadily rising carbon fee must be collected from fossil fuel companies. All funds should go to the public on a per capita basis to allow lifestyle adjustments and spur clean energy innovations. As the fee rises, fossil fuels will become increasingly unprofitable and will be phased out, replaced by carbon-free energy and increased energy efficiency. This is the economically-efficient path to a clean energy future – the cure to fossil fuel addiction.”

This is the game changer. This is what is needed.

The impact would not just involve a shift to renewables but a shift to local as opposed to global production, and a shift of wealth from the most excessive to the poorer. It would immediately kick-start a rapid reduction in emissions, support the building of resilient communities, and transfer wealth to the poorest.

Peoples’ first experience of this policy would be as a cheque landing on their doormat or arriving in their bank account every month. The money would be needed to cope with the inevitable rise in the cost of those goods and services with high fossil fuel content, since the fossil fuel companies will pass on the fee they are having to pay for the right to bring fossil fuels into the economy. If you are a high fossil fuel user (the wealthiest 20%) the share you receive to cope with the increase in prices will be pretty meaningless, if you are in the other 80% of the population you will be financially better off, particularly if you are in the poorest 20%. That is the policy at its simplest – there could be a range of ways of reshaping it: from not distributing any portion of the money to the wealthiest 20% (for whom it will make little difference) and redistributing it instead to those in poorer communities, possibly as is being done in Brazil and Mexico.

It is simple game-changer, but the consequences are enormous in terms of the potential for demonstrating to the world how we can begin to rein in corporations and secure the future. Why seek anything less?

This post first appeared on the Bella Caledonia website on 7th January 2011 at:

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2011/01/07/what-hopes-for-scotland-in-2011/#comment-2533

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.”

Firstly, a 1962 advert in which ESSO boasts of it’s power to melt icebergs!

Richard Heinberg sums up what happened in Copenhagen and brilliantly portrays the larger context.

Rob Edwards quotes James Curran (Head of Science at the Scottish Environment Protection Agency) response in The Herald

George Monbiot in The Guardian sum­mar­ises what happened at Copenhagen, focusing on Western vested interests.

A pub­lic rela­tions expert explains to Americans why Obama can’t really do any­thing about health­care, cli­mate change, etc unless (as Monbiot says above) people who care get organ­ised, get act­ive and make it happen.

A sum­mary of what’s in the accord from Climate Code Red, an Australian per­spect­ive

Mark Lynas in The Guardian outlines how China did it’s best to make sure a deal didn’t happen (a useful reminder that China’s elites — just like the West’s — chose to scupper a deal; although Mark seems to fall for a very rosy view of Western leaders which doesn’t take into account the fact that America was only offering a 4% reduction in emissions, an offer that was next to useless)

Joss Garman of Greenpeace and Plane Stupid responds to Copenhagen.

Johann Hari’s response in The Independent.

The Historian Jeremy Brechner responds on znet.

Mike Small responds on Bella Caledonia

Brian Davey of Cap and Share responds on Open Democracy arguing that we have hit the end to economic growth and so the future will be quite different, even without a useful outcome at Copenhagen,

Bill McKibben of the 350.org cam­paign at the end, and earlier when he was still work­ing flat out in hope and in tears.

Ben Brangwyn (of Transition Network and Transition Totness) response from earlier in the week …

Finally, some initial thinking on what needs to happen next, intended to provoke far better thinking than I am managing here!

Justin (justinken­rick AT yahoo.co.uk)

p.s. and these aren’t about Copenhagen at all, but about the context in which the talks happened, they are by Shaun Chamberlin on car­bon off­set­ting and the value of money and on one of the main ways we can return to climate safety, but first take his Earth IQ Test! ]]> http://holyrood350.org/2009/12/responses-to-copenhagen/feed/ 0 http://holyrood350.org/2009/12/unccc-talks-11-12-0/ http://holyrood350.org/2009/12/unccc-talks-11-12-0/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:27:55 +0000 justin http://holyrood350.org/?p=175 Along with about 45,000 other people I’ve been at the Bella Centre in Copenhagen where the main UN Climate Change negotiations and side events have been happening in a place capable of holding only 15,000 people (see Day One below).

Then I joined 100,000 folk to march on the Bella Centre to demand real action now (see Day Two below).

Finally I took part in an unexpected BBC debate and in our polite but firm Academic Seminar Blockade (Day Three below) before heading homewards.

DAY THREE: Sunday 13th December — Radio 5 then an Academic Conference Blockade

The Radio 5 late night interview after the Copenhagen march was bizarre; and even more bizarrely, some of it was apparently repeated on Radio 4’s Today programme the next morning. I was asked about the huge march and why I was there – fair enough – and then the interviewer wanted to focus on the 968 arrests – fair enough, although I wondered out loud whether the story should really be that a few ‘Black Bloc’ demonstrators broke windows, that the Danish police used that as an excuse to arrest and hold 968 protestors in freezing conditions (later charging only 13), or whether the story should be that 100,000 people of all ages and backgrounds and from all over the world marched to demand the politicians act. Unexpectedly the interviewer then went to an American Republican Party climate denier and I was drawn into a debate about whether manmade climate change is even an issue!

The next day a group of us held an Academic Seminar Blockade at the gates of a coal fired power station near Copenhagen docks. Passionate and informed papers on climate change were delivered, and while I was giving a paper (on the three different forms of denial I believe that we in the climate change movement have to navigate between) three police vans arrived and a policeman came over. I politely but firmly asked him to wait until I had finished giving the paper – which he did. Then Stellan Vinthagen spoke with him and the vans waited while we continued – eventually leaving as we left. The main organiser of the Seminar Blockade — Kelvin Mason, from the Centre for Alternative Technology – pointed out that various Danish based academics hadn’t turned up to join us because there is a real sense of fear here, especially after the 968 arrests; and indeed while we were at the power station, several hundred people were arrested for protesting in other parts of the docks.

On Sunday night I took the 24-hour coach ride back to London and am now heading on to Edinburgh.

Meanwhile in the negotiations the ‘developing’ countries led by Africa walked out yesterday (Monday) because of an attempt by ‘developed’ countries to scrap the Kyoto Protocol — the only legally binding agreement committing ‘developed’ countries (except the US) to emissions cuts. The talks got back on track because the ‘developed’ nations backed down and agreed to a twin track approach: one track to hold ‘developed’ countries (except the US) to Kyoto cuts; and another track to bring the US, China and India into making cuts as well. However since the Kyoto protocol came into fore emissions have continued rising rapidly, and total pledges for 2020 emission cuts stand at a desperately low total of 8–12% cuts on 1990 levels, and once loopholes are taken into account this could end up as a 4% INCREASE on 1990 levels when what is needed is at least a 45% DECREASE by 2020.

It’s not just a Wave (like the great march in Glasgow) nor a Flood (like FoE’s march that fed into the Copenhagen march of 100,000), it is a complete Sea Change that is needed. George Monbiot’s article in today’s Guardian describes it well. As we work flat out to try and make the changes needed, there are three certainties that I hold onto. The first is that the only thing we can rely on is uncertainty: in other words we can never be certain what will happen, we can just do our bit to tip things the right way. The second is that radical social change in the future always looks impossible before it happens (and it happens fast), and it always looks as though it was inevitable afterwards (of course Apartheid ended, women got the vote, the Berlin Wall fell, or in this case people would say that “of course we made the changes, otherwise humanity wouldn’t have survived” – but that’s not how it feels right now). And finally, we are alive now to the extent that we care.

DAY TWO: Saturday 12th December — On the Huge Climate Action March

A fantastic day of civil society taking action on the streets.

I’m too tired to do anything more than paste in here a report I have just sent to the BBC’s Radio 5 Live show who want to interview me tonight …

I came over to Copenhagen on the ferry from Harwich on Thursday, and head back to the UK tomorrow night by a 24 hour coach ride. I am part of the Transition Town movement in the UK (www.transtionculture.org).

I came, like thousands from the UK, because we don’t believe the politicians understand the seriousness of what is happening. So today 100,000 of us from all over the world marched the 6km from Parliament Square to the Bella Centre where Ministers are working out what they will let the world do to limit the damage from climate chaos.

99,500 people on the march were cheerful and colourful (the other few hundred were young kids of the Black Bloc who — after two of them broke some windows — seemed destined to end up being the playthings of the Danish police and their new ‘Rascal law’ giving them powers they needed to prove they deserved). The rest of us danced to samba bands, brass bands, walked alongside floats, under flags and banners, as penguins, as polar bears (well, you know, they have to find somewhere). The colourful tens of thousands carried placards saying ‘Politicians only talk, Leaders lead’, ‘There is No Planet B’ and ‘System Change not Climate Change’. At the end an indigenous leader from the Americas said — to roars of agreement — that the real solution is not the climate market; the real solution is simply to leave the coal and oil and gas in the ground, and not to try and make a quick fix with poisonous nuclear. Before, on the march, he and all the indigenous peoples had been singing ‘The Climate Market is a Big Lie’.

The fear is that the politicians will negotiate a deal where the North just carries on with planet-wrecking business as usual, and pays some money to the politicians of the Global South in exchange for them saying they’ll protect their forests to keep absorbing some of the CO2 — meanwhile carbon levels will keep on rocketing, the arctic melting, forests burning and permafrost melt will increasingly release methane. The fear is that they’ll make it look like a great deal, but it could be just like the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in 2005 when Bob Geldorf and the Make Poverty History campaign got the Governments to promise they’d end poverty in Africa, and then things just got worse.

Strangely enough, we’re here because these meetings of these politicians do nothing. They just seem to rubber stamp the system that has brought us starvation at one end of the world and obesity at the other, brought us cheap flights to sunny destinations which will soon be too sunny to fly to any more. That’s why the most popular placards at today’s march were ‘System Change not Climate Change’ and ‘Our Climate — Not your Business’.

DAY ONE: Friday 11th December — In the UNCCC Bella Centre

Today I was at the side events at the UNCCC Climate talks in the Bella Centre, Copenhagen. I was here to meet up with people I’ll be working with to support forest peoples’ communities in Cameroun to resist and redirect the World Bank’s climate change ‘solutions’. Solutions which are probably no solution at all but will appropriate local peoples’ forests, lead to rapid deforestation, and be used to justify emissions in the Global North through appearing to protect (while actually destroying) the forests of the Global South. Welcome to the UN’s REDDS mechanism (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in the Global South) — a great idea if controlled by local people and if it isn’t an excuse for inaction in the Global North, but a crazy idea in the hands of the powers that be. Sounds familiar?

There has just been an amazing event at the end of the day: CAN (the Climate Action Network) has just awarded the day’s highly prized ‘Fossil Fool Award’. Under bright lights, with a huge fanfare, speeches, and a huge crowd, the prize was awarded to Canada for being the most obstructive nation at the talks today. Amazingly the Winning Trophy was received by the Mayor of Toronto who is here with a 100 other Mayors from across the world.

The Mayor stood with the trophy on the podium, holding it in front of his face. He said he was proud of what Canadians and cities throughout Canada are doing in response to climate change, but he was receiving the prize because he was ashamed of the Canadian government’s stance. The occasion ended with a glitzy singer singing a song as if from Canada: “We’ll keep extracting from the tar sands until [PM] Harper is gone”. Huge applause, huge appreciation of the no-nonsense, and yet strange to be with such a huge crowd laughing so hard, clapping so loudly, and aware that this is so deadly serious.

Meanwhile, in the inter-governmental negotiations the REDDS initiative is being rapidly watered down. They’ll work through the night on this one, but as things stand there are no targets, the language doesn’t guarantee indigenous and local peoples free, prior and informed consent, and the argument is over questions of finance rather than democracy and climate safety. Sounds as though it is going the way of the whole conference: distant targets instead of present action, more techno-fixes instead of just solutions. On techno-fixes see the Declaration ‘Let’s look before we leap!’

Strangely, at the session on REDDS in the Congo Basin (which was mostly a combination of pedantic obfuscation and entertaining story telling from African Government Ministers), the Kenyan Green Belt movement Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai spoke briefly at the end of the need for African unity and drew laughter when she said we had to get the rich nations to “open their wallets” to save the Congo rainforest. I couldn’t help thinking how unlikely it would be that that finance would serve local people, rather than further enrich the rich. Stranger still (or maybe not) were the two Danish conference security guards who forced people who were standing to leave the packed room (presumably on the pretext of health and safety). They hadn’t done this at any other session. Some of us got up to give people from Africa our seats, and some of us then sat on the floor. When asked to move, I refused. Others came and sat down too instead of leaving, one European woman asking “Am I allowed to stay?”, to which I replied “If you insist on staying, they won’t move you”, Reassured by this self-fulfilling statement, she stayed. But it’s only self-fulfilling if enough selves fulfill it — a metaphor for the collective action needed to replace the inevitable with the impossible?!

In contrast to the Congo Forest session (and to an earlier session on the Convention on Biological Diversity which couldn’t see the people for the science and the finance), a session on the Amazon and REDDS run by indigenous people was full of people and peoples stories. Many of the indigenous representatives were only newly elected to their representative positions and so seemed to know little about the climate issues. They were, understandably, more concerned with the immediate effects of violence against their peoples (in Peru) and with the impact of extractive industries (everywhere).  At the start of the session a Minister from  Columbia (I think, though possibly it was Ecuador)  spoke clearly and passionately about how her Government had changed it’s view of REDDS to place local peoples needs and wishes centre stage. She couldn’t stay for the rest fo the session because she was needed in the main REDDS negotiations to battle against the watering down of democracy and ecology in favour of finance and prevarication.

Before finding a place to tap this out and then head for the alternative summit or Klimaforum, I met someone from Scotland who recently helped initiate a Transition initiative there (here?!), and who also works with communities in Africa. He thought they were operating in completely different worlds — but talking with colleagues from Cameroun we weren’t so sure. We reckoned that recovering community ownership, action and effectiveness in the Global North is as vital as protecting existing communities and shared ownership in the Global South.

Instead of heading to the alternative Klimaforum summit, I went to the alternative alternative summit in what felt like a police no-go alternative collective: Christiania. It used to be a military fort and was turned into a huge squat that covers blocks and blocks. Here the summit was a huge circus tent with good cheap food, conversations, and a discussion focused on how people can make lives and communities that are not driving consumption and catastrophe. The whole place mingled threads of chaos, conversation and laughter — not so different, then, to the so-called main event back at the Bella Centre.

You can keep track of what is happening at the negotiations through Climate Action Networks’ daily bulletins.

[Justin Kenrick]

Why did the audience find it so funny that cutting emissions meant ending economic growth? It reminded me of Monbiot’s point about ‘economic growth’ being our ‘immortality project’, our collective denial of our own and our planet’s limits. Speaking with Kevin afterwards I asked him why he didn’t directly address the point and say out loud that this particular economic system is the force driving extinction? His answer was arresting: he feared that if he said this explicitly then people would dismiss everything else he is saying. This fear – that the one thing that needs to be communicated can’t be communicated – can be summed up by one word: taboo. Breaking a taboo means no longer being worthy of consideration. This explains why all such attempts tend to dress up the move from economic growth to a sustainable economy in terms of improved happiness and well-being rather than going straight to the point: this economy is killing people and planet, and it has to be transformed, and transformed now.

As John Riley writes: the great success of this event “was very much down to the hard work of Keith Baker & Cindy Courtillier. Despite the drizzly rain it was really uplifting day”. Led by John and the Samba Band from Biggar and elsewhere, about 150 of us marched down the Royal Mile from the City Chambers to the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, where Keith organised us all into a human-made 350 sign, gave a great talk (despite the wind and rain) about why we are doing this — and much press coverage was made. See, for example, the BBC report here, and the STV report here.

It was a great event — well done Keith, Cindy and John for organising, and well done everyone else who came and played their part in getting this message out there! It’s a great idea for future occasions to make sure events are as brief, fun, uplifting, and welcoming for families as this one was! This event tied in with over 4,500 actions around the globe on the same day, including a parallel drumming event in Barcelona.

Feature: “A safe operating space for humanity“
Nature 461, 472–475 (24 September 2009) | doi:10.1038/461472a;
Published online 23 September 2009

“Identifying and quantifying planetary boundaries that must not be
transgressed could help prevent human activities from causing
unacceptable environmental change, argue Johan Rockström and
colleagues.”

“We have tried to identify the Earth-system processes and associated
thresholds which, if crossed, could generate unacceptable
environmental change. We have found nine such processes for which we
believe it is necessary to define planetary boundaries: climate
change; rate of biodiversity loss (terrestrial and marine);
interference with the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles; stratospheric
ozone depletion; ocean acidification; global freshwater use; change in
land use; chemical pollution; and atmospheric aerosol loading”

“In general, planetary boundaries are values for control variables
that are either at a ‘safe’ distance from thresholds — for processes
with evidence of threshold behaviour — or at dangerous levels — for
processes without evidence of thresholds. Determining a safe distance
involves normative judgements of how societies choose to deal with
risk and uncertainty. We have taken a conservative, risk-averse
approach to quantifying our planetary boundaries, taking into account
the large uncertainties that surround the true position of many
thresholds.”

“Humanity may soon be approaching the boundaries for global freshwater
use, change in land use, ocean acidification and interference with the
global phosphorous cycle (see Fig. 1). Our analysis suggests that
three of the Earth-system processes — climate change, rate of
biodiversity loss and interference with the nitrogen cycle — have
already transgressed their boundaries. For the latter two of these,
the control variables are the rate of species loss and the rate at
which N2 is removed from the atmosphere and converted to reactive
nitrogen for human use, respectively. These are rates of change that
cannot continue without significantly eroding the resilience of major
components of Earth-system functioning.””

Graphic at  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/fig_tab/461472a_F1.html

Figures for Planetary Boundraries at
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/fig_tab/461472a_T1.html#figure-title

Whole article at

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html

Rather than pointing to others failings, we can recognise what is of worth in everyone who we work with – including politicians — and start from there. This is about building relationship, rather than apportioning blame.  We are all complex people, with our strengths and weaknesses. To build the relationships, movement and political processes we need as fast as we need, there is no point taking the blame short-cut to nowhere, and every point in recognising what is of worth in those we meet and in ourselves, and recognising our weaknesses/ vulnerabilities – and connecting (rather than dividing) through both.

We can be persuaded that THEY (in this case, politicians) are powerful and we are powerless, or that they are fixed and stuck and immovable expressions of the structures we are up against, whereas WE (whoever ‘we’ are) are complex responsive evolving human beings. This division between politicians and people is incredibly paralysing for both. What we need (and what we are attempting through Holyrood 350) is to not get sucked into the glamour of power, (as in “I’m important/ effective/ worthwhile because you’re not”) but nor to get sucked into the abdication of power (as in “I can do nothing, I’m not to blame because you are politically/ organisationally stupid/ malevolent”).

Taking this approach, we have to believe we can find the creativity, responsiveness and powerful vulnerability to sit with others as equals (whatever they think of themselves, whatever they think of us) and insist that the days of postponement are over, action is now and here and nowhere else.

When people from community carbon reduction initiatives from across Scotland went to the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 10^th September, we went to ask them to implement a 4 point policy framework that can work with the grain of community action, rather than us always working against the grain of the overall economic and political framework. We argued that these first steps – although completely insufficient in themselves – can enable us to break the deadlock. These steps can enable us to begin moving in the right direction, not only at the community level but at the national level. Just as community initiatives can inspire others to take response-ability and act, so one country acting boldly can help break the international deadlock and kick-start the race out of carbon.

On Thursday September the 10^th 2009, people from across Scotland who are working to reduce their communities carbon emissions, came together in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood to ask the Scottish Government to put in place a radical policy framework to ensure that we collectively decarbonise society fast.

This had been billed as ‘A Climate Active Party in the Parliament’, and it was extraordinary that we had a completely full house of people, passionate about their community level work and wanting to take this work to the national level too, aware that without that our work will come to nothing, and aware that with that, we can become an example to the world of how a society can address climate change and peak oil, and improve our quality of life in the process.

The day was organized by people from a range of community carbon reduction initiatives – we’ve called ourselves Holyrood 350, since we aim to ensure that Holyrood creates the right framework to enable us to play our part in getting emissions back down to a safe level below 350ppm.

We offered food, and Hamish Moore played his bagpipes beautifully slowing the pace as people entered the largest committee room in Holyrood (it can take a hundred folk), a room with a real sense of space: high up with high ceilings, and stunning views to Arthurs Seat and the Pentland Hills beyond.

We were warmly welcomed by Aileen Campbell MSP, and we then welcomed the MSPs and everyone to a celebration of community action. We began by offering them stories of what is possible if people put their energies into making change happen – stories to let them know what we’re doing, and stories to give them the courage to join us in acting boldly. The stories were from a range of communities across Scotland: Lucy Conway spoke about community-owned renewables and living within limits on the Isle of Eigg, Mike Small spoke about how people had been inspired to eat local through the Fife Diet, Tom Black spoke about Portobello’s Transition Town initiative on the edge of the capital, and Danny Alderslowe spoke about a range of relocalisation initiatives across Glasgow’s inner city. The last story ended with Danny voicing our resounding thanks to this Government and this Parliament for two extraordinary pieces of legislation. The first being the £27.4 million Climate Challenge Fund to support community carbon-reduction initiatives that was proposed by the Greens and taken up by the Scottish National Party Government, the second being the recent Climate Change Bill unanimously passed by the Parliament, establishing the world’s most ambitious emission reduction targets of 42% by 2020, and 80% by 2050.

Immediately after we had applauded their ambitious targets, the experts we had brought in began the process of explaining why these targets were not nearly enough and what we need to do to address this problem.

Tim Helweg-Larsen from the Public Interest research Centre in Machynlleth, summarized PIRC’s Climate Safety report, clearly articulating why the science is saying such targets are nowhere near bold enough, and that we need to take action to get down from the current carbon overshoot of 387ppm, and get back below 350ppm as soon as possible.

In the light of the science, in response to the need to meet and surpass Holyrood’s targets, and in line with the action communities across Scotland have embarked on, we presented three perspectives on Holyrood 350’s proposed plan of action: 4 steps to create a policy framework to support and enable all communities in Scotland to take effective action and so enable Scotland to lead the world by example.

Brian Davey presented ‘Cap and Share’ as the first crucial step to limit and rapidly reduce carbon coming into the economy, and to redistribute wealth so that the majority of people who emit below the average are financially rewarded and the high-emitters penalized, as the cost of fossil fuels and carbon embedded products soar and renewable energy schemes and carbon-neutral products become competitive.

Duncan McLaren, of Friends of the Earth Scotland, presented the recent ‘Power of Scotland Renewed’ report, supporting Holyrood 350’s target of getting back below 350ppm and outlining how Scotland could become energy healthy, with 100% renewable energy by 2030.

The final presenter, Shaun Chamberlin, author of Transition Timeline, argued for relocalisation. That very morning Shaun had turned his final power-point slide upside down to be in keeping with the event. Previously, it had placed a Copenhagen agreement at the top, with national policies (such as Tradable Energy Quotas) as ways of implementing such an agreement, and then community and individual action below that as the place where emissions and zero-carbon lifestyles actually take place. In his presentation, Shaun reversed this and placed us coming together in communities to take action as the first step, and then the next step being all these communities (such as those involved in Holyrood 350) coming together to ensure a national framework is put in place to enable community action to flourish and to inspire agreement between countries internationally.

Perhaps Shaun’s slide sums up the politics we are attempting: we need to act, and through that to inspire others to act, and if the politicians can’t see the steps needed then we will have to show them, and if they won’t take them then we’ll have to keep building a movement that can insist they take those steps, or we’ll take them for them.

Which brings us to the next steps.

The first hour had (as is obvious now!) been packed with way too many speakers. We had crammed all the celebration of community action, the applause for Parliament’s work so far, the stark science, and Holyrood 350’s policy framework, into an hour in order to ensure each MSP and Government Minister who had come would get a good sweep of the story before vanishing. The fact that a dozen MSPs, including one Minister, (out of a total of 129) turned up can be seen as a success, or as a failure, but it was certainly a start. After the presentations they did (as we anticipated) all vanish, and we broke into workshops focusing on the 4 points of the action framework (capping carbon, community-owned renewables, a real Green New Deal, and transition through relocalisation). Within each workshop people flagged up their area of interest and broke into groups focusing on these. In fact we hadn’t thought the workshops through well enough and – although some very interesting discussion happened – the necessary expertise on each subject was often lacking, and time was lacking, for them to be really satisfying.

After the workshops, we came together in a plenary, a meeting which one of the politicians present later described as feeling like a medieval moot. The purpose of the plenary was to discuss how to take this forward, how to map out the next steps for this politically engaged aspect of the relocalisation movement. It was slightly chaotic, but open, fluid, powerful stuff. The cultural story we have all been told has been falling apart as ecologies and economies teeter on the brink, and the reassuring mantras of business as usual regularly fail to convince the man or woman in the street. There is the cultural and political space to make the dramatic changes that need to happen, happen; but how?

A community approach to the ‘how of politics’ might be to map the territory, see what is unique to the context, ask what stories people are passionate about here, weave these into ways of encouraging them to realise their power and realise the predicament we are in: bringing them on board with a positive vision of how we need to – and can — reshape society, fast.

A community approach to the ‘who of politicians’ might be to build relationships with Politicians, actively communicate our appreciation of each of them when they are taking the right steps, invite them to join us, to be part of our communities and not just representatives of communities: enabling our communities to show them leadership, and insisting they join that leadership too.

A community approach to the ‘what next?’ of this particular political development may well involve another gathering in Parliament in January or February, where we focus on the economics (the ‘how do we build sustainable secure outward-looking communities?) aspect. Fully aware that the UN December 2009 Copenhagen meeting is very unlikely to produce anything like the agreements we collectively need, and aware that the economy is almost certainly going to take a far more serious nose-dive (probably later in 2010, but possibly much earlier), we are asking whether the Jan/Feb meeting should refocus our attention on the climate of our communities (their social and material health) as much as on the ecological climate? If economic growth is driving, not only the destruction of ecologies, but the destruction of communities, do we present the evolving Holyrood 350 policy proposals as a framework that can help ensure individuals, families and communities sufficiency, safety and well-being in the current climate?

Some very exciting ideas have emerged involving using a petition to the petitions committee as a way of building referendum-type support for the actions we are proposing, taking debate and theatre out to communities across Scotland in a travelling roadshow to build support both for local community action, and for action at the national level that can enable all communities to become resilient sustainable and inspiring, and bringing the power of theatre to the Parliament itself. Very exciting ideas, very real questions starting with ‘can we do it?’ well, we’ve begun.

The bad news is that Global target-setting by so-called ‘developed’ countries (in the run up to the Copenhagen negotiations that are supposed to determine global action on climate change) is so weak as to guarantee dangerous climate change. That’s not a reason to give up, it’s a reason to push hard on targets, and push even harder with setting an example in terms of ACTION now at a local, national and global level. These are the years of our lives that matter in terms of stopping ecological meltdown. That sounds like such hype, If only it was.

Coming out of watching the ‘Age of Stupid’ last Sunday, Saul (12) — who had only just managed to persuade me it was ok his coming to see a film that shows the extinction we are fast heading for if we don’t act now — said something like “There’s no better time to be alive, no more important time to be alive than now, we’re the ones who can make the difference”. That wasn’t the reaction I expected. If a 12 year old can take up the challenge, there’s hope the rest of us can too.

However, the bad news from elsewhere is that rich countries continue to ignore their responsibilities and offer targets which would mean weak cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, so weak that scientists have concluded they would be virtually certain to guarantee dangerous climate change.

The IPCC 2007 assessment was that industrialized countries need to be making cuts in emissions of at least 40% by 2020, but here’s the climate-wrecking, unilateral targets for 2020 such countries are proposing:

·         Australia – not clear (conditional target of 25% but they are using a base year of 2000)

·         Canada – 2.7%

·         EU – 20%-30% — half of which could be offsets

·         Norway – 30% — a third of which could be offsets

·         Japan – 8% — no offsets

·         New Zealand – “we’ll tell you later”

·         Russia – “later…”

·         United States – 0–4% (exact number is unclear) — mainly offsets

See: http://coinet.org.uk/discussion/climate_radio/bw_u  

That IPCC 2007 report has in fact been overtaken by science showing climate change is accelerating far faster than it imagined, and so even the 42% cut proposed by Scotland is now considered to greatly underestimate the cuts needed. Meanwhile, the Head UK negotiator at Bonn, Jan Thompson, says that trying to establish cuts of 40% by 2020 is so unrealistic as to be “laughable”

http://adoptanegotiator.org/2009/06/11/whats-laughable-about-40/#more-863

So, back to the good news!

In Scotland the 2020 target for greenhouse gas emissions cuts has been established at 42%, the Scottish Climate Change Bill also includes a recognition of carbon consumed in Scotland rather than simply created here, and the inclusion of maritime and aviation emissions which do not apply to Westminster targets (. Scotland has used its unique position to put pressure on the rest of the UK, Europe and the world to establish targets that are far more n line with reality. It is up to all of us to make sure such targets are established, strengthened and met. We can do it.

For the first time in years, I feel as though humans can wake up, that we have enough time (just) if we all focus our energies not just on recognising climate change but recognising the cause of climate change and acting to defuse it: the cause being an economic system that not only has in-built obsolescence, but has an in-built necessity to ignore the ecological and social consequences of production and consumption in order for a company to stay alive in the market place. Clearly we need Governments to not only set targets, but also to reorientate and relocalise our economies so that they serve the needs of human and al other beings, rather than helplessly destroy the grounds of our existence.

That said, Scotland is looking beautiful tonight.

It was excellent that the event happened, that 80% is the target (and rising), and that global equity (C&C) is seen as an inescapable part of achieving stabilisation.

What was less impressive was Adair Turner’s target: giving ourselves a 50/50 chance of keeping within 2.3C is not a target it is (as Andy Ross remarked) like handing a 6 cartridge revolver to your child with 3 bullets in it, and saying ‘pull the trigger’. His story is that the UK will only have 2% lower GDP if it seeks to achieve an 80% cut by 2050 (being our part in achieving a 50% cut globally by 2050) and that this will give the world this 50/50 chance of keeping within 2.3C.

I had a very robust but friendly exchange with Turner afterwards contrasting his story with Jacqueline McGlade’s. Her story being that where business as usual will lead to 900ppm (and 5C+ of warming), if we succeed with all these current UK/EU/Global plans, we will still hit 600-650ppm (and 4.5C warming).

The point being that if his plans would only cost 2% GDP, then why not do much more, and sooner? If she is right that the actual empirical evidence is at the worst end of the modelling predictions, then his notion that we can contain warming at 2.3C (rather than such warming being part of a process which kicks in runaway climate change) seems implausible.

He heard the argument, responded with assurances that in 2 or 3 years time they will revisit the science and make recommendations on the basis of changing evidence. But his was a story to reassure business and teh UK government that climate change is a business opportunity, something he didn’t disagree with. But, how, I wanted to know, could he change his story so that it included the enormity of what Professor Jacqueline McGlade was eloquently and terrifyingly telling us …

… it was time for the reception and John Swinney’s gracious welcoming remarks, so I guess we will have to await an answer in the form of — what we all hope will be — more robust action than was managed by the FSA in relation to regulating financial services.