What do rigged
corporate trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the
Paris Treaty, an international climate agreement to be signed in 2015,
have in common? They are both tools being pushed by the power elite to
rip away our hopes for democracy and to commodify all things to monetize
them for profit.
It
is this drive by multinational corporations to patent and control even
living beings such as plants and animals and to privatize even elements
that are essential to life such as water which connects all human beings
on the planet. We are in a global battle of the people versus the
plutocrats and this battle has a ticking timer called the climate
crisis.
The global financial
elites meet regularly to plan their strategy and tactics. If they can’t
push their agenda through the World Bank, International Monetary Fund
and World Trade Organization, they move to secret massive trade
agreements. The Obama Administration is negotiating three such
agreements right now: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TAFTA) and the
Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), those agreements are stalled thanks
to a movement of movements coming together to stop Congress from giving
Obama fast track trade promotion authority.
Similarly, in response the climate crisis, the United Nations has
been involved in what is called the Conference of the Parties (COP)
which is part of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Big corporations have taken over this process and turned it into a
method of their relentless drive to plunder the planet and exploit its
living beings knows no limits. It will take people power to apply the
brakes. Once the public understood the implications of the TPP the
people created a movement of movements to stop it and the other trade
agreement.
Now, with the Paris Treaty, a binding international climate
agreement, set to be concluded in December of 2015, we must build a
similarly unified movement that stops this rigged corporate agreement
and puts in place real solutions to the climate crisis. We must
understand that the climate change affects and connects all of us – the
connection to climate change to every issue should be evident as the
health of the planet will dominate the future. We must be as organized
as the opposition to false solutions and the advocates for real
solutions.
The United Nations Climate Summit in New York this September 23rd
provides an opportunity to further build this unified movement in the
United States. Hundreds of thousands of activists are planning to come
to New York City for a march on September 21. In the days prior to that,
the Global Climate Convergence in partnership with System Change not
Climate Change will host a
conference to discuss real solutions and obstacles to change,
share skills and connect our sub-movements. This will be another step
in the growing moving seeking real climate solutions in the face of the
corruption and dysfunction of the United Nations and United States which
have failed to address the climate crisis in meaningful ways.
Driven by profit, not real solutions
The United Nations’
statements on the climate crisis and the Obama administration’s rhetoric
about its climate strategy make it sound like real actions are being
taken to mitigate climate change. But the reality is that both the
United Nations and the US government are acting on behalf of the
industries that are vying to profit from the climate crisis even as they
make it worse.
The UNFCCC began in 1992
as an international treaty to coordinate action around climate change.
It is responsible for the Kyoto Protocol which is set to expire in 2020.
The UNFCCC currently includes 195 member states which make decisions
through the COP. The COP usually meets yearly, although currently it is
meeting more frequently to prepare for the Paris Treaty which will be discussed at the COP 21 in December, 2015.
Sounds great, right? Wrong. According to Anne Petermann of the
Global Justice Ecology Project
which sends observers to the COP meetings and provides opportunities
for frontline groups to get media attention for their work, the COP
meetings are really just industry trade shows. She
writes:
“They block any forward process in stopping catastrophic climate change
while creating new and diabolical schemes for making money off of false
solutions.” Petermann refers to the UNFCCC as the “World Carbon Trading
Organization” and describes it as a body that promotes neoliberal
economic models as do the World Bank and World Trade Organization.
Friends of the Earth
describes
the COP process as captured by corporate power to the extent that there
are corporate logos everywhere. At the COP 19 in Poland, a concurrent
meeting was held by the World Coal Association to promote the use of
coal and false solutions like ‘clean coal.’he extent that there are
corporate logos everywhere.
A major false solution adopted at the COP 19 meeting in Warsaw,
Poland is REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation). While on the surface, REDD+ sounds like a positive step by
paying countries to leave their forests intact, in reality,
Petermann writes
that local communities and advocates see REDD+ “as a Trojan Horse that
will lead to enclosure of forests, erosion of rights, and big loopholes
for polluting industries.”
In
addition to false solutions, the COP meetings are becoming increasingly
restrictive and repressive. Like the WTO, they take place behind
barriers where access and activity are tightly controlled. There is no
tolerance of dissent even as civil society sees the COP trading away the
future of humanity and the planet as well as delaying real solutions.
The same things are
happening within the United States. Although the Obama Administration
claims to take the climate crisis seriously, their actions are actually
making it worse. The Administration is promoting false and dirty
solutions such as methane (a potent Greenhouse Gas euphemistically
called ‘natural’) gas and nuclear energy and taking ineffective steps to curtail emissions.
Obama’s ‘all of the above’ energy strategy allows for
carbon polluting and nuclear energy
to continue while investing inadequately in efficient use of energy, as
well as development of solar, wind, tidal and other sustainable energy
solutions. Obama’s Office of Management and Budget has also been
intervening to
weaken pollution standards.
Treaties like the
TPP and
TAFTA
being negotiation by Obama will increase fracking and the export of
coal, oil and gas. The US is in preparation to excavate land for tar
sands extraction in
Utah and
Alabama
even though that will permanently decimate the land and harm local
communities while pouring more carbon into the air. The administration
has approved the southern half of the Keystone Pipeline which is
bringing tar sands from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico for
processing and export. And the Obama Administration has approved seismic
testing for off-shore oil drilling even though
the testing will maim and kill marine mammals and the drilling will set the stage for more disasters like the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
The recent EPA rules proposed by Obama which have been applauded by Big Green non-profits are totally inadequate. Ken Ward
writes
in Truthout that “the emissions scheme is near-to-useless as policy and
comes embedded in a pro-gas and oil plan….” And Sean Sweeney of the new
Trade Unions for Energy Democracy
reports
that progress in implementing sustainable energy is also inadequate. At
a time when the climate crisis is here and we must mobilize quickly to
mitigate and adapt to it, drastic and coordinated actions are necessary.
It’s all connected
This is where the need for
a ‘movement of movements’ to stop the Paris Treaty from being a boon to
industry and a death blow for all living things comes in. There are
solutions to the climate crisis, but like all other real solutions they
will have to come from organized and mobilized people at the grassroots
level.
Over the last several
decades, there has been growing awareness of the climate crisis but
somehow it was relegated to being an environmental issue and was ignored
by groups working on other issues. This was a mistake and it’s time to
correct it. The climate crisis has its roots in the same soil as all of
the other crises we face – corporate domination of public policy and
promotion of neo-liberal economic models that seek to own and enclose
all things, goods and services for profit despite the harm this causes
to people and the planet.
The climate crisis affects everything we care about beginning with the water we drink and the food we eat. According to the
National Climate Assessment Report of 2014, water shortages are expected to worsen and the quality of water will be diminished. Cities particularly in the Southwest are
draining their aquifers
at unsustainable levels. Combined with the push to privatize municipal
water, we can expect the price of water to rise and public access to
decrease. Water shutoffs like we are seeing in Detroit will become more
widespread. And climate change will lead to more crop failures,
especially if Big Ag continues to dominate the food system and employ
unsustainable practices that strip the soil of resiliency and plant
mono-crops.
The climate crisis is
already affecting human health from injuries and deaths due to extreme
weather events, poor air quality and greater spread of infectious
diseases. In addition, the Climate Report states that the climate crisis
will lead to more stress and anxiety. The communities that are and will
be most affected are those with fewer resources and political power –
low income and people of color including Indigenous communities.
The assault on our civil liberties and increasing militarization are connected to the climate crisis. The Pentagon is studying
the effects of climate change on civil unrest including how to predict
and control such unrest. No doubt, we are seeing some of their tactics
unfold in Ferguson, MO in the wake of the police killing of Michael
Brown. From police in full military attire in heavily armored vehicles
shooting tear gas, flash grenades and rubber bullets at demonstrators to
undermining the right to peaceful protest and press freedom.
The NSA, its allies and
private corporations
are engaged in widespread spying on people in the US, especially
activists. This spying can be used to control the population. This year
through the Pentagon’s Minerva Program, experiments were conducted to manipulate the public through social media. And investigative reporter Dr. Nafeez Ahmed
recently exposed new tools that are being developed to track and possibly kill activists.
Military conflicts are
largely driven by access to dwindling fossil fuel reserves and other
resources. Rather than promoting the development of sustainable energy
sources which would be produced locally and would reduce Greenhouse
Gases, Big Oil’s influence is fueling military escalation in Gaza,
Iraq and
Ukraine. We can expect future wars over water and arable land.
Project Censored
reports
that the US military is the biggest polluter on the planet through its
“uninhibited use of fossil fuels, massive creation of greenhouse gases,
and extensive release of radioactive and chemical contaminants into the
air, water, and soil.” The US military also consumes the greatest
portion of our federal spending, money that would create more jobs and be put to better use if it was spent on building a truly green economy.
This is just a surface
examination of the ways in which these issues are related to the climate
crisis. Perhaps the greatest connector of all is that if we don’t act
now to take real action to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate
change, our future existence on this planet is threatened.
The climate convergence
The future is literally in our hands. Left unchecked, the global
financial elite blinded by greed will take full control. The people
must organize and put forward real solutions while preventing big
business interests from taking advantage of and worsening the climate
crisis. Popular Resistance is supporting the New York City march and
will form a contingent marching with the global climate convergence (
join us, here).
And, we have been working with other groups to develop the
Global Climate Convergence
which puts people, planet and peace over profit. The objective of the
Convergence is to build and strengthen a movement that addresses the
root causes of the climate crises; a social-economic system that values
profits over destruction of the ecology of the planet. As the corporate
captured UN proposes false solutions like carbon trading and sets meager
greenhouse reduction targets, we will show the world what tackling
global warming from the bottom up looks like.
To get more information on this event see here.
At the Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009, the people marched under a massive banner that read:
Another World Is Possible
Another World Is Coming
Another World Is Reality
The truth of that banner
can be made real as together we write the future history of humankind.
We do not underestimate the forces aligned against the transformation
that is a necessity, but nor do we underestimate the power of a
mobilized people in times of crisis. This September is another step in
the march to a new reality.
Join us at the People’s Climate March New York City this September.
This article is produced by Popular Resistance in conjunction with AlterNet. It is a weekly review of the activities of the resistance movement.
Kevin Zeese, JD and Margaret Flowers, MD are organizers of PopularResistance.org; they co-direct It’s Our Economy and co-host Clearing the FOG.
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