Climate justice movement plans mass action during UN climate talks. “The UN climate talks will not solve the climate crisis”
(October 18) The international network Climate Justice Action (CJA) (1) met this weekend to prepare for mass actions during the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009.
After 14 years of ineffectual talks, activists from social movements across the globe are taking the struggle for climate justice to the streets. Planned is a series of events ranging from a mass action to shutdown the harbour of Copenhagen to an action aimed at bringing a people’s agenda for climate justice to the elite summit space for a day.
“The UN climate talks will not solve the climate crisis. We are no closer to reducing greenhouse gas emissions than we were when international negotiations began fifteen years ago: emissions are rising faster than ever, while carbon trading allows climate criminals to pollute and profit”, says Tadzio Mueller, a press spokesperson for CJA.
In response to what they perceive as a political circus playing to the interests of corporations, Stine Gry, also from CJA, argues that “we cannot trust the market with our future, nor put our faith in unsafe, unproven and unsustainable technologies. Instead of trying to paint a destructive system green, we need to take mass action for climate justice.
On the 13th of December Climate Justice Action will take direct action against the root causes of climate change by disrupting the toxic, fossil fuel-driven flows of global capitalism and overproduction for overconsumption by shutting down the harbour of Copenhagen.
On the 16th of December, CJA will put climate justice and the voices of marginalized peoples from across the North and the South at the top of the agenda. Led by activists from the Global South we will challenge the corporate and governmental elites at the UN climate talks, overcoming police barriers with civil disobedience to hold a People’s Climate Justice Summit.
Against the “false solutions” adopted by the UNFCCC, the networks call for:
- leaving fossil fuels in the ground
- reasserting peoples’ and community control over production
- relocalising food production
- massively reducing overconsumption, particularly in the North
- respecting indigenous and forest peoples’ rights
- recognising the ecological and climate debt owed to the peoples of the South and making reparations
Again Stine Gry:
“Real solutions to the climate crisis are being built by women and men in both the South and the North who fight every day to defend their environment and living conditions. We need to globalise these solutions and work for a just transition towards a post-fossil fuel future.”
Climate Justice Action is a network of a wide diversity of groups from both the global north, and the global south. Among them Terra de Direitos (Brazil) and Focus on the Global South, international Climate Camps, Rising Tide and Indian Social Action Forum. The complete list of groups can be found on the website, www.climate-justice-action.org