U.S. Inaction on Climate is "Criminal", Activists Say

By Kanya D'Almeida

Nation of Change

http://www.nationofchange.org/us-inaction-climate-criminal-activists-say-1323099635

The United States' delegation at the 17th annual
Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCC) in
Durban, South Africa has come under heavy fire from
civil society leaders and activists around the globe
for standing in the way of real solutions to climate
change.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 farmers, unionists, teachers,
peasants, students, garbage pickers, transport workers
and other indignant citizens gathered outside the U.N.
consultation chambers in Durban on Saturday calling for
"system change, not climate change".

Many of these protestors marched to the U.S. embassy,
demanding that the "world's biggest polluter" start
supporting climate solutions that benefit the 99
percent.

In solidarity with their African counterparts, citizens
in 20 cities across the U.S. rallied against the
eco-destructive actions of the "one percent" as part of
the Dec. 3 global day of action to save the planet and
"occupy the climate".

Spearheaded by the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
(GGJA), a national network of grassroots organizations,
along with the North American chapter of the 200
million member international farmers' movement, La Via
Campesina, Saturday's events were an attempt to draw
together disparate climate-related struggles under one
banner.

"We are mobilizing to denounce quick fix solutions
being promoted by governments and corporations - like
carbon markets, REDD++, and geo- engineering - all of
which are just creative ways for corporations to
continue profiting at the expense of the people and
Mother Earth," said Dena Hoff, a Montana-based member
of the National Family Farm Coalition.

"As stewards of the land, feeding the world's people,
we can't stand by as our ecosystems are destroyed for
corporate greed," she added.

"U.S. government and corporations are the one percent
responsible for the majority of pollution affecting the
99 percent of the world," Francisca Porchas of the
LA-based Labor Community Strategy Center, said
Saturday. "We demand that the U.S. immediately reduce
carbon emissions to 50 percent of current levels by
2017, and stop obstructing progress towards paying
climate debt and forging an internationally binding
deal."

Actions in the U.S. kicked off Friday, when a
delegation representing leaders from hundreds of Native
American tribes presented President Barack Obama with
the Mother Earth Accord, a document stating their
opposition to the development of the bitterly contested
TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline through Indian
country.

"Recognizing that the pipeline would stretch 1,980
miles, from Alberta, Canada to Nederland, Texas,
carrying up to 900,000 barrels per day of filthy tar
sands crude oil," the Accord roundly condemned the
project as "suicidal" for scores of Native communities
and sacred sites as well as for the Ogallala Aquifer,
which currently sustains millions of people and
irrigates huge swathes of farmland throughout the
heartland of the United States.

The U.S. government's indecision on the project,
despite reported evidence of numerous spills and
irrefutable data on the pipeline's impact, is
indicative of its overall indifference to social
movements and civil society's demands, activists say.

The U.S. delegation in Durban, led by special envoy
Todd Stern and his deputy Jonathan Pershing, have
remained immune to civil society pressure by continuing
to push its agenda of promoting new "climate financing"
systems to mitigate the impacts of carbon emissions and
global warming.

This, despite the fact that a 2011 World Bank report,
prepared for this year's G20 meeting in France and
leaked to the British Guardian in September, confessed
that global carbon markets are in deep trouble.

"The value of transactions in the primary CDM market
declined sharply in 2009 and further in 2010 ... amid
chronic uncertainties about future mitigation targets
and market mechanisms after 2012," the report said.

The failure of financial markets to regulate
themselves, much less the climate, notwithstanding,
Stern and Pershing have blocked even the most watered
down proposals on the negotiating table in Durban, such
as the establishment of a Green Climate Fund, endorsed
by most developing nations as well as the Eurozone.

"The U.S. is putting the cart before the horse in terms
of the climate fund by refusing to sign onto something
before the details have been worked out," Jen Soriano,
communications coordinator for the Durban delegation of
the GGJA, told IPS. "In fact, nothing can be
concretized until countries like the U.S. commit to the
fund in the first place, so this is the perfect stall
tactic."

"It reflects the administration's total inability to
take the lead, even over a proposal that would
essentially be managed by (controversial) for-profit
actors like the World Bank," she added.

"The U.S. delegation also told a gathering of NGOs in
Durban yesterday that they would absolutely not
re-ratify an updated version of the Kyoto protocol
until 2020... proving that there is no scientific basis
to the U.S.'s agenda," Soriano said.

In fact, every noteworthy document on climate change,
from the landmark Cochabamba People's Agreement signed
last year in Bolivia to the U.N.'s own
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC)
2011 report, predict catastrophic results if industrial
countries don't limit global warming to less than two
degrees Celsius and follow the basic conditions laid
out in the Kyoto protocol.

The signatories to the Cochabamba Agreement stressed,
"Between 20 percent and 30 percent of species would be
in danger of disappearing, large extensions of forest
would be affected, droughts and floods would affect
different regions of the planet, deserts would expand,
and the melting of the polar ice caps and the glaciers
in the Andes and Himalayas would worsen.

"Many island states would disappear, and Africa would
suffer an increase in temperature of more than three
degrees Celsius. Likewise, the production of food would
diminish and the number of people in the world
suffering from hunger would increase dramatically, a
figure that already exceeds 1.02 billion people."

Meanwhile the 220 scientists who comprise the U.N.'s
IPCC noted last month that "extreme weather events"
would likely suck billions out of national economies
and destroy millions of lives, particularly in Africa.

"We have to think not only in terms of loss of life but
also climate displacement, the loss of homes,
separation from families and poverty," Jill Johnston,
programs coordinator of the Southwest Workers Union,
told IPS.

In fact, the World Bank said back in February that an
additional 44 million people were pushed into poverty
this year as a result of rising food prices and
millions more could be hungry by the end of 2012 if
current trends continue.

"Viewed against this backdrop, the U.S. has been
incredibly irresponsible at these talks. Its negligence
in finding real solutions to the climate crisis often
borders on criminal," Johnston added.

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