Climate Justice (News)

As of November 2009, at least 139 cities in the United States had climate action plans, including Portland and Chicago. Oakland doesn’t have one yet, but it does have a goal: by 2020, the city seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 36 percent of what they were in 2005. That goal is more aggressive than those of either San Francisco or Berkeley, which both have climate action plans.

By Juliet Eilperin

Van Jones, the environmental justice advocate who relinquished his post as a White House adviser five months ago after coming under fire from conservative activists, is reemerging on the public policy stage to push for green jobs.

By Gar Alperovitz, Ted Howard & Thad Williamson

Something important is happening in Cleveland: a new
model of large-scale worker- and community-benefiting
enterprises is beginning to build serious momentum in
one of the cities most dramatically impacted by the
nation's decaying economy. The Evergreen Cooperative
Laundry (ECL)--a worker-owned, industrial-size,
thoroughly "green" operation--opened its doors late
last fall in Glenville, a neighborhood with a median
income hovering around $18,000. It's the first of ten
major enterprises in the works in Cleveland, where the
poverty rate is more than 30 percent and the population
has declined from 900,000 to less than 450,000 since
1950.

Editor’s Note: This editorial was produced in association with New America Media (www.newamericamedia.org), a national association of ethnic media, and was published by ethnic media across the country to bring attention to the urgency of addressing climate change.

U.S. public concern about climate change has waned. The climate change summit in Copenhagen – largely viewed as a failure – did little to elevate the issue among the public. Climate change is foremost among the concerns of our communities. It is our responsibility, as the media that serve them, to call for action on this urgent matter. For many ethnic Americans whose family members are at the frontlines of global warming back in their home countries, climate change is a life-and-death issue.

If no action is taken, immigrants will continue to see their family members back in their home countries bear the brunt of rising sea levels and devastating cyclones.

By Frances Q. Quimpo

Copenhagen - The climate negotiation in the Fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen has come to a sour end. The world's high expectation for a meaningful and binding agreement is doused with icy cold water by a non-binding deal dubbed as "Copenhagen Accord" - a deal primarily brokered by the most powerful and leading polluter country in the world -- the United States.

By Suzanne Goldenberg & John Vidal

America sees a diminished role for the United Nations in trying to stop global warming after the "chaotic" Copenhagen climate change summit, an Obama administration official said today.

Jonathan Pershing, who helped lead talks at Copenhagen, instead sketched out a future path for negotiations dominated by the world's largest polluters such as China, the US, India, Brazil and South Africa, who signed up to a deal in the final hours of the summit. That would represent a realignment of the way the international community has dealt with climate change over the last two decades.

By Paul K. Haeder 

US Climate Envoy Blames ALBA for Copenhagen Failure, Backs Sidelining UN

A top US climate negotiator has said he hopes to see the United Nations sidelined at future talks on global warming. On Wednesday, US Deputy Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing said the scale of the climate talks called for a rethinking of the UN’s role. Pershing cited the objections of the ALBA bloc, which he said had blocked an agreement in Copenhagen.