Climate Justice (News)

COPENHAGEN, Dec 19 (IPS) - The climate change summit proved to be a "spectacular failure even according to its own terms," but civil society had "some successes," such as the inclusion of certain issues on the climate agenda, and making the voice of the South heard loud and clear.

That was how activists assessed their efforts at 15th Conference of Parties (COP-15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as the climate change talks came to an agonising end Saturday in Copenhagen.

By Mateo Nube

La Paz, Bolivia, where I was born and spent my first 18 years "could perhaps be the first large urban casualty of climate change," according to The New York Times. [1]   I've been tracking the melting glaciers that supply water to the La Paz metropolis for the last few years. Each year the pace of melting has outstripped prior predictions in dramatic fashion. As a kid and a teenager I used to visit the emblematic glacier, Chacaltaya, mentioned in the Times article.  It is now gone.  Extinct.  Scientists speculated that it would be gone by 2020; it formally disappeared this year.  The crisis is no longer a futuristic prediction.  It has arrived.  The human impact stands to be incredibly stark. Margarita Limachi Álvarez, a Bolivian woman living in a village impacted by receding glaciers was quoted in the Times article saying,  “A lot of us think about not having kids anymore.  Without water or food, how would we survive? Why bring them here to suffer?”

Let's transpose that experience to a U.S. context:  Lake Mead, which is a major source of water for LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, Tucson, and Phoenix, has a 50% chance of being completely dry by 2021. [2]   That is only 11 years from now.  Major urban centers in Southwest U.S. are going to suffer dramatic decreases in water supplies within the next decade.

Tens of millions of lives are at stake in Copenhagen and beyond.  Literally.  Our profit- and growth-based economy has pushed the planet's life systems to the brink.  Hence the motto on the streets of Copenhagen this week:  "We need Systems Change, not Climate Change."  It's way too late for compromises.

Updates from the UN Climate Change Conference
Dec. 7-18, 2009 – Copenhagen, Denmark

Come Out Friday, 12/18 4:30-6 Vigil at San Francisco Danish Consulate

EMERGENCY PROTEST & VIGIL
SOLIDARITY WITH ACTIVISTS IN COPENHAGEN

* CLIMATE TALKS UNDEMOCRATIC & ON VERGE OF FAILURE
* US/RICH COUNTRIES REFUSE SERIOUS REDUCTIONS & CLIMATE DEBT
* MASSIVE POLICE REPRESSION AGAINST NONVIOLENT CIVIL SOCIETY

WHEN: Friday December 18th 4:30-6:00PM
WHERE: Danish Consulate, 1 California St, at Market St. (Embarcadero BART),
San Francisco. Bring candles and friends.

COPENHAGEN — Perhaps the strangest sight at protests that turned violent here on Wednesday was a group of young men and women in fur coats and white bow ties who came bearing Champagne, fistfuls of dollar bills and grapes on a silver platter.