What after Copenhagen?

Unification of the youth movement. The kids are there. It's their future. Hundreds of student campaigns. Just need bringing together.

Should be an open youth rebellion upon the aging population that left them to clean up their mess.

Andy Fraser - This is the Big One   http://www.youtube.com/user/mctrax#p/a/u/1/63qIoGpnrl8

Hi Peter, Darrin,

The real problem, I think, is that the global justice movement as a whole hasn't yet twigged as to why governments aren't acting, be it on climate change or any other global problem. If it did, it would be well on the way to solving the problem.

The main reason they're not acting on global problems is that governments fear that if their commitments are not matched by other nations, their industries will become uncompetitive, so leading to mass job losses. One way to deal with this is to try to get all nations to act simultaneously, and that, effectively is what the UN Conference at Copenhagen tried to do. BUT even if all nations acted together, the problem is that big-polluting nations will have deeper cuts to make than low-polluting nations, so making it likely that big-polluters will not cooperate (or will not cooperate substantively). Hence China's and the USA reluctance and the scupperring of any meaningful deal.

Alongside this is the need to compensate developing countries adequately,  so developed countries need to pay off developing countries. But the problem here is that they simply don't have the cash. Given that all the rich countries are all deep in debt, they don't want to go deeper. So to get around this a deal on emissions will need to be combined with a global tax-raising measures of some kind (eg. a Tobin Tax) so that the revenues raised can be used to compensate big-polluters, oil-producers, as well as developing countries. If the international community could actually raise a substantive tax, the wheels of an emissions agreement could be oiled. But without it, they grind to a halt, as we've just seen.

The above, then, are the "starting issues" that we, the global justice movement, must start to grapple with. To a large extent we need to stop thinking that governments can solve global problems on their own - they can't. They're stuck in a vicious circle they can't get out of, so for us to carry on lobbying them, or protesting at their inaction, as we have been for the last decade since Seattle, 1999 is rather illogical as well as futile. Instead we need to develop a global and unified political strategy capable of overcoming the above-mentioned obstacles.

Does this ring bells with anyone?

The above, then, are the "starting issues" that we, the global justice movement, must start to grapple with. To a large extent we need to stop thinking that governments can solve global problems on their own - they can't. They're stuck in a vicious circle they can't get out of, so for us to carry on lobbying them, or protesting at their inaction, as we have been for the last decade since Seattle, 1999 is rather illogical as well as futile. Instead we need to develop a global and unified political strategy capable of overcoming the above-mentioned obstacles.

Does this ring bells with anyone?

Yes. I agree in essence govts can only follow. So if activists are able to get our nations on track for contraction/convergence targets or any of the other decent target systems we are going in the right direction. This needs a huge strategic effort. I'm aware that we in the UK need to build a sustainable economy to get people fed/clothed whilst spannering the worst excesses to force conversion: serious blockading coal-fired plants and airports would make people find ways to get fed/clothed. We need to train a whole generation in nvda and make that follow through because we need to get people building sustainable businesses to meet basic needs right in the teeth of the economic growth machine. The national action plan http://interactive.bis.gov.uk/lowcarbon/ is only -34% C by 2020 which I guess is getting people looking in the right direction but we need more like -90% by 2030 (using George Monbiot's broad target from CRAG site 2005). So one arm in the UK will be starting with that plan and working with civil servants etc to see how we can double++ the cuts.

I think people are right to say we need to start looking outside CCC and working with people and organisations. Linking to other organisations is essential, so CCC can find its particular niche to complement the other organisations. In many ways, the lobbying government role in the UK is well covered, and in fact the current government largely agrees with the NGO sector already - they have actually been calling for NGOs to be noisier.

The area that is less covered is the mobilising of ordinary and partially-engaged public who could do more. We shouldn't see mobilising as only getting people on the streets. I think mobilising means a range of things, depending on how keen people are or what kind of people they are. Some (especially the young) will enjoy going out and protesting and holding up coal trains. Others wouldn't but would be happy to start organising their community to change people's practices and make improvements to their homes. We mustn't forget that in all this we are not helpless - we can actually start reducing our own emissions and of those around us. I know this doesn't make a global movement: but it is just as powerful, if not more so, than complaining to government. It shows more than anything that people support emission cuts and it can provide a model for how policies could be implemented on a larger scale. In other words, it can still be used to push government to make national changes, but in a more useful way.

10:10 has been good here, but is failing to get much outside the Guardian readership. There is a role for someone to start drawing people in who are outside the current 'green' community. Also CCC doesn't have to limit itself to one course of action - so if there are people within CCC interested and able to take on certain tasks, they should be encouraged to do so.

Ecoplaza Paradise Oasis. If it can save  my childs life then I think I should watch it and at least have an opinion about it.

Hey ajmacconville,

I quite agree with you how do we bring people in from outside the green community in.. This is where it is at, 5% in a [plan to save the planet is irrellevent.   Or the vast majority, ok.. half of all greenhouse gases are produced by people from just  a few sources,. So, How do we get them to change. The fastest answer is  through their children.  One of the chief weapons suppliers fro the yugoslavian conflct, "The reason that I sell weapons to kill and maim people is so that my children can gain an income and therefore be safe in the world. "  If we set up global solution centres where we all chip in what we know , soon we will have a resourse that is unmatched.  soon we will be at the forefronjt of sving the planet ecoplaza paradise oasis can do this........ check out the web address above..........

I just knew the Copenhagen talks would be a let down.

It's good to talk, but actions speak louder than words. 

I would like to have a wind turbine erected in the village where I live in Kent, so that when the wind blows, renewable, sustainable, locally generated power will flow to our little community with any excess energy shared to the national grid.  I also want the spinning bladed tower to provide an eye-catching landmark to encourage other local villages to think greener!

I would be grateful for any advice on how I might start to plan/organise such a project - with all suggestions most welcome please!!!

Regards, Neal Pearson.

 When it comes to one wind power turbine planning laws come into question, opposition to the windpower turbines in communities etc. If someone in the next city to you wants the same then they would have to go through all the same lengthy processes and people in the next city the same. It can end up being an ongoing process of reinventing the wheel.  Sometimes, not always, it is easier to talk in terms of a wholesale solutions. Ie if a multi purpose environmental and social action centre is established, then they all can be run on renewable energy. If local and national governments were lobbied to donate in their area a building for the community run by the community on renewable energy. It is asking for one facility that can then answer a thousand questions at once, essentially it enables everyone to fast track solutions and therefore creating the green jobs everyone wants and talks about yet to date are pretty slow in manifesting.

The whole community can learn about renewable energy together. An expert on renewable energy can be on hand to advise, when people are interested they can find out about other renewable energy schemes exist like how they can convert to renewables on the grid  etcv. They can learn about hemp and how that is one of the few products that sucks up and holds greenhouse gases, investors can discover this and invest in it, they can learn about collectivo transport, car share, bicycle stores, LETS,etc.

 Al Gore did a speech a couple of years ago that was something along the lines of the biggest leap forward since the moon landings has been the discovery that it can sometimes be  easier to solve a multitude of problems together rather than solve one on its own. The example he cited was America getting loans from China, Oil dependency in the middle east and terrorism.  Similarly on a community level, if the whole community can be motovated and mobalised it may well be easier to  help the elderly, help children with cancer, find land where trees can be planted, gain  plant trees enmass, reduce or even finish homelessness, learn about hemp, learn about recycling, using algae in design, car sharing etc. all at once. Robert Anton Wilson wrote that most major innovations in history take 60 years from their first consideration to actual instigation to take form. He related that to most types of inventions and ways of thinking. With climate change we haven't got that long if the sixties was taken to be the starting point when people began to realise there was a global enviornmental problem. Somehow we have to find away of shortening the evolution process. If addressing climate change is dependent upon the rapid uptake of green awareness, processes, green jobs are dependent upon the creation of green markets, increase of people growing their own food, applying permiculture to recreate diverse ecosystems, even in cities,   green product cost reductions are dependent upon the greater uptake in green products and processes. The safety of indigenous people dependent upon there habitats being preserved, this dependent upon markets being created in and around carbon sinks, giving the ecologically most important countries market advantages for the first time etc.. Like the problem of climate change itself being a combination of problems working together to creat a single phenominon, the answers can be linked to create a mirror effect. As world visions message goes give a man a fish and he can eat a meal, give a net and he can sustainably eat. If a critical mass of people could see the potential in establishing multi purpose enviornmental social action centres, then a greater critical mass of people will discover the plight of the planet and discovery what they can do to help...If we  demand ecoplazas where we live,  we have a combined resource base, from this we can build an immune system for the Earth of solutions, network what works, establish more effective funding models for NGO's etc. It goes beyond idealism to pragmatic functional logistical models. Climate change could be likened to being a super intellegent organisam always looking for niches of ways to combine and expand upon itself. Like nature on the surface may appear to be random and chaotic yet on a deeper level it is super organised. Dew Harvesting nets used in Peru, this strategy can be used in any dry region to reduce water use. etc. A global immune system combined with ecoplazas could find the best answers and network them in unison to every NGO. council and water company globally. Cement the worst building material can be replaced with Hemp the very best, it does the same thing. What proportion of building companies world wide know this infomation today 1 or 2% maybe. Unlike other  green consumer products, hemp really is green, ie the more it is grown and used, the better. Its really widescale use couple of hundreds of years ago interestingly would have already absorbed and reduced the co2 of  the Industrial revolution, yet at the time with nobody realising it.  Despite the benefits of Hemp, One of the UKs largest producer earlier this year nearly went bankrupt. Through an effective system being put into place the benefits of hemp today could be widely advertised.

The infomation of potential Earth gains sent out to every large and small building company in the Uk and or the world via volunteers, ie the retired and school children, at ecoplaza. This then creating a boom  in the farming and production of hemp creating green investment and many green jobs. This then opening up other markets for the use of hemp as fuel, food, fibre, clothing etc. Each acre of hemp absorbing huge amounts of CO2, more than forests do etc. On one hand we need to have a plan on the other organisational models and on the other build the belief that we really can save the planet. 

Anthony Robbins gets people, members of the public,  to achieve the seeming impossible, to walk accross 1000 degree hot coals. This is done through the power of belief. If these people were to try this alone they may fail yet as a group with everyone motovating each other, with focus, commitment and a sense of shared purpose, as they whisper the words cool moss and walk accross the coals, with support and the right infastructure for the workshop in place the impossible is achieved. If we believe we can save the planet and we work on a system that develops, encourages and multiplies excellence fast enough then we can lift ourselves back up from the doldrums and depressing results of COP15.

How best to bring on board and motovate 95% of people and to get the best out of each player is the pivital question determining widescale success or failure. TEAM.Together Everyone Achieves More. We can best counteract climate change,  if we start to think and act in terms of system hange, solutions able to take form by combining and multiplying rapidly, thus maximising everyones skills, resources and potential and most importantly creating and building in more and more of us the believe that yes we really can win against global warming.

Ecoplazas create multiples of fun green angles everyday and therefore keep the enviornment in the media, therefore they can be the difference that makes the difference. 

 Living in intentional community with like minded people satisfies the need to get on and do it, I know I´ve lived in a community for over 30 years. That is satisfactory at one level. Leading by example, but even that is a challenge with a relatively small group of people.

Imposing rule of law from outside, another way. President Tito did this quite successfully in Yugoslavia. Talking with friends in Slovenia where I was giving talks on Climate change, the desirability for the Spirit of Community, led to a number of Slovenain people saying they wished there was a kind of Communism again.

Too much talk? keep the message clear, simple and straight down the line.

The Britain I know now has too much choice. This creates problems that affect the environment ( among other things). Time to understand rights go hand in hand with responsibility. This is where education comes in.

Being  pragmatic is essential, how we can gain the maximum benefit with minimal input. With the worlds media focussed on Copenhagen, Obama able to act only partially due to reasons in the states,  Gordon Brown asking people to join Avaaz to help lobby governments, The Chinese leader sending a minion into talks, we really live in extraordinary times, potentially. The collective focus is on a solution to climate change, the thinkers, the polititions, protestors are all in agreement. There has never been a stronger collective focus on finding an answer to climate change, or any other issue. How this can be harnessed and maximised and prevented from being defused is the crucial question.  The internet is the tool that maximises the potential of millions of computers. It is a common binding agent, where together everyone achieves more.  Over the past week we met with people from various eco villages such as Auroville, Findhorn and various others at COP15. They could see the potential of autonomous enviornment centres, the resource base this can provide fro a multitude of different answers. They could also see how logistically it is so much faster and easier to establish non residential ecovillages and that this can be complimentary to the process in multiples of ways.

Multi tasking solutions is where it is at. Ecovillages do this automatically, Day centres that can simultaneously stimulate actions, so rather than us having conversations like this over the net using energy we could be having them face to face whilst planting trees at the same time. If Peter, you have a reason why you do not think ecoplaza could be the fastest and most effective tool for addressing climate change. please can you explain why? If you don't think it is the best tool for  winning people on board to invest ecologically then why? Providing bike stores, opportunities for the retired and the scouts and schools and universities to join us, If it isn't the most effective method, establishing rent free resource centres for all of us engaged in trying to make the world a better place, then what else could be? We need to talk in terms of absolutes if we are going to use our time as efficiently as possible. If you think this is not a part of the best way forward after Copenhagen on what grounds do you base that judgement?  Where can we find something better?  Solar, wind, hemp, ecoproducts, organic fairtrade etc its all part of the puzzle. Whats missing is the glue that bind the pieces, so everyone is versed on these issues and they are apart of everyones lives. The media and the internet alone is not an effective way to communicate. We require  a way  to present the plight of the planet and the movement for healing it to the populous, in order for the 90% of people that don't participate to jump on board. Klima forum has created a critical mass, Ecoplazas can sustain that critical mass. Lets not wait till COP16 lets just keep the energy of COP15 going.

The UK government also see the potential in green lifestyle centres. They have also admited they cannot do this alone and have made huge grants available for establishing them. If these are set up then these types of discussions can be happening in village squares rather than in such a limited way over the internet alone.      What we have to learn to do we learn by doing..... 

On line petition

Could the campaign set up an online petition to get the Government to consider the campaign's Climate Emergency Measures?  This might sound like jumping on the band wagon a bit, but it would raise the profile of the campaign.  I believe the answer to climate change has to be an at least part political one, as its only through getting the Government of the day on board will authorities, companies, organisations and Government qaungos start to take the scale of climate change seriously and start to make changes necessary to make a real change to CO2 emissions.

I do believe that an internal debate is needed in CCC to move forward.  I don't believe one person decreeing a way forward and expecting everyone to follow will achieve the consensus in the campaign that need to achieve success at what we want.  We have to step up the campaign, but equally I believe we have to recognise the hard work, comittment and achievement of campaign so far.  I now believe that the Climate Emergency Campaign is the way forward, but having got this far, if we are to make a difference, we must maintain what we've started and see it through.  If we stop and change, stop and change, and stop and change, we can't be taken seriously, and will end up being ignored, derided, or both.

I agree with John that the general election should be a focus for activity over the next few months.  I would also like to see a campaign to explain to the general public what the outcome at Copenhagen means.  I think for the majority of people in this country the general impression would be "It was similar to other summits.  The politicians talked a lot but fail to reach agreement.  Business as usual."   Perhaps even "Climate change can't be that much of a problem or they would have done something about it".

Occasionally, buried deep in the comments pages of newspapers, are some references to what the Copenhagen Accord would mean for our planet if it is not replaced with an effective agreement.  These are vague to the casual reader.  3.9C rise - by when?  What then, does the temperature stop rising?  What does that mean for different parts of the world?  Somewhere I saw something about emissions continuing to rise until 2040 (or it might have been 2035...  I couldn't find it again).

Can we reach out to the general public with clear information about what the failure at Copenhagen means and what needs to happen now?  Just one idea - creating a few linked Facebook groups such as "I won't stand for a deal that means x deaths in Africa by 2030", "I won't stand for a deal that means...".   If a few examples of who will be flooded out, deprived of water because glaciers are gone, farmland made uninhabitable etc etc. are chosen, based on mainstream science, and then repeated consistently across a range of media, I think this would help get the message across.  It will be hard to convince politicians of the need for action if 90% of the public continue to think climate change is not one of the most important issues facing this country. (That's without even going into the climate sceptic backlash).

How else, with limited resources, can we play a role in informing the general public?  Ideas?

Hi,

This is my first post here, and is just an attempt to set out briefly how I currently see the political situation post-COP15, so may be somewhat lacking in coherence. Until now I've been too depressed by recent events even to think about it in any systematic way, as I am sure many others have been.

What difference if any will the (non-binding) pledges just made by most of the major emitters in response to the Copenhagen resolution make? Will they even be noticed by most people, among the stories about intemperate emails and isolated errors in the AR4? How deep is the damage the latter have caused? I don't believe their emergence now is any coincidence: the ideologically-motivated denialists, and the paid shills of the fossil fuel lobbies, struck just before COP15, but now believe they are on a roll, and can destroy any chance of meaningful action to reduce emissions for years to come. Unfortunately, their message is one very many people want to hear, because the truth is so frightening. So as far as the global public is concerned, we are up against the strong human tendency to disbelieve uncomfortable truths.

The governments of major emitting states, I think, mostly do accept the weight of the evidence that anthropogenic climate change is an urgent problem, because that will undoubtedly be what their scientific advisors are telling them  - but they all still hope to pass the political and economic costs on to others: all would be better off if all agreed cuts drastic enought to give us a good chance of avoiding medium-term disaster, but all fear the short-term consequences of acting, and particularly of angering powerful economic interest groups, and of giving other states an economic edge. So far as governments are concerned, we are thus up against the competitive nature of the capitalist world-system (now including China), both within and between states, which systematically rewards short-termism.

If I saw any prospect of an anti-capitalist revolution in the next few decades I'd be pushing for it, but it would seem to require a near miracle: there is no coherent alternative with anything like mass support, at least outside Latin America. The financial crisis has to some extent discredited extreme "free market" ideology, but the immediate result has been a disillusionment with all politics, and often a retreat into xenophobia, with at most unfocused resentment against ruling elites.

However, there are longer-term factors that give some grounds for hope, if not exactly optimism. It remains true that the free-market, greed-is-good ideology that insists that anthropogenic climate change cannot be happening - because the latter demands at the very least intervention in markets on an unprecedented scale - has suffered a huge blow. Second, it remains the case that objectively, all those who care about what happens more than 20-30 years into the future (which means almost everyone with children or grandchildren who could live through much of this century), have a strong common interest in drastically reducing emissions.

In this context, I consider that while climate change is of immense importance, we must view it in the light of the wider crisis of resource use - where resources include the planet's capacity for absorbing waste products, but also impending shortages of at least high-grade oil, phosphorus, fertile soil, and several metals. In some recent social scientific work I'm involved in, it has appeared that even many of those sceptical of anthropogenic climate change do share the value that waste, and specifically <em>wasting energy</em>, is a bad thing. Again, there remains a strong public sentiment in favour of greater equality, and government action to achieve it (see the latest Social Attitudes survey in the UK); and there is now abundant evidence that increasing equality benefits even the well-off, and also encourages pro-environmental attitudes (see Wilkinson and Pickett's <em>The Spirit Level: Why more Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better</em>). Finally, we know from the success of long campaigns against drink driving, and now against smoking, that apparently deep-rooted behaviours and attitudes can be changed by a combination of education, exhortation, social interaction, and legislation. The same work I mentioned also suggested that people <em>are</em> willing to accept a lead from government on reducing "waste" and energy use, if they see it as being done fairly. It will certainly take time for momentum to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to be recovered, and that is time we can ill afford, but as part of a broader campaign against greed, waste, inequality and profligacy, I see reason to think it can be recovered.

Interesting discussion.  My two cents: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/dec/21/copenhagen-climate-change