UN Climate Change Talks in Durban, South Africa

Beginning last week and continuing through this Friday, the UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa are being held.  http://www.cop17-cmp7durban.com/.  Ostensibly, the purpose for the Conference of Parties, known also as "COP 17", is to address global warming caused by emissions of CO2 through the burning of fossil fuels.   In reality the Conference of Parties delegates are meeting among themselves, with themselves, and by themselves. Science is being ignored, despite the overwhelming evidence compiled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. http://www.ipcc.ch/.  These representatives of the 1% are merely staging this event that they would have us believe is an earnest effort to solve the climate crisis.  However, in reality they are seeking creative ways in which they can manipulate markets with off sets, or whatever, in order to continue unabated fossil fuel extraction and burning.  Meanwhile, outside, in the streets of Durban, being ignored by the ruling elites, are the climate conscious citizens of the planet.  They are busy organizing and planning for actions to counter the inaction by the Conference of Parties.  The governments of the world are being held hostage by the fossil fuel industry.  The money involved is in the trillions.  On the other side of the scale the earth's atmosphere is in the balance.  It is near the oft-mentioned tipping point.  It cannot continue to absorb CO2.  We have altered the atmosphere of the planet to such a degree that it will take millions of years for it to return to the stable state in which human civilization evolved. Meanwhile, the US media, conveying  the ideology of the ruling elites, has devoted only slight attention to the Durban conference, relaying the impression that climate change is a trivial matter.  The greatest of all capitalist market failures is the climate.  Costs related to climate and pollution are externalized and not recorded in balance sheets or in stock holders' meetings.  The US delegate, Todd Stern is shamelessly denying the truth that it is the United States that is sabotaging the the entire process and seeking to delay any significant reductions in CO2 emissions until 2020.  The science says that we will be 2 degrees Celsius warmer by then.

We don't have much time.  The collapse of the fossil fuel economy has already begun.  Fewer people are driving, teenagers are finding it impossible to afford the luxury of individual transportation.  Ironically, the high speed rail system approved by voters in California just three years ago, is now threatened by voter turn around.  This is exactly the wrong time to abandon alternative transportation systems that have the potential of reducing automobile use.  By listening to the ruling elites representing themselves at the "Conference of Polluters", one would be prompted to believe that they are not living on the same planet as we.  It is time to bring down the carbon economy while we still have a climate that resembles the one in which all life on earth evolved. 



I just read a great piece by Noami Cline in the November 28th edition of The Nation.  We shared the privilege of being arrested on the same day at the White House during the Keystone XL Pipeline action this summer.  She points out that climate deniers, so called, have a more realistic view of what the end of the carbon economy will look like.  And it is sobering for them.  The climate change deniers are not comforted by the false viewpoint that our world economy will experience a soft landing if we move gradually and painlessly toward renewable energy options, toward sustainable culture.  All cultures encountered by Western European colonialism were originally sustainable.  Capitalism must destroy sustainability.  Capitalism by its very nature is not sustainable; it is always reaching beyond itself toward what it presumes to be inexhaustible planetary resources.  In order for us to survive as a planet, let alone as a species, we must face the reality that fossil fuel based energy sources contain concentrations of power that will never be available to us through alternative means.  These reserves are being depleted and energy companies are stretching technology and bludgeoning the earth to extract what remains ... extreme energy.  This is "fracking", to extract natural gas from shale, deep water drilling, tar sands mining ... basically the destruction of the earth in order to keep the fossil fuel economy grinding on.  The point is that if we continue to burn this stuff, life for those who survive on earth will be impossible.

In Durban, South Africa this week the 1% are doing nothing to prevent catastrophe.  It is up to us, the citizens of the planet, to stop them.  We must occupy, act and stop the madness.  Explore the Deep Green Resistance, a strategy to save the planet.  http://deepgreenresistance.org/