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Climate Rage

Among the smartest and most promising — not to mention controversial — proposals is "climate debt," the idea thatrich countries should pay reparations to poor countries for the climate crisis. In the world of climate-change activism, this marksa dramatic shift in both tone and content. American environmentalism tends to treat global warming as a force that transcends difference: We all share this fragile blue planet, so we all need to work together to save it. But the coalition of Latin American and African governments making the case for climate debt actually stresses difference, zeroing in on the cruel contrast between those who caused the climate crisis (the developed world)and those who are suffering its worst effects (the developing world). Justin Lin, chief economist at the World Bank, puts the equation bluntly: "About 75 to 80 percent" of the damages caused by global warming "will be suffered by developing countries, although they only contribute about one-third of greenhouse gases."

Climate debt is about who will pick up the bill. The grass-rootsmovement behind the proposal argues that all the costs associated with adapting to a more hostile ecology — everything frombuilding stronger sea walls to switching to cleaner, more expensive technologies — are the responsibility of the countries thatcreated the crisis. "What we need is not something we should be begging for but something that is owed to us, because we aredealing with a crisis not of our making," says Lidy Nacpil, one o fthe coordinators of Jubilee South, an international organizationthat has staged demonstrations to promote climate reparations."Climate debt is not a matter of charity."

Here we are again.  Justice is what we should be advocating not charity.  Yes, all those foundations and seed vaults and do good organizations are fine on the surface.  But if people in the Southern Hemisphere are always treated like supplicants rather than partners we deserve to see that big giant spaceship show up with the big bad robot guy and experience "The Day the Earth Stood Still".

Raj Patel author of "Stuffed and Starved" and his newest book coming in January "The Value of Nothing" gave a link to the hokum of carbon trading as a solution to our polluted planet.  Carbon Trading: How It Works and Why It Fails
This pamphlet can be downloaded at the site. 

Carbon trading lies at the centre of global climate policy and isprojected to become one of the world’s largest commodities markets, yetit has a disastrous track record since its adoption as part of the Kyoto Protocol.

Carbon Trading: how it works and why it fails outlines the limitations of an approach to tackling climate change which redefines the problem to fit the assumptions of neoliberal economics. It demonstrates that the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the world’s largest carbon market, has consistently failed to  ́cap ́ emissions, while the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) routinely favours environmentally ineffective and socially unjust projects. This is illustrated with case studies of CDM projects in Brazil, Indonesia,India and Thailand.

UN climate talks in Copenhagen are discussing ways to expand thetrading experiment, but the evidence suggests it should be abandoned.From subsidy shifting to regulation, there is a plethora of waysforward without carbon trading – but there are no short cuts aroundsituated local knowledge and political organising if climate change isto be addressed in a just and fair manner.

The new book is published by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation (www.dhf.uu.se) as part of its Critical Currents series.

 "Anyone who still thinks that creating a carbon casino can solve our climate crisis owes it to themselves to read this book. The most convincing and concise challenge to the green profiteers yet."
Naomi Klein, author, the Shock Doctrine

Pay attention people to the guys behind the curtain, not the smiling shiny big head projected on the screen.  We need some rage, not more death by power point climate panels.