Cancun, Mexico – It’s just the beginning, but from the inside looking out, COP 16, the UN climate summit just underway in Mexico feels kind of strange.
Instead of the radical sense possibility, here there are low expectations. The sense is that we will see more foot dragging, as the developed nations, held in the thrall of “Big Oil” and a voting public that has not yet to wake up to the reality of the climate crisis, continue to do their best to avoid any legally binding legislation in favor of vague promises.
People talk about the “ghost of flop-en-hagen,” as in the climate change talks in Copenhagen last year, haunting these talks. What a difference a year makes.
In Copenhagen, the energy was palpable and people gathered in big numbers, in what my friend and activist extraordinaire Judy Rebick informed me was the most important moment of movement building since WTO in Seattle.
Here there is a chasm in the air-conditioned Moon Palace where the plenary sessions of the summit are held, an enormous clash of paradigms, between the developed countries, and the developing world, known in COP talk as the LDC’s – least developed countries.
Most of the real heart felt and urgent discussions are taking place in what are called ‘side events.’
The summit itself is held in two main venues – one where the NGO’s gather, and another where the world’s leaders and much of the press hang out.
In the plenary sessions we have the “negotiators”, professional wheelers and dealers, who this week may be dealing with climate change, and next week may be negotiating trade deals. The urgency of the climate crisis here feels abstracted and distant.
Today was a day of action for the youth. Wearing T-shirts that said, “you’ve been negotiating all my life. You can’t tell me that you need more time,” the youth spread out across the venues to get their message across.
They are a presence that needs to be heard, and respected. As Ethan Case, a youth delegate from SustainUS told me, “most of these negotiators will be dead before the full effects of climate change will hit us. We’ll still be here!”
Japan is talking about scrapping the Kyoto Accord, which is itself inadequate, but at least much more potent than the watered down Copenhagen Accord, which many developed countries hope will supplant it.
Another vocal and passionate presence are the people of the Small Island States – countries like the Seychelles, who will face “the end of history” if global temperatures continue to rise, causing sea levels to rise.
As Ronny Jumeau, the UN Ambassador from the Seychelles, told me, in a haunting interview, “we will not stop shouting – even as the we sink into the ocean you will hear our voices rising with the air bubbles.”
These states are the “miner’s canaries” – taking action to save them, now, will ultimately save us all.
These small states are stirring up trouble here at COP 16, with their loud voices, and their refusal to settle for a deal that will allow anything more than a 1.5 per cent rise in temperature – or 350 ppm of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. The Copenhagen Accord would allow levels to go much higher than that.
A banner above 350.org’s booth reads “450.com – who needs science when we have politics?”
I had the pleasure of interviewing BIll McKibben, the founder of 350. McKibben was one of the early “Paul Reveres” of the climate crisis, and his organization has helped launch a global movement of movements to combat the crisis.
The recent 10.10.10 day of action was the largest global action in history, with every country save for North Korea participating, and last week’s eARTh project, in which massive human created art pieces that could be best seen from satellites were created.
McKibben says that “Art needs to be much more important in movement building. We can’t just appeal to the cerebral cortex – we need to bring in the spirit, the heart. It’s a cultural fight as much as it’s a political fight. We need to create a zeitgeist around the climate crisis, and that hasn’t happened yet.”
First Nations People have a strong presence in the movement building around the summit, but inside the halls of power they must fight to be heard.
This morning a group from the Indigenous Environmental Network did a powerful action calling attention to the Alberta Tar Sands, one of the world’s single largest contributors to climate change.
A few hours later, a group of indigenous representatives from around the world gathered in front of the Moon Palace in a moving ceremony, demanding that the United Nations to listen to their voices, to include them at the table, to recognize that their wisdom is needed.
Casey Camp-Horinek, from the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma, dressed in turquoise blue, finished with a prayer, which in part said, “We’re asking at this time that this United Nations grow ears to listen to the wisdom of the indigenous people.
“We’re asking at this time that the United Nations opens it’s eyes to be able to see the destruction that is happening to our mother earth, to the air and to the waters, and through those eyes that they be able to see that the solutions lie within the hearts and the minds and the spirits of the indigenous people.
“We’re asking that the United Nations open it’s heart, so that this heart can receive the blessings and the understandings of the creator and the earth mother, so that the United Nations will understand how to go forward in a way that is harmonic with all that is.”
Velcrow Ripper is a two-time Genie Award-winning filmmaker.
