“Today, activists participated in the Solutions COP21 event in the Grand Palais in Paris, where official corporate sponsors of the COP like Engie, Renault-Nissan, Avril Sofiprotéol lavishly spent to present themselves as those who can solve the climate crisis. Indigenous leaders, people representing frontline communities whose land was wrecked by these companies, and local climate activists have voiced their side of the story in front of several stalls.
They were forcibly removed by the police, heavily present on the site. Several activists, coming from around the world, were arrested.”
-350.org December 4th, 2015
Mobilization during the Paris talks is becoming more and more critical. In the defence of front line communities, we are compelled as an international movement to come together and fight on behalf of the demands made by those who are overlooked.
As I’ve mentioned before, and as we all know because we grow up in a time where racial and economic inequalities still shout and scream out for solidarity, there is a beacon of hope in the idea that we still live within representative democracies. Those democracies are actually meant to encourage peaceful intervention and civil disobedience when injustices are occurring, meaning it is not only the right, but the duty for members of so-called “free societies” to provide the cornerstones of visible and ongoing civil rights movements that protect the rights of people at home and elsewhere, if the cause is great enough.
So, here we must stress; Where an international conference seems like a tidy solution, that our elected officials and the most powerful voices of industry have come together to do the “right” thing to ensure a 2 degree cap on emissions and an economic climate where markets will follow accordingly, the reality is that the drivers behind changing policies are not adjusted to properly deal with poverty, where climate changes pose the greatest threats. That is the stark bad news bear.
The climate justice movement is coming from a forceful bottom-up approach to rights reclamation for all peoples so that they may live in dignity with their land, water and sustained livelihoods. This has to happen alongside and in opposition to existing political frameworks, and the UNFCCC knows this, and actually needs it. Heads of state inside the negotiating rooms are more willing now to accept that the world is changing, and change with it, but they represent only a portion of the catalysing forces for equity and lowered emissions. So, even if this conference counts as a huge signifier that there is an emerging green economy that will eventually prevail and an acceptance that we are "in this together", the global free trade agreements that discourage dissent and carbon industry leaders that refuse to keep it in the ground are huge threats. Hence, the emergence of an organised climate justice movement.
In his first essay on civil disobedience, Ghandi said, “None of us had to offer any defense. We were pleading guilty to the charge of disobeying the order…” The willingness to accept penalty is based on something so central to the philosophy of civil disobedience. Violating pernicious laws is justified if the existing hegemony violates our inalienable right to live in dignity.
When Hurricane Katrina wailed against the Gulf of the Unites States in 2005, the whole world was confronted with images of black and working class residents in the Ninth Ward clambering on roofs and on floating debris and the atrocious conditions inside the Superdome. That moment highlighted something that is so often overlooked at home in developed countries. People of colour and poor communities are seen as disposable. In the United States it is finally, in 2015 (!!!) becoming agreed that policing and incarceration of black Americans is actually a thriving industry. This is a fact that is amplified on the world stage, for Gulf Coast residents in United States, for the First Nations Peoples living alongside the Canadian tar sands in Northern Alberta or the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota, for the Pacific Island nations like Tuvalu and Nauru, and for centuries across all of Africa and Latin America. If you are poor, if you are indigenous, if you are a person of color, your rights are easy to silence through powerful use of force, through illegitimate dispute settlement mechanisms, and by the money to be made from ripping up your backyard.
The political-economic system that has let this continue internationally is so dark. It's like sci-fi, or paintings of the four horsemen or someone who smiles wringing the a kitten's neck. And trade has everything to do with it. Right now there is something happening that affects us all, but that we don't really want to talk about having anything to do with climate change, though it is CENTRAL to the ineffective stalling seen by the most powerful political and economic stakeholders. And it is this:
The proposed free trade agreement between the European Union and the United States, referred to as The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), as well as its companion, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are expected to be finalized in 2016. The economic barriers between the members of the agreements are already extremely low because they are included within the World Trade Organization (WTO), but now member states want to decrease them even further. And oh the surprises we are in for! More joyous unfettered trade, and more commodities and more sticky plastic residue everywhere is enough to put a smile on all of our faces, especially right before Christmas time to really get that economic engine jolly-humming and red faced like Saint Nick himself. I mean, yes, though the TTIP aims for an agreement that may create millions of new paid jobs and a focus on a renewing the business sector between members, and glowing reviews in an assessment by the European Centre for Economic Policy Research that expects GDP growth upwards of 120 Billion Euros by 2027, we might be biting off a little more than we can chew, or even fit in our mouths (Trade.ec.europa.eu. 2014) But Isn't that devilishly exciting!?
No. It's just fucking terrifying.
Here at COP21, TTIP and TPP has not been touched much though the very nature of the agreements commit to amping up trade and consumption of fossil fuels, as well European imports of the stuff from North America. And where agricultural markets are at risk of becoming the highest emitting industry in the world, with a 76% increase in global meat production predicted by the year 2050 and more intensive soybean and maize plantations, meaning the highest emitting industries are being fueled to grow instead of scaling back. The pork being raised in China is linked to the soybean being grown in Latin America, while Canada will import more US dairy and on and on it goes. What also presents additional assaults on consumer (aka human) rights is that under TTIP, buy-local initiatives, as well as green-purchasing programs are seen as "trade-distorting" and discriminatory. This systemically derails democratic institutions that serve to protect local production of food and against the privatisation of fresh water through the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism that would be introduced upon completion of the agreements. And, get this! Companies will now be allowed to sue governments if their policies result in profit loss. Now, this is a huge deal, and one of great consequence for the environmental justice movement because it means that unelected corporations can dictate the policies of democratically elected governments, and they are also the ones who are employing the courts that try them.
ISDSs exist already, and they have lead to huge injustices and a cycle of anti-democratic cases around the world. Businesses are not just in the back pockets of government, they have ballooned out of control and are now more powerful than government, ready to put them on trial for dwindling quarterly reports. They continue the deregulation of fossil fuel industries responsible for degrading people everywhere, and keep us hooked on carbon. En-couragable!
Paris is the playground where this relationship is playing out. So, sooner rather than later we may agree there is a really hard pill to swallow when it comes to the environment. Manpower is now necessary to legitimize and strengthen advocacy groups and the demands of exploited people everywhere who don't stand a chance in the courts of unelected corporate figureheads. It is hard to admit that we have a say, and that if we stand idly by we are complicit with a system that can only thrive through continued mass exclusion of people and their right to livelihoods everywhere. It is harder still to believe that these are demands that must be made, and what can sometimes appear to be a movement lacking in continuity, it in fact represents the most important civil rights issue of our time. To say it is not a human issue, a race issue and a poverty issue is to stand on the side of mass segregation and violent oppression.
Change does not happen overnight, and we must beg for forgiveness for our inaction on these issues for so long. Our material wealth, our symbols of success, our appetite for exclusivity shadows us and must be now be brought to light. We aren't even being asked to give up our successes, our innovations or to live without high quality goods and social services. The real challenge is providing support and solidarity to those on the losing end in what can now officially be considered a global economic battleground. This is not a call to arms for an extreme global red wave, but it is about the redistribution of wealth, and a sensible acknowledgement that we do not want to be a bunch of fatties that defend our right to consume more than the rights of others to stay alive.
And, no, nothing will be achieved by alienating our communities through a yawning guilt trip about decreasing individual consumption, but for goodness sake can we not take the time out of our day to pause. To pause and reflect on the casualties of this system. To pause and see the opportunities for a better world. And to give ourselves just one second to think about what a broken earth we are delivering to the next generation. It is but sweet denial to know that we benefit greatly from this system of economic free trade when others do not. It is terrible dinner conversation, it makes for a really uncomfortable series of eye rolling, a harmony of “there have always been poor people, there have always been armed conflict, there have always been powerful oligarchs… Nothing can change that.” But the truth is the rise in a global social network of civilised, educated and organised individuals are in fact changing that through what Paul Hawken refers to as a "planetary immune system." And if it is encouraging to see the movement as represented by the greatest thinkers of our time with pins on their lapels, as supposed to the disheveled portrayal of protesting drifters with dreadlocks and devil sticks, then so be it.
The face of the climate justice movement is changing and boy has it ever been in need of a makeover. To look away now is to beg coal in the bottom of our stockings for the rest of time. Therein lies the big fat truth, there are physical and human limits to an economy that intends to grow indefinitely, and it's only possible to be all "that-was-just-the-wool-over-my-eyes!" until you are confronted with those limits. If we are honest when we say that Black Lives Matter, that we are Idle No More, that poverty is a killer, then we must put ourselves in a position where we defend the poor, black, brown, blue and purple people who are are already dealing with climate calamities in both the global North and South. And then, to accept the penalty for being part of that defence.
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“A true “ecological debt” exists, particularly between the global north and south… In different ways, developing countries, where the most important reserves of the biosphere are found, continue to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future.”
-Pope Francis, 2015 Ecyclical on Climate