This December (ten years since the alter-globalisation movements took to the streets of Seattle to oppose the world trade organization) activists from across the globe will be descending on Copenhagen to protest the COP15 round of discussion. Has the UK Direct Action movement changed in the interceding years between these cycles of struggle? And what lessons, if any, can it learn from its recent past?
What COP15 Is:
The fifteenth ‘Conference Of Parties’ (COP) is scheduled for 7-18th December 2009. Established by the UN, with the first meeting in Berlin in 1995, these conferences aimed to determine the method by which the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty could be pushed forward. This treaty was legally non-binding, but provided protocols with the objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions at a level which would prevent ‘man-made’ climate change. The COP talks aim to establish legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their emissions whilst not inhibiting the industrialization of developing nations. Through out its brief history the COP process has been hampered by indecision. The most famous example being the Kyoto Protocol. This was proposed at COP3 in 1997 to set emission restrictions for the period 2008-2012. The next nine years and 8 meetings were dominated by attempts to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in the face of severe challenges and finally a firm rejection by the USA. By the time an agreement was met, the time frames set were unworkable and COP shifted their focus towards establishing a successor.
The purpose of COP15 is to establish a decisive global agreement which can pick up the pieces from the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. This they hope to achieve through various market methods, including the implementation of carbon trading, a means by which developed nations can buy their way out of emissions targets through exchange with less-developed nations which emit far less than the designated targets. In effect, through the supply of funding and ‘technology’, richer countries can accumulate ‘spare’ carbon credits and not address their own emissions. The meeting will be attended by Governmental ministers and officials from 192 countries as well as business leaders and civic society groups.
Why Should You Care About COP15?:
In the wake of the financial crisis it seems apparent to us that states and the international markets will use the threat of runaway climate change as a means to restructure capital and to shore up state power.
What Do We Mean By This?
That the very industries and national bodies that have created this crisis will make the working and poor population of the world pay for carbon reduction through increased attacks on our collective standards of living and our limited freedom.
It seems likely that these attacks will take the form of green taxes levelled against populations, the control or regulation of people’s movements between borders (flight allocation/personal carbon rations), rising fuel prices, energy rationing or through the establishment of renewable industries (which will involve layoffs/retraining).
read more here:
http://www.freedompress.org.uk/news/2009/11/29/cop15-notes-from-below/#more-450
The fifteenth ‘Conference Of Parties’ (COP) is scheduled for 7-18th December 2009. Established by the UN, with the first meeting in Berlin in 1995, these conferences aimed to determine the method by which the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty could be pushed forward. This treaty was legally non-binding, but provided protocols with the objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions at a level which would prevent ‘man-made’ climate change. The COP talks aim to establish legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their emissions whilst not inhibiting the industrialization of developing nations. Through out its brief history the COP process has been hampered by indecision. The most famous example being the Kyoto Protocol. This was proposed at COP3 in 1997 to set emission restrictions for the period 2008-2012. The next nine years and 8 meetings were dominated by attempts to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in the face of severe challenges and finally a firm rejection by the USA. By the time an agreement was met, the time frames set were unworkable and COP shifted their focus towards establishing a successor.
The purpose of COP15 is to establish a decisive global agreement which can pick up the pieces from the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. This they hope to achieve through various market methods, including the implementation of carbon trading, a means by which developed nations can buy their way out of emissions targets through exchange with less-developed nations which emit far less than the designated targets. In effect, through the supply of funding and ‘technology’, richer countries can accumulate ‘spare’ carbon credits and not address their own emissions. The meeting will be attended by Governmental ministers and officials from 192 countries as well as business leaders and civic society groups.
Why Should You Care About COP15?:
In the wake of the financial crisis it seems apparent to us that states and the international markets will use the threat of runaway climate change as a means to restructure capital and to shore up state power.
What Do We Mean By This?
That the very industries and national bodies that have created this crisis will make the working and poor population of the world pay for carbon reduction through increased attacks on our collective standards of living and our limited freedom.
It seems likely that these attacks will take the form of green taxes levelled against populations, the control or regulation of people’s movements between borders (flight allocation/personal carbon rations), rising fuel prices, energy rationing or through the establishment of renewable industries (which will involve layoffs/retraining).
read more here:
http://www.freedompress.org.uk/news/2009/11/29/cop15-notes-from-below/#more-450
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