2009-12-16
SOLIDARITY WITH ACTIVISTS IN COPENHAGEN
WHEN: Friday December 19th 4:30-6:00PM
WHERE: Danish Consulate,
1 California St, at Market St. (Embarcadero BART), San Francisco
Bring candles and friends.
“First they shut the public out of the climate negotiations, then they shut out 80% of NGOs who have been accredited to attend, and now they are jailing people who challenge the undemocratic nature of the climate negotiations, while the future of life on earth literally hangs in the balance.”
-Dorothy Guerro, Focus on the Global South, Climate Justice Now Network.
WHY?
Because the US and other wealth climate polluting nations refuse to significantly reduce climate pollution and to pay our ecological debt to climate-impacted developing world and because of the lack of democracy in the UN climate talks. On Tuesday, US climate negotiator Todd Stern said he foresees no change in President Obama’s offer to cut emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by2020. The proposal has been widely criticized because it amounts to just a four percent cut when adopting the 1990 emission standard used by the rest of the world. Scientists call for a 40% cut by 2020in order to prevent an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Meanwhile, developing countries including the US, UK and Denmark drafted and circulated a document to completely circumvent the UN from all further future negotiations.
Accredited civil society groups including Friends of the Earth, Avaaz, Tck Tck Tck, Via Campesina have been banned from the UN Climate Conference. “The surgical removal of non governmental organizations underscores the lack of democracy inherent in these negotiations. The only way to avoid catastrophic climate change is fully supporting and including peoples movements like the very ones illegitimately removed from this process.,” said Professor Micheal Dorsey, a member of the Climate Justice Now! Network.
Danish police have engaged in mass preemptive arrests, detentions, clubbed and pepper spayed nonviolent activists, raided organizing centers and suspended basic civil liberties and democratic rights. Dr. Tadzio Mueller of Berlin, an accredited NGO observer at the COP 15 and the spokesperson for Climate Justice Action, was arrested without provocation by plain clothed police shortly after a press conference announcing nonviolent demonstrations plans. He remains in jail awaiting trial.
SING A PETITION TO THE DANISH GOVERNMENT HERE:
http://www.petitiononline.com/Tadzio/petition.html
WHO: Mobilization for Climate Justice West: A coalition of thirty climate justice, environmental justice, community, peace and human rights organizations.
http://west.actforclimatejustice.org/