When the Climate Change Center Cannot Hold | MR Zine

"Kyoto's promised 5% emissions cuts (by 2012, from 1990 levels) are impossible now. Obama's people hope the world will accept 2005 as a new starting date; a 20% reduction by 2020 then only brings the target back to around 5% below 1990 levels. Such pathetically low ambitions, surely Obama knows, guarantee a runaway climate catastrophe -- he should shoot for 45%, say the small island nations.

Regardless, core principles of the progressive movement are non-negotiable. In advance of Copenhagen Bella Center protests, here are demands articulated by Climate Justice Action:

* leaving fossil fuels in the ground;
* reasserting peoples' and community control over production;
* relocalizing food production;
* massively reducing overconsumption, particularly in the North;
* respecting indigenous and forest peoples' rights; and
* recognizing the ecological and climate debt owed to the peoples of the South and making reparations.

If the center is not holding, that's fine: the wave of courageous direct-action protests against climate criminals in recent weeks -- and the prospect of seattling Copenhagen at the big protest on December 16 -- offer an inspiring reflection of left pressure that will soon counteract that from the right. It's our only hope, isn't it?"