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The Day After: $1.1 Trillion Creates an Even Bigger Problem

April 03, 2009 7:42 AM

By Jody Boehnert, Climate Camp in the City

On Wednesday, Climate Camp occupied the street in front of the European Climate Exchange. Today we survey the landscape and wonder what was accomplished. Meanwhile, world leaders close the G20 Summit by announcing an agreement to pump $1.1 trillion in the world economy through the World Band and the IMF. But dedicating more money to propping up this failing system will only bring us closer to climate chaos due to the failure to address the intrinsic problems within the system itself.

Climate Camp has decided to use 2009 to focus on how our economic system itself drives climate change - through its addiction to fossil fuels. We recognized that the G20 meeting could have been a perfect opportunity for governments to start transforming our economies to tackle climate change. The shift away from fossil fuels needs to happen now before we hit a tipping point and damage the climate system beyond its ability to recover.

There are credible alternatives to the current economic system that would allow us to live sustainable and happy lives. But these all involve more systemic changes than a few greener products and lots of recycling.

In the UK, the 30-year-old Center for Alternative Technology published the ‘Zero Carbon Britain’ report in 2007 detailing how we could completely de-carbonize our economy within twenty years. The permaculture movement has design methods for creating sustainable human settlements that could enable the kinds of dramatic shifts necessary. The Transition Towns movement designs energy descent in a local space though collaborative planning, re-localization and building resilience into communities to deal with impending energy shocks. There are alternatives and most have many things in common. The most common ground between sustainable alternatives is the awareness that the only way to combat climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground. 

Changing the system that created the financial crisis would create jobs and also work to prevent catastrophic climate change. 2009 is the year to make this happen. It’s up to us – to everyone who is reading this – to stand up, maybe take some risks, and stop this madness, and start turning things around.

Climate Camp succeeded Wednesday at camping for 12 hours in the middle of London’s financial district. We planted a seed in people’s minds about the links between the financial crisis and the climate crisis, and the links between financial trading and carbon trading. The climate is too important to be left to the people who have destroyed the economy (by running a casino of speculative hedge funds, derivatives, sub-prime mortgages, and so on).

Now is the time for people to create real and fair solutions to climate change - and reject all the pseudo solutions.  Carbon trading is not a solution to climate change - it's another disaster waiting to happen. Equally, biofuel (or agrofuel) is not a solution to climate change – it is another disaster already happening as rainforests are destroyed to make way for plantations to grow fuel for cars. We need those rainforests to stabilize our climate! It’s another example of how reductionist thinking creates more problems than it answers.

Until we change the system to accept integrated, holistic solutions to environmental and social problems, we will not even begin to deal with climate change. One trillion dollars spent in the wrong way is not a solution, but only creates a bigger problem.

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April 3, 2009 in Guest | Permalink | User Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

'This Economic Model is Unsustainable & Will Collapse'

April 02, 2009 5:51 AM

By Jody Boehnert, Climate Camp in the City

Yesterday Climate Camp did exactly we said we would do – we arrived at the European Climate Exchange at 12:30 sharp. 

This busy street in the middle of the financial district was buzzing with its normal activity when over 1,000 of us swooped, sat down on the road, and then quickly popped up our tents simultaneously. Shortly there after came out bunting, kitchens, compost toilets, instruments, and little sound systems – all delivered by bicycles.  We did what we said we would do (again) although people had told us it was impossible. The sun was shining and we started a busy day of activity at Climate Camp in the City.

The camp was a means to demonstrate our extreme frustration with failure of our government, and the rest of the G20 governments to address the real cause of climate change – our economic system. This system is dependent on infinite growth, on the production and consumption of more and more stuff, forever and ever.

As seductive as this economic system might be for those in a position of privilege, this system is unsustainable in the long term. We cannot have infinite growth while reliant on a planet with finite resources. This economic model is unsustainable and will collapse; and while financial collapse is painful, ecological collapse is terminal.

And so the stakes could not be higher for activists setting up camp today at the European Climate Exchange, one of the global epicenters for ‘emissions trading’. Climate change is just one indicator of the multiple geo-physical limits that we are now hitting. These limits are now creating multiple ecological crises.

And so while there was poetry and music at the camp, there was also a full days worth of workshops on everything from ‘Trading our way into Trouble’ on carbon trading, to ‘Techno fixes’ on the problems associated with some new ‘green’ technologies, and the history of direct action and social change in the UK and beyond.

Around late afternoon word got around that the Royal Bank of Scotland’s windows had been smashed and there was trouble on nearby streets. Climate camp had our own way of expressing our disgust with the inexcusable actions perpetrated by the Royal Bank of Scotland, with a credit card flier showing the name of Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of RBS.

When some of the so called ‘black block’ spilled over to our camp, the police used a tactic of ‘kettling’ the camp to keep us all from leaving the block we occupied. No one could leave the camp at all for several hours until just after eleven pm. Many people were devoted to spending the night, but I left at midnight to come home to write this blog.

Shortly after I left, at about 1am police moved in on the camp and removed the 400 or so campers who had been determined to spend the night. We may not have been able to stay the full 24 hours, and but we are pleased to say that we made space for debate on the most important threat to life on this planet - climate change and the fact that carbon trading is not an effective solution.

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G20 Protestors Optimistic About the Future

April 01, 2009 11:23 AM

From Lindsey German
National Convenor, Stop the War Coalition 

Diary (Day Two)

Several thousand people set off from the U.S. Embassy to march through Central London this afternoon.

On a working day, marchers arrived from London, Birmingham, Manchester and other towns across the country. To shouts of “viva viva Palestina” and “1,2,3,4, we don’t want your bloody war. 5,6,7,8, stop the killing stop the hate”.

The demonstration had many young people who have never marched before. That is an optimistic sign for the future.

We marched past banks, fashion stores, art galleries – the most expensive shops in London (to those of you who have been in London this is the Bond Street area of the West End). Yet the police were hardly visible, and of course there was no violence. The police were too busy in the city of London, where demonstrations were being held outside the banks.

It sort of begs the question:
Heavy policing = trouble. No policing = peaceful marching and assemblies. We are receiving good media coverage. This column is one of them. I was on BBC radio last night on a programme normally more interested in sport stories, but they paid attention to my message. In London today people are speaking out and we have put protest against war at the centre of politics.

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‘No Carbon Markets: Nature does not do Bailouts’

April 01, 2009 5:36 AM

By Jody Boehnert, Climate Camp in the City

The G20 is coming to London and Climate Camp is busy getting ready for a 24-hour ‘Flashcamp’ in front of the European Climate Exchange, in the heart of the financial district. This is about to happen starting at noon today. Climate Camp activists will swoop into location and set up camp to expose carbon trading as the next sub-prime disaster waiting to happen.

Carbon trading is the main mechanism that governments and industry have devised to meet emission targets. Unfortunately, not only has carbon trading not worked to reduce overall emissions, but it has created a system wherein polluters are profiteering from selling the ‘right’ to pollute our atmosphere. Meanwhile, the very existence of this mechanism has prevented us from getting on with the real solution to climate change (which involves leaving fossil fuels in the ground).

Yesterday was a hectic day. I had a meeting in Brighton at 9am, and then a busy ‘Meet the Campers’ press event at noon back in London. I finished off a research proposal in the afternoon for my day job, and then attended a Climate Camp media meeting in the evening. Meanwhile activists are arriving from all over the country to attend the event tomorrow. Climate Camp is part of a growing movement forging a new wave of protest and direct action, one that is inclusive and highly participatory. We make decisions by consensus in big meetings and then we all work together at taking action.

Climate change threats to destroy life as we know it. By camping outside the European Climate Exchange during the G20, we’re highlighting the fact that carbon trading presents a false solution to climate change.  We are also making the point that the G20 must not resurrect the same old economic system but start to create a system that will seriously tackle climate change.

The press has been interested. The economic crisis has revealed fundamental flaws within the system and people are questioning the values embedded in the economic system. We had dozens of journalists and television crews at our event yesterday. We have had more requests for interviews than we can handle. It is hard work for a group of people with day jobs and other commitments. Nevertheless, this is an issue that demands immediate action and we are using every opportunity to push the agenda forward.

We are going to set up the Climate Camp tomorrow in front of one of the world’s biggest carbon trading exchanges.  Our message to the G20 is that they have left the climate in the same hands as those that gave us the financial crisis. They have allowed emission rights to our atmosphere to be traded by financial speculators in a similar way as derivatives or bad loans. They have trusted that the market would protect our atmosphere by putting a value on the ‘right’ to permit. Climate Camp considers these practices deeply immoral. Furthermore, this system just plainly does not work. We are taking direct action tomorrow to get across our message: ‘No Carbon Markets: Nature does not do Bailouts’.

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April 1, 2009 in Guest | Permalink | User Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Why the G20 Is Hard Work for Protestors

March 31, 2009 10:28 AM

From Lindsey German
National Convenor, Stop the War Coalition

Diary (Day One)

The G20 is  hard work, if not for the world leaders, then for those of us protesting against it. It started on Saturday with the big Put People First march through central London, where the anti-war movement had a large and lively contingent. Then it rolled on into Monday with a big meeting called 'Meet the Resistance' with speakers from Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine.

Tonight there's a gig with the rapper Lowkey launching his song on Palestine. Then tomorrow's demo which is looking good. Then Thursday at the Excel Centre, then Strasbourg for demos and conferences all weekend in opposition to NATO, which is celebrating its 60th birthday there.

Unfortunately I woke up with a raging toothache this morning so off to the dentist. Need to get all my interviews in before then. Been on BBC news channel and talked to numerous journalists. Our (very compact) office is crammed and the phones ring all the time. It seems to be the law of demos that everyone turns up in the office to do all sorts of things that could be done some other time just when you need some thinking space.

I'm speaking on the demo and have to organise the other speakers and entertainers. Always a headache, especially when people find out how little time there is for them to speak! Anyway the weather forecast looks good, the usual obsession even for demonstrators.

March 31, 2009 in Guest | Permalink | User Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Unpaid Since 2007: Chinese Migrant Workers Protest

January 13, 2009 10:53 AM

By SHANNON VAN SANT

Ms Van Sant is a Beijing-based freelance journalist, not affiliated with ABC News.

This morning about 40 migrant workers filled my apartment lobby. I could tell from the way they were dressed that they were from the countryside. They seemed unhappy -- I assumed it was because of the weather. It's brutally cold. I also assumed they were here to do renovations or construction work. However I found their presence puzzling, because I had never seen any migrant workers in my building, and today there were dozens, and they remained all day. 

It turned out they were demonstrating for past due wages and asking to see building management. The
real estate company that owns my apartment building owns several other properties in Beijing. 

This evening five police vans surrounded my building. Only 10 or so migrant workers remained inside. My doormen told me that the rest of the workers had left and that the police had shown up to monitor the situation. The workers said  they were from Gansu province and had worked for one year on a construction project in another part of Beijing. They said the managers of my building also manage this other property. They said they had not been paid since 2007 and are owed half their promised wages for the construction work. The workers wanted their money before they traveled home for the Chinese new year. 

Though I'm familiar with increasing protests because of factory closures in southern China, could it be that the slumping real estate market is spurring discontent too, in cities like Beijing? Or is it that, with with more coverage of protests in the state-run media, and greater reluctance by officials to crack down, workers feel they have more of a voice?

After talking with them, I did what any host would do. I ordered them a pizza. As of 10:30 p.m. today, the workers are still in my lobby, and the police vans remain outside. 

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A Foreign Correspondent's View of U.S. Elections

October 31, 2008 7:11 AM

By EVA SOHLMAN, journalist and writer for the Swedish magazine Fokus, covering the U.S. elections

As the clock ticks down to Election Day, I wonder whether Americans realize just how eagerly – almost fervently – the rest of the world awaits the outcome of their vote.

My editor in Sweden summed it up when she urged me in my curtain raiser for the election not just to tell her who might win but what was America thinking and what were the various moods I'd found in my travels around the country.

As I see it, there is a dark cloud of uncertainty and worry hanging over this historic vote.

Americans know they will bring forth either their first black president or their first female vice president. They are also battling a financial crisis that threatens not only to wreak havoc on their livelihoods and the country’s standing in the world, but also to kill the American Dream.

Little wonder then that the entire world is watching this election far more closely than many of the past.

The writer Joan Didion depicts a country struck with a kind of blindness, or coma. “…We approach this election with no clear idea where bottom is: what damage has been done, what alliances have been formed and broken, what concealed reefs lie ahead,” she wrote in The New York Review of Books. “Whoever we elect president is about to find some of that out.”

My friend Joanne, a 62-year-old editor temporarily out of work, is one of thousands of middle-class Americans who are going through housing foreclosure. She observed that the country has woken up to a new reality and has moved from feeling rich to feeling poor. This identity crisis is a brutal and paralyzing experience. “It is like standing on a beach with a tsunami coming at you,” she said.

Joanne worries that many Americans do not yet appreciate how much they will have to change in order to get it back on track, especially when it comes to their culture of consumption and credit. “At this moment in time I see us as a bunch of astronauts floating idly in a little tin can lost in space, hoping for a miraculous happy ending.”

Grim words, I know, but it is a mood I have constantly run into as Americans seem to be seeking in this election not just to choose a new president but a happier, calmer and more optimistic future.

They want the American Dream back. And they want it back in this election.

“Growing up, you knew you could fulfill your dreams. Today, you don’t even know if you’ll be able to pay the utility bill,“ said Jim Edmunds, owner of the Stonewall bar in the small town of Winchester, Va.

So how do you avoid the feared scenario of the so-called American Century crumbling like the Roman Empire? And what will a future America look like if, and when, it weathers this financial and identity crisis?

Internationally, pundits agree the era of dominant superpowers is nearing its end as people and markets – nations – become increasingly interconnected in the "global village."

For a weakened America, whose political and economic credibility and clout have dwindled, this means an increased need to seek alliances and strategic partnerships. As China, India and Russia continue to grow and the issues become more complex, “there is a great opportunity for the U.S. to swallow a dose of humility and learn to listen,” Anne Marie Slaughter, the principal of Woodrow Wilson School, explained to me.

At home, the United States will have to sort out its markets and get better regulation, not necessarily more, financier George Soros concluded at a seminar on the financial crisis at Columbia University in New York last week.

One of the main problems, he agreed with economists Nouriel Roubini of New York University and Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia, was that the markets focused on surface appearances and did not recognize underlying reality. This superficiality appears to have become perhaps a common attitude in the wider American society.

While Americans are voting on their future, they are also voting on their past. A dark history of slavery and discrimination is being brought into clearer daylight. To move forward and into the 21st century, some intellectuals say, the country will now have to address the fact that even if a black American is elected president, equal opportunity still will not be a reality for all – especially for people with dark skin – and that America is in fact a class-based society.

Caryl Phillips, a Yale literature professor and writer, who writes about race, identity and belonging, concludes the "trickle-down" economy clearly hasn’t worked when 1 percent of the population sits on about a third of the country’s wealth. He says the country is still run by a white gentleman’s club that doesn’t represent what America looks like today.

“America is at a historical crossroads. But if she chooses the wrong way she could lose her soul,” he said.

Back to Joanne.

She sees an America where her 30-year-old daughter Kelly won’t have the same opportunities as she did in her youth. Although she has a law degree from an Ivy League university, Kelly can’t afford to buy a home. She is lucky to have a job. “I can see how I myself might end up like one of those old ladies on a park bench eating cat food,” Joanne said.

But, even in her grimmer moments, Joanne can still show a glimmer of that can-do American attitude that is still so admired and yearned for again around the world.

She believes something positive will come out of the financial crisis. She predicts Americans will become engaged again in their grass-roots community, just like in the '60s and '70s:

”I can see an America, which gets back to some of her core values. I can see people helping each other and sticking together when the going gets tough.”

Maybe she is right because it is one of the great things that have struck me about this country -- how it never stands still. Change and failure might be hard and uncomfortable, but as so often in the past, for Americans, they are often seen as something positive.

America should stick to that belief as it searches again for a new American Dream.

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Could a Politician Like Sarah Palin Exist in Europe?

September 30, 2008 8:22 AM

Opinion by EVA SOHLMAN, journalist and writer for the Swedish magazine Fokus, covering the U.S. elections

This is what a friend asked me on the phone from Athens, Greece, the other day. Enjoying the view from his balcony that overlooks the Acropolis, heart of European culture and history, the retired Reuters correspondent, Brian Williams, a veteran of covering two U.S. presidential elections, admitted that he, along with many colleagues, was fascinated by the self-described “pit bull with lipstick.”

Judging by the reaction of the European press to John McCain’s pick of the moral conservative who claims to understand Russia because she can practically see it from her window, the answer to my friend’s question has to be a resounding, “No!”

So why is that? Well, ironically, what makes Palin strong in America - her religion and celebrity status – is what makes her impossible in Europe.

It’s not that Europe hasn’t had strong women leaders, or is a stranger to women in politics. Look at Britain’s former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Finland’s accomplished President Tarja Halonen and the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, whom Forbes magazine rates “the most powerful woman in the world.”

But these are women who rose to power on the opposite strengths of those of Palin. In order to gain respect and acceptance they had to do more than their fair share of time in the political trenches, to prove their abilities were stronger than male counterparts.

Batting of eyelashes, color of lipstick, as well as highlighting private and personal issues like being a moose-shooting hockey mom, were not part of their campaign weapons.

It is not by coincidence Thatcher earned the nickname “The Iron Lady” or Merkel that of “The Iron Frau.” Generally speaking, to succeed as a female politician in Europe you had better suppress the private and personal – yes your femininity in part – and focus on the political. Otherwise you just won't be taken seriously.

Thatcher had her famed handbag but it was perceived to be to hit people with, not a fashion accessory. 

On this note, it is not strange to notice Europe’s unease over Palin’s “habit of investing secular matters with religious meaning,” as the German magazine Der Spiegel puts it, in reference to Palin’s statements that a $30 billion gas pipeline in Alaska was "God’s will," and the war in Iraq a "task that is from God."

The fact that she was a member of the tongue-speaking Pentecostal Church doesn’t exactly reassure, neither does her wish that creationism be taught in schools or her desire for schools to skip sexual education completely. In Europe today it is almost taboo to infuse politics with religion.

Indeed, in the Op-Ed “Sarah and the Extremists” Swedish independent daily Helsingborgs Dagblad says the candidate “leaves a foul taste with her extremely conservative politics that includes anti-abortion among other things.”

And while the celebrity factor is something that has reenergized the Republican Party and has been to Palin’s advantage on this side of the Atlantic, it is something that most likely would have marginalized her in Europe where strong parliaments and parties tend to sift out mavericks and too personality-driven politicians.

Perhaps there is one exception: Italy. Its weak party structure has allowed space for beauty queens, fascists and even porno stars. Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of dictator Benito Mussolini and niece of Sophia Loren, is the party leader for Italy’s National Alliance neo-fascist party, and a member of parliament. She also posed for Playboy. Ciccolina, the porn star, singer and former wife of world-famous American artist Jeff Koons, was elected to parliament in 1987.

So unlike my friend, I have not been particularly fascinated by Palin, although there is no denying her impact on the election has been explosive.

Instead, I find there is something very sad about this Palinomania. It seems she has become the personification of the identity struggle America is fighting while its economy is on the brink of collapse. McCain’s pick of her plays straight into what I see as a desperate nostalgia for the past -- a nostalgia fueled by a fear of a future where the world order is changing and America’s role as the greatest superpower is faltering.

It is nostalgia for the 1950s and the American dream when the ideal church-going American family could survive on one salary and still know that its children would be better off when they grew up. Palin, the mother of five with strong traditional family values, and with her 1950s-inspired outfits and hairdos, is a palpable expression of this longing for a past where your dreams could be fulfilled in your own backyard.

So among my European friends there is almost disbelief -- no it is not snobbery -- that anyone, let alone a woman who could be one heartbeat away from the presidency, could have reached her 40s before getting a passport.

But in an era when the buzzword is "globalization," insularity as a strength, does not fit well.

A short while ago, I met with a major fundraiser for the Republican Party in Washington, D.C. First she admitted she had been appalled by the choice of Palin because,  “there was a strong sense that there were others who were more qualified.”

But then she changed her mind: “Actually, she has been great for the party and we’ve raised so much money because of her. You know she seems like a genuinely nice person plus I do like her neat little outfits and that hairdo is really cool.”

September 30, 2008 in Guest | Permalink | User Comments (75) | TrackBack (0)