Report from Copenhagen

Haringey residents Adrian and Robyn Thomas have just returned from Copenhagen:

Copenhagen, 10th – 15th December 2009

One or two friends asked us to report on our experiences in Copenhagen during the climate change talks. We came back to London before the final negotiations but were able to take part in the main public demonstration on Saturday 12th December. The temperature that day was barely above zero so it was a test of commitment, but some 60,000 people turned out. They were a mixture of Danes and others, mostly West or North Europeans. It was inspiring to march with such a variety of nationalities, all with a common concern. Contrary to some press reports the part of the demonstration we were in was good humoured and orderly.

The march went from the city centre to the Bella Conference Centre, a new development some 5 kilometres away, where the climate negotiations are taking place. There was of course no access without passes but a sports centre next to the main railway station had been turned into an alternative venue, the Klimaforum.

This attracted a great variety of people, from serious activists to the merely curious. Between us we attended a number of meetings and seminars. The quality of the speakers varied quite a bit, as did their standpoints, but overall they reinforced our concerns. Robyn went to an interesting session on consumers, ethics and food. She found the Danish speakers a little complacent so put them on the spot by asking what they personally had done to reduce their carbon footprint. She was then interviewed by Swedish TV!

Meanwhile Adrian listened to Prof Schellnhuber from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research talking with other specialists on how to agree and allocate national emissions targets. He gave a particularly powerful presentation, stressing that during the coming century we must restrict all our future emissions to 700 billion tons if we are to keep warming down to 2°C - and most climate scientists found that level of warming disturbing enough. It may seem a lot, but it is the same as we emitted between 1989 and 2009! See http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2009/dec/14/climate-simulator if you want to learn more.

It was a good place for quotes and sound-bites. Some interesting ones we picked up on were:
· Politicians talk; leaders act
· The political reality is nowhere near the scientific reality; for scientists carbon-based growth is no longer an option for anyone
· There is a narrow window between (climate change) denial and despair (at ever getting agreement to limit emissions)

In many ways Copenhagen seemed a good venue. It is a very pleasant seaside city, with lots of history in its pedestrianised streets. There are excellent facilities for the many cyclists, and public transport is very good (all our travelling was by train and ferry, which worked well). Denmark is well known for the high proportion of its electricity which is wind-generated, but its overall record is not as good as it might seem: emissions per head are still high and the smoke from several coal-burning power stations ringing the city hopefully reminded the negotiators what they are up against.

All in all it was a most interesting few days and we are very grateful to Robyn’s brother and sister-in-law for enabling us to experience the meeting at first hand.


Adrian and Robyn Thomas

George Monbiot at Copenhagen

www.monbiot.com

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 15th December 2009

This is about much more than climate change. This is about us.
...

Humanity is no longer split between conservatives and liberals, reactionaries and progressives, though both sides are informed by the older politics. Today the battlelines are drawn between expanders and restrainers; those who believe that there should be no impediments, and those who believe that we must live within limits. The vicious battles we have seen so far between greens and climate change deniers, road safety campaigners and speed freaks, real grassroots groups and corporate-sponsored astroturfers are just the beginning. This war will become much uglier as people kick against the limits that decency demands.
...

Although the delegates are waking up to the scale of their responsibility, I still believe that they will sell us out. Everyone wants his last adventure. Hardly anyone among the official parties can accept the implications of living within our means, of living with tomorrow in mind. There will, they tell themselves, always be another frontier, another means to escape our constraints, to dump our dissatisfactions on other places and other people. Hanging over everything discussed here is the theme that dare not speak its name, always present but never mentioned. Economic growth is the magic formula which allows our conflicts to remain unresolved.

While economies grow, social justice is unnecessary, as lives can be improved without redistribution. While economies grow, people need not confront their elites. While economies grow, we can keep buying our way out of trouble. But, like the bankers, we stave off trouble today only by multiplying it tomorrow. Through economic growth we are borrowing time at punitive rates of interest. It ensures that any cuts agreed at Copenhagen will eventually be outstripped. Even if we manage to prevent climate breakdown, growth means that it’s only a matter of time before we hit a new constraint, which demands a new global response: oil, water, phosphate, soil. We will lurch from crisis to existential crisis unless we address the underlying cause: perpetual growth cannot be accomodated on a finite planet.
...

But somehow this first great global battle between expanders and restrainers must be won and then the battles that lie beyond it – rising consumption, corporate power, economic growth - must begin. If governments don’t show some resolve on climate change, the expanders will seize on the restrainers’ weakness. They will attack - using the same tactics of denial, obfuscation and appeals to self-interest - the other measures that protect people from each other, or which prevent the world’s ecosystems from being destroyed. There is no end to this fight, no line these people will not cross. They too are aware that this a battle to redefine humanity, and they wish to redefine it as a species even more rapacious than it is today.
...

Hornsey Library Display for Global Carbon Reduction Fortnight

Urban Harvesters admiring the 'Low Carbon' display put on by CHATI (the Crouch End & Hornsey Transistion Initiative) http://chati2009.ning.com/

Haringey's Copenhagen Climate Conference 2009

This year representatives from 170 nations will meet to decide the future of our planet. On 6-18 December the Copenhagen Climate Conference will produce decisions on how we are going to tackle climate change and manage our emissions once the Kyoto protocol runs out in 2012.

With a financial crisis and parliamentary scandal catching the headlines climate change seems to have been pushed aside in the media. Here in Haringey we have not forgotten about it!

We are planning two weeks of action in the Borough to coincide with the Conference. We want to raise awareness of climate change and make sure this important event is not forgotten, and we need to make sure as many people in Haringey know about this as possible.

The conference is the culmination of a year of negotiations where leaders try and reach a global strategy in meetings of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The London Olympics. A significant birthday. A turning point for the future of our planet.

Whatever 2012 means to you and to us in Haringey, pivotal decisions made now will dictate the future of our planet. Please do contact us if you have any events/ideas/help you want to add... and we will try to keep you informed about our plans for these important dates as we decide on them.

Email info@sustainableharingey.org.uk if you would like to be involved.