Cancun Update: Dec 7, 2010

ggj-marchupdate by Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan, Movement Generation
photos by Allan Lisner and Orin Langelle

As we prepare for a powerful day of action, MG joins with more than 100 groups in Grassroots Solutions for Climate Justice North America to say:

Our communities are our homes!  Our local organizing campaigns offer real solutions: local agriculture for food sovereignty that will slash greenhouse gas emissions, affordable mass transit instead of expanding highway systems and automobile culture, local clean energy policies to create a just transition off fossil fuels, all grounded in values of sustainability and health for ourselves, our communities, and the planet.

On this Road from Detroit to Cancun and beyond, we are building a powerful movement for climate justice that will liberate the rivers, honor the earth, free the people, and unplug the empire!

Read more for a look at some of what is happening inside & outside!

Outside:

  • Buses have brought folks in full force from across Mexico as part of the Caravans for Life, Environmental, and Social Justice organized by La Via Campesina International. The Caravans have connected community members from across North & South America and  the world to share struggles and build a peoples movement that will win the rights of Mother Earth and her peoples.
  • As Grassroots Solutions for Climate Justice, groups from the South in the North have gathered in Cancun to build a strong climate justice movement with people’s movements from around the world.
  • While social movements will march to Moon Palace where the talks are taking place in Cancun, actions will take place in 30 locations in the U.S. and Canada on December 7, 2010 as part of La Via Campesina’s call to action for local actions everywhere.

1_tarsands_langelle-copyInside:

  • Industrialized nations entered with lowered expectations and then promptly weakened the language in theofficial drafts.
  • This despite outcry from governments in the global south whose peoples will be most impacted by melting glaciers, rising sea levels, drought, famine, disease, forced migration, and more.  Social movements are calling for the inclusion of key points from the Cochabamba People’s Agreement which would head off catastrophic climate disruption.
  • And as WikiLeaks documents have shown, the U.S. has resorted to underhanded bullying tactics to ram through a version of the undemocratic and ineffective Copenhagen Accord while completely ignoring essential provisions of the Kyoto Protocol that must be renewed before 2012.
  • The President of the country most responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions currently in the atmosphere – U.S. President Obama — fails to show up at the UN climate negotiations in Cancun.  In fact, no head of an industrialized state will be present.
  • Indigenous communities along the destructive XL Pipeline staged a powerful action inside the UN Climate Negotiations calling for an end to Tar Sands extraction and pipeline construction. Other strong actions including Wastepickers for zero wastehave also been held inside and outside to bring attention to the root causes of the crisis. (photos by Orin Langelle/GJEP)
  • The fight to stop REDD continues.
  • Media keeps the public in the dark by failing to cover the story.

Stay abreast of new developments through these websites:

Grassroots Solutions for Climate Justice North America

RedRoad Cancun

Climate Voice