http://socialistaction.org/calif-climate-activists-set-sights-on-cop21/
Calif. climate activists set sights on COP21
Published September 21, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
Sept. 2015 Calif. fracking
By NICHOLAS ISAAC
As governments and some 40,000 corporate negotiators, scientists of
different persuasions, and other mostly corporate-friendly parties
prepare to attend the Nov. 30-Dec. 12 United Nations Conference of
Parties (COP21) in Paris, environmental and climate-crisis organizations
are preparing massive and perhaps unprecedented mobilizations around the
world.
Fear is widespread that this 21st UN-sponsored climate meeting will
propose nothing to stop the earth’s temperature from rising beyond the
point of no return—the point where catastrophic and irreversible changes
threaten all life on earth. Few, if any, environmental and related
movement organizations believe that the world’s greatest polluters have
any intention of subordinating their highly profitable fossil-fuel
extraction to the interests of humanity. Indeed, the greatest of the
polluters, the U.S. and China, have every intention of increasing their
production and use of fossil fuels!
Activists from 350.org and a broad range of other concerned
organizations on the East Coast are making preparations for a massive
mobilization in Boston on Dec. 12, the last day of COP21. They chose the
last day of COP21 to indicate their lack of confidence in any of the
“solutions” proposed to date and to state unequivocally that only a
massive international movement, a “movements of movements,” is capable
of saving the earth and its inhabitants from the destructive forces of
today’s profit-driven polluters.
In Northern California, a broad coalition of environmental groups, labor
unions, social justice, antiwar, and human rights groups, and a number
of socialist parties, has been meeting in Oakland union halls for the
past two months to plan a mass march and rally through downtown Oakland
on Nov. 21. Leading organizations include 350.org chapters in all Bay
Area counties, the Sunflower Alliance—which focuses on defending
frontline communities—System Change Not Climate Change, and a host of
groups aimed at fighting California fracking, coal transport, explosive
bomb trains, and environmental racism. Socialist Action, Solidarity,
DSA, ISO, and CoC have also been actively building this effort.
The Northern California Climate Mobilization (NCCM) traces its origin to
its Sept. 21, 2014, mobilization of 5000 in Oakland in solidarity with
the historic New York City march of 400,000 on the same date.
The coalition’s meetings have democratically discussed, debated, and
hammered out an impressive list of points of unity and demands, perhaps
the most advanced in the U.S. climate-crisis movement to date.
In contrast to the powerful 350.org-sponsored Sept. 21 mass march
through Midtown Manhattan last year, which had no formal demands or
speakers, and was led by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former Vice
President Albert Gore, and an assortment of some 25 elected Democrats,
the Northern California Climate Mobilization demands reflect a growing
awareness that the powers that be have no intention of implementing any
“solutions” other than the ineffective palliatives that meet the
corporate-driven headlong rush for increased fossil fuel extraction, not
to mention endless oil wars for imperial domination.
This year, after another 12 months of capitalism’s pillaging the
environment and an outpouring of scientific confirmation of global
warming rates exceeding initial predictions—not to mention unprecedented
and deadly heat waves everywhere—the movement has taken some important
steps forward.
The NCCM demands include: “A global agreement to implement dramatic and
rapid reduction in global warming pollution—Keep fossil fuels in the
ground!” and “100% clean, safe, renewable energy!”
Central demands also include: “End all fracking, tar sands mining and
pipelines, offshore drilling, arctic drilling! Stop expansion of the
extractive economy! Wind, solar, geothermal power now! No coal exports
or crude-by-rail bomb trains in Northern California!”
The coalition also focuses on a host of inseparable issues aimed at
uniting the broadest sectors of working class America, oppressed people
and the labor movement. These can serve the emerging and critically
necessary U.S. “movement of movements” quite well as an initial
political orientation for effective mass resistance to the doomsday
scenario increasingly pressed forward by corporate America’s “profits
first at any cost,” ruling elite. The NCCM states that all of the above
are “the conditions necessary to create…
“A world united to repair the ravages of climate change:
“Industrial countries and polluting corporations of the global north
need to pay their ecological debt to society and to the global south by
providing funding for developing countries and vulnerable communities
worldwide to adapt to the impacts of climate change and convert to
sustainable economies.
“A world with an economy that works for people and the planet:
“Billions of dollars for energy efficiency and conservation. We need a
just transition to a sustainable, demilitarized economy based on
renewable energy, clean transportation, and jobs for all at union wages.
Convert water-wasting, polluting factory farms to sustainable organic
agriculture. End corporate personhood; end ‘money equals free speech’;
end billionaire purchase of elections.
“A demilitarized world with peace and social justice for everyone; where
Black Lives Matter; where good jobs, clean air and water, and healthy
communities belong to all:
“End all forms of oppression and discrimination. No to environmental
racism and pollution of indigenous, low-income, and frontline nations
and communities. Respect all indigenous lands. No militarized police. No
wars. No nuclear weapons or power. A true ecological approach must
integrate questions of justice to protect biodiversity, honor all life
on earth, and lift all people out of poverty” (See NorCalClimateMob.net).
Climate scientists examining previously submitted COP21 proposals have
concluded that none come close to achieving the UN’s own announced goal
of preventing a 2-degrees Celsius global temperature rise. Indeed, the
new proposals lead toward a mean global warming temperature rise of 3 or
4 degrees Celsius, which would reshape the world.
California, which has experienced 1.3 degrees Celsius of warming in the
last 100 years—and the rate of warming has accelerated in recent
decades—is currently in the midst of a historic drought that has
completely eliminated drinking water in some areas. There is no time to
wait while the capitalists talk it over.
The only way to prevent further devastation is to build a powerful
worldwide mobilization whose focus goes far beyond targeting
climate-change deniers and a few egregious corporations, and leads in
the direction of challenging capitalism itself—the polluting and
pillaging system ruled by the minority corporate elite who are
destroying the planet.
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Posted in Environment, San Francisco Bay Area. | Tagged California,
climate change, global warming, Oakland.
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