Cancun climate talks
El capitalismo climático gana en Cancún -- todos los demás pierden
Por Patrick Bond, Cancún
12 de diciembre -- Bolpress/Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- La clausura el 11 de diciembre de la 16 Conferencia de las Partes –la cumbre global del clima– en Cancún fue mostrada por la mayoría de los participantes y periodistas de los medios dominantes como una victoria, un ‘paso adelante’. El jefe negociador del Departamento de Estado de EE.UU., Todd Stern, alardeó: “El año pasado las ideas fueron esquemáticas y no se aprobaron, ahora se han elaborado y se han aprobado”.
‘Climate capitalism’ won at Cancun – everyone else loses
Protest in Cancun.
[For more analysis of the Cancun climate talks, click HERE.]
By Patrick Bond, Cancun, Mexico
December 12, 2010 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal – The December 11 closure of the 16th Conference of the Parties – COP16 global climate summit – in balmy Cancun was portrayed by most participants and mainstream journalists as a victory, a “step forward”. Bragged US State Department lead negotiator Todd Stern, “Ideas that were first of all, skeletal last year, and not approved, are now approved and elaborated.”
Cancun climate talks: `Hollow and false' -- Bolivia, activists condemn deadly `betrayal'
Red Road Cancun, by Allan Lissner. Highlighting Indigenous voices excluded from the COP16 UN Climate Conference in Cancun, Mexico.
Statement by the Plurinational State of Bolivia
December 11, 2010 -- Cancun, Mexico -- The Plurinational State of Bolivia believes that the Cancun text is a hollow and false victory that was imposed without consensus, and its cost will be measured in human lives. History will judge harshly.
[For more analysis of the Cancun climate talks, click HERE.]
December 6, 2010 -- Democracy Now! -- Secret diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks have revealed new details about how the United States manipulated last year’s climate talks in Copenhagen. The cables show how the United States sought dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming, how financial and other aid was used to gain political backing, and how the United States mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the [US-sponsored and -imposed] "Copenhagen Accord". We speak to Bolivia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Pablo Solón. Several of the cables addressed Bolivia’s opposition to the US-backed accord.
* * *
(Updated Nov. 29) Cancun climate summit should not be `Copenhagen Accord Part II', says Bolivia
Statement by the Plurinational State of Bolivia
Battlelines drawn for Cancun climate summit: `Nature has no price!'
Protesters in Newcastle,Australia, December 20, 2009. Photo by Rising Tide.
By Simon Butler
November 22, 2010 -- Green Left Weekly -- If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success. This phrase has become the unofficial motto of this year’s United Nations climate conference in Cancun, Mexico. Just out from Cancun, which runs over November 29 to December 10, there is little hope of meaningful progress. Yet key players have sought to throw a shroud of official optimism over the looming failure.
Few Western politicians want a repeat of last year’s Copenhagen climate conference. They consider it a public relations disaster.
In the lead-up to Copenhagen, public expectations were high. There was a widespread feeling that politicians could no longer ignore the warnings from climate scientists. Many politicians said they agreed strong, decisive action to curb emissions was needed.
But when the big polluting countries blocked a new legally binding treaty at Copenhagen, they were badly exposed.
`Leave the oil in the soil!' -- Oil curses, climate conferences and fake Norwegian ‘Good Samaritans’
A humpback whale at the Bluff Whaling Station, South Durban, in 1909. From "Facts About Durban".
By Patrick Bond
November 23, 2010 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The stench of rotting blubber would hang for days over The Bluff in South Durban, South Africa, thanks to Norwegian immigrants whose harpooning skills helped stock the town with cooking fat, margarine and soap, starting about a century ago. The fumes became unbearable, and a local uproar soon compelled the Norwegians to move the whale processing factory from within Africa’s largest port to a less-populated site a few kilometres southeast.
There, on The Bluff’s glorious Indian Ocean beachfront, the white working-class residents of Marine Drive (perhaps including those in the apartment where I now live) also complained bitterly about the odour from flensing, whereby blubber, meat and bone were separated at the world’s largest onshore whaling station.