It took a whole two hours of crawling on an expressway jammed by cars, buses and trucks heading to the Cancunmesse, a centre where delegates are screened before being ferried another 20-30 minutes to the Moon Palace venue of the COP. For those who have visited this city, the location of the venue is rather isolated from the main city and may well have been selected for this reason. The routes are lined with armed police including some on vehicles mounted with machine guns. The picture one comes off with is that of security overkill.

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I will not dance to your beat
If you call plantations forests
I will not sing with you
If you privatise my water
I will confront you with my fists
If climate change means death to me but business to you
I will expose your evil greed
If you don’t leave crude oil in the soil
Coal in the hole and tar sands in the land
I will confront and denounce you
If you insist on carbon offsetting and other do-nothing false solutions
I will make you see red
If you keep talking of REDD and push forest communities away from their land
I will drag you to the Climate Tribunal
If you pile up ecological debt
& refuse to pay your climate debt
I will make you drink your own medicine
If you endorse genetically modified crops
And throw dust into the skies to mask the sun
I will not dance to your beat
Unless we walk the sustainable path
And accept real solutions & respect Mother Earth
Unless you do
I will not &
We will not dance to your beat

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President Evo Morales of Bolivia did not mince words yesterday diagnosed the root cause of climate change as being capitalism and all that it entails. The president was speaking at the formal opening of the official opening of the first-ever World Peoples Climate Change Summit (CMPCC).

The Tiquipaya stadium, venue of the event, was filled to capacity with about 10,000 peoples from the nations and continents of the world. Many more milled the streets outside the stadium while thousands more kept to the queue at the town square waiting for accreditation to participate in the conference. Present on the platform with the president were the Vice President of Burundi, Ambassadors from various countries, representative of the UNFCCC secretariat and representatives of the peoples of the continents. 17 participants were expected at this conference but by the end of the second day up to 30,000 had registered.

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19 April 2010

Cochabamba, Bolivia: Following the catastrophic outcome of the United Nations’ climate negotiations held in Copenhagen in December 2009, a breath of fresh air wafts in as peoples from around the world gather in the first ever global summit on climate change initiated by a government in league with social movements, indigenous peoples and other civil society actors. When the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, announced that the world would meet in Bolivia for a thorough and inclusive discussion on this vital issue of our day many may have thought that the announcement was nothing but a pipedream. To the joy of many and the consternation of some the summit is holding as planned.

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