Naomi Klein: A New Climate Movement in Bolivia

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Friday, April 23, 2010 by The Nation
A New Climate Movement in Bolivia
by Naomi Klein

Cochabamba, Bolivia

It was 11 am and Evo Morales had turned a football stadium into a giant classroom, marshaling an array of props: paper plates, plastic cups, disposable raincoats, handcrafted gourds, wooden plates and multicolored ponchos. All came into play to make his main point: to fight climate change, "we need to recover the values of the indigenous people."
Yet wealthy countries have little interest in learning these lessons and are instead pushing through a plan that at its best would raise average global temperatures 2 degrees Celsius. "That would mean the melting of the Andean and Himalayan glaciers," Morales told the thousands gathered in the stadium, part of the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. What he didn't have to say is that the Bolivian people, no matter how sustainably they choose to live, have no power to save their glaciers.

Bolivia's climate summit has had moments of joy, levity and absurdity. Yet underneath it all, you can feel the emotion that provoked this gathering: rage against helplessness.

It's little wonder. Bolivia is in the midst of a dramatic political transformation, one that has nationalized key industries and elevated the voices of indigenous peoples as never before. But when it comes to Bolivia's most pressing, existential crisis--the fact that its glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, threatening the water supply in two major cities--Bolivians are powerless to do anything to change their fate on their own.

That's because the actions causing the melting are taking place not in Bolivia but on the highways and in the industrial zones of heavily industrialized countries. In Copenhagen, leaders of endangered nations like Bolivia and Tuvalu argued passionately for the kind of deep emissions cuts that could avert catastrophe. They were politely told that the political will in the North just wasn't there. More than that, the United States made clear that it didn't need small countries like Bolivia to be part of a climate solution. It would negotiate a deal with other heavy emitters behind closed doors, and the rest of the world would be informed of the results and invited to sign on, which is precisely what happened with the Copenhagen Accord. When Bolivia and Ecuador refused to rubber-stamp the accord, the US government cut their climate aid by $3 million and $2.5 million, respectively. "It's not a free-rider process," explained US climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing. (Anyone wondering why activists from the global South reject the idea of "climate aid" and are instead demanding repayment of "climate debts" has their answer here.) Pershing's message was chilling: if you are poor, you don't have the right to prioritize your own survival.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/23

[Bacchus39]

1. fascinating, can't wait to hear the proposals

The next stage was to invite global civil society to hash out the details. Seventeen working groups were struck, and after weeks of online discussion, they met for a week in Cochabamba with the goal of presenting their final recommendations at the summit's end. The process is fascinating but far from perfect (for instance, as Jim Shultz of the Democracy Center pointed out, the working group on the referendum apparently spent more time arguing about adding a question on abolishing capitalism than on discussing how in the world you run a global referendum). Yet Bolivia's enthusiastic commitment to participatory democracy may well prove the summit's most important contribution.

[Peace Patriot]

2. "if you are poor, you don't have the right to prioritize your own survival." -USA to the world

This summation of our corporate rulers' attitude toward all but their boardroom cronies and the super-rich is both accurate and pithy. Bolivia and Ecuador are not alone. And we, the majority of people in the U.S., are equally scorned. Majority views on war, the environment, health care and many other important matters simply don't matter to those who have seized power over us through political corruption so vast that it even includes how our votes are counted (--basically, by one, far rightwing corporation--ES&S, which just bought out Diebold--with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code and virtually no audit/recount controls. Talk about "privatization"!)

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"When Bolivia and Ecuador refused to rubber-stamp the accord, the US government cut their climate aid by $3 million and $2.5 million, respectively. 'It's not a free-rider process,' explained US climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing. (Anyone wondering why activists from the global South reject the idea of 'climate aid' and are instead demanding repayment of 'climate debts' has their answer here.) Pershing's message was chilling: if you are poor, you don't have the right to prioritize your own survival." --from the OP