Skip to content

Climate Change

Post-Game Thoughts On The Paris Talks

By Ezra Silk and Margaret Klein Salamon for The Climate Mobilization - The Paris climate talks are over, and the postmortems on the final agreement are flooding in. Here’s our take: After 21 years of negotiations, we finally have an agreement that the majority of nations are expected to ratify. This is a critical breakthrough in terms of shared global understanding of the crisis. We are grateful that world leaders have agreed to make an effort to collectively tackle the climate crisis.

Pentagon To Lose Emissions Exemption Under Paris Climate Deal

By Arthur Neslen for The Guardian - The US military and armed forces of countries around the world will no longer be automatically exempted from emissions-cutting obligations under the UN Paris climate deal, the Guardian has learned. Although the US never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, it won an opt-out from having to fully report or act on its armed forces’ greenhouse gas emissions, which was then double-locked by a House national defence authorisation bill in 1999. Under the Paris agreement, countries would not be obliged to cut their military emissions but, equally, there would be no automatic exemption for them either.

Act Out! in Paris [5] – Culture for Climate

By Staff of Occupy - As we mentioned during our coverage of the Art Not Oil protest, culture dictates politics. And if your culture is vapid, your politics will be too - as evidenced by - well, pick anyone. Art in all of its iterations has played a big role in COP21 and La Gaite Lyrique is the "center of culture for climate." Anais, part of the ArtCOP21 team, explains what that means and again, why culture is so important in the fight for climate justice.

US Should Join France & Civil Society To Solve Climate

By Katherine Paul and Ronnie Cummins for Organic Consumers Association - France, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the U.K., Germany and Mexico are among the more than two dozen countries that have so far signed on to what one day will likely be recognized as the most significant climate initiative in history. France’s 4/1000 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate puts regenerative food and farming front and center in the climate solutions conversation. This is why the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), our Mexico affiliate, Via Organica, IFOAM Organics Internationaland more than 50 of our other activist allies across the globe have signed on in support of the Initiative.

1.5° C Is Better For All Of Us, And Here’s One Key Thing It Means

By Staff of 350.org - One target has stormed back into contention at the Paris climate talks: 1.5 degrees Celsius. That number has been around for years, but in the past it was only pushed by a coalition of small island states and most vulnerable countries. Now that coalition has fresh backing from the likes of Canada, Australia, France, the USA and China. It has a good chance of being contained in the final text that emerges from the talks. Here’s three important things you should know about the number: The best thing about 1.5° C: It is better for all of us – not just small island states...

How Backward US Climate Politics Shaped Weak COP21 Deal

By Suzanne Goldenberg for The Guardian - At 11.30pm Paris time, a small group of White House officials dashed into a temporary plywood hut in the exhibition hall where, a few hours earlier, a historic legal agreement to cut emissions causing climate change was secured. They were just in time to catch a live feed of Barack Obama declaring “a turning point for the world”. These were the officials who helped set the US negotiating position for the talks – or, perhaps more accurately, helped craft the deal according to US specifications in order to insulate Obama and the agreement from attacks.

Newsletter: Opportunity For Climate Justice, If We Mobilize

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. The COP21 resulted in an agreement that was 25 years in the making, beginning with the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. Until now the world had been unable to reach an agreement on combating climate change. Because the document required unanimous consensus it is the lowest common denominator. Countries that depend on oil as the basis of their economy, like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, as well as those with strong climate denialism, like Australia and the United States, which combines denialism with corporate domination of government, all had to agree. The lowest common denominator is not good enough.

Jump Into Dump Dominion Day Of Action!

By We Are Cove Point for Popular Resistance. On December 16, we are telling Bank of America to stop financing Dominion’s dangerous gas refinery and export terminal in Cove Point with actions throughout the area. On December 16, we are telling Bank of America to stop financing Dominion’s dangerous gas refinery and export terminal in Cove Point with actions throughout the area. Join an action or organize your own. We’ll help you. Lusby, Maryland - We Are Cove Point is a coalition of people and organizations that is working together to stop a new liquefied fracked gas export terminal that Dominion Resources is trying to build in the residential community of Cove Point in Lusby, Maryland. This is the first liquefied fracked gas export terminal to be built on the East Coast and the first one to be built adjacent to a densely-populated residential neighborhood. Bank of America is a major financier of Dominion.

The People’s Demands To Achieve Climate Justice

By Staff of Peoples Climate Demands. Nothing less than a systemic transformation of our societies, our economies, and our world will suffice to solve the climate crisis and close the ever-increasing inequality gap. After over 20 years of stunted and ineffective action to reduce climate pollution by governments – particularly in wealthy countries that have failed to meet their legal and moral responsibilities – only urgent and transformative and systemic change that can address the root causes of the crisis and deliver what is needed to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the limit beyond which climate impacts will become potentially catastrophic. The urgency to keep temperatures down is not just about the planet and the environment. It is about people, and our capacity as humanity to secure safe and dignified lives for all. As social movements, environmental non-governmental organizations, trade unions and other civil society organizations with deep roots in communities around the world struggling to cope with the climate crisis, we take hope from the fact that while the scale of the challenge is enormous, people already have solutions and alternatives that work at the scale we need.

Paris Deal: Epic Fail On A Planetary Scale

BY Danny Chivers and Jess Worth for the New Internationalist. After two weeks of tortuous negotiations – well, 21 years, really – governments announced the Paris Agreement. This brand new climate deal will kick in in 2020. But is it really as ‘ambitious’ as the French government is claiming? Before the talks began, social movements, environmental groups, and trade unions around the world came together and agreed on a set of criteria that the Paris deal would need to meet in order to be effective and fair. This ‘People’s Test’ is based on climate science and the needs of communities affected by climate change and other injustices across the globe. Does the deal pass the test? The 15,000 people who took to the Paris streets today to condemn the agreement clearly didn’t think so.

Friends Of The Earth: Paris Climate Deal Is A Sham

By Staff of Friends of the Earth International. “Despite the hype, the Paris agreement will fail to deliver. Politicians say it is a fair and ambitious deal – yet it is the complete opposite. People are being deceived,” said Dipti Bhatnagar, Friends of the Earth International climate justice and energy coordinator. Jagoda Munic, chairperson of Friends of the Earth International said: “Instead of acting with ambition and urgency, our governments are acting in the interests of powerful lobbies and corporations, but people are taking back the power. History will not be made in the convention centre, but on the streets of Paris and round the globe. The climate justice movement is unstoppable and will continue to expand in 2016 and beyond. A handful of politicians will not stop the energy revolution.”

COP21 Concludes: Thousands Draw Red Lines Throughout Paris

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. On the final day of the COP21 meetings in Paris, thousands of people took to the streets to display the urgent need for climate justice. Red lines made with umbrellas, cloth, banners and roses emphasized the point that action is needed now to confront the climate crisis. The climate agreement was announced and while there was a lot of self congratulations at reaching an agreement and many big greens applauded the result, climate scientist James Hansen gave the bottom line. The Guardian reports: “It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2º C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.” Hansen describes a crisis-level urgency saying that “More than half of the cities of the world are at risk.” He describes the economic costs of the climate crisis as incalculable.There will be hundreds of millions of climate refugees, and he predicts global governance breaking down.

Red Lines, Condoms And Arc De Triomphe: Climate Activists Step Up Protests

By Valerie Volcovici, Bate Felix, Jonathan Leff and Janet Lawrence for Reuters - From storming the Arc de Triomphe in central Paris to handing out condoms to bureaucrats in the suburbs, climate change activists stepped up public stunts on Friday in a last-ditch bid to get negotiators to agree a powerful accord. Two weeks of U.N. talks to forge a global agreement to temper global warming are set to continue into Saturday, a day later than scheduled, as officials from 195 nations seek to resolve stubborn differences over how to cut back fossil fuel use and shift the planet toward greener growth.

Decrying Draft Deal ‘Fails Humanity,’ COP21 Protesters Draw Red Line

By Sarah Lazare for Common Dreams - People from around the world on Friday stretched a large "red line" through the COP21 summit to register their outrage at politicians' failure to strike an ambitious draft climate deal—and to call for social movements in Paris and internationally to continue to take to the streets. "Once again, world leaders have shown they lack the political courage, decency, and integrity to stand up for the needs of the most impacted communities around the world in the biggest ecological crisis of our time," Ananda Lee Tan, a Vancouver-based organizer with Climate Justice Alliance, told Common Dreams over the phone from Paris.

Climate Games Challenge Paris Protest Ban

By Kate Aronoff for Waging Nonviolence - The 21st Conference of Parties, or COP21, has taken place under unusual circumstances, which is saying a lot given the history of international climate negotiations. Following the attacks on Paris on November 13, French President Francois Hollande declared a nationwide state of emergency that the French legislature then extended to three months. Relevant to COP21, that includes a wholesale ban on protests and “outside events.” Tomorrow, thousands in Paris are planning to defy it. At D12 — “D” standing for both December and disobedience — activists plan to form a massive “red line” with their bodies, symbolizing how they and others around the world will hold governments accountable to the climate commitments...
assetto corsa mods

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.