COP26

COP26 Can Learn From West Papua’s Green Resistance

November 10, 2021 Chris Saltmarsh, Tribune Magazine. Resist! climate crisis, COP26, Environment, West Papua

The Indonesian state has dominated West Papua with military force since 1962. West Papua is the western half of the island of New Guinea, situated immediately north of Australia. The Netherlands colonized the territory during the nineteenth century. As the Dutch began to decolonize during the 1950s, they prepared West Papua for independence. This came, briefly, at the end of 1961. Shortly after, Indonesia invaded in 1962. This began an enduring occupation predicated on political repression, cultural destruction, and colonial genocide. It has also resulted in environmental devastation locally and globally, but West Papuans are fighting back with a new vision for a free Green State launched during COP26.

Cop26: Surging Wood Pellet Industry Threatens Climate

November 10, 2021 Sharon Guynup, Mongabay. Educate! Biomass, climate crisis, COP26, Energy

Representatives From 192 Nations Continue Meeting In Glasgow, Scotland, At COP26 This Week In Hopes Of Making Deals To Save Humanity, Cool The Planet, And Salvage Their Nations’ Reputations. However, Absent From The Conference Agenda Are Discussions Of Carbon Accounting Loopholes That Scientists Say Are Dangerously Underreporting Emissions And Speeding Climate Change. An Overlooked Issue Is Forest Biomass: Burning Wood To Produce Energy. Despite Research Proving Otherwise, The Practice Continues To Be Called Carbon Neutral By Nations And The Forestry Industry, Allowing Significant Greenhouse Gas Emissions To Go Uncounted. That Has Caused Some Policy And Advocacy Groups To Dub Forest Biomass Burning “The Green Myth.”

COP26: How The World’s Militaries Hide Their Huge Carbon Emissions

November 10, 2021 Doug Weir, Benjamin Neimark and Oliver Belcher, The Conversation. Educate! Carbon emissions, climate crisis, COP26, Wars and Militarism

Climate change leadership requires more than stirring speeches. It means facing up to hard truths. One truth that governments around the world are struggling with is the immense contribution their militaries are making to the climate crisis. For example, the US Department of Defense is the largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels in the world – and the largest institutional emitter. Two of us worked on a 2019 study which showed that if the US military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, sitting between Peru and Portugal. In other words, the US military is a more consequential climate actor than many of the industrialised countries gathered at the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

COP26: Emitters Sue To Chill Climate Measures

November 9, 2021 Manuel Pérez-rocha, Consortium News. Educate! climate crisis, COP26, ISDS, Lawfare

International negotiators are meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, to develop solutions to the climate change threat. But one major obstacle to global sustainability is largely absent from the discussions: the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system. This system gives transnational corporations the power to sue governments over actions — including policies to address climate change — that reduce the value of their foreign investments. Allowing corporations to continue to wield this power could undermine whatever agreements might be reached in Glasgow. How does this system work? Clauses in more than 2,600 Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) allow foreign investors to bypass domestic courts and sue sovereign states in international tribunals for millions — and even billions — of dollars.

Indigenous-Led Action In Memory Of MMIW And Relatives

November 9, 2021 Indigenous Climate Action. Resist! climate crisis, COP26, Indigenous Rights, MMIWG2S

As climate chaos rages forward, Indigenous communities and land defenders continue to remain on the frontlines challenging the continued expansion of major contributors to the climate crisis. According to the Front Line Defenders 2020 report, the three most targeted sectors of human rights defence were: land, environmental and Indigenous Peoples’ rights (21%), LGBTIQ+ rights (14%), and women’s rights (11%). Of the 331 human rights defenders killed in 2020, 26% were working on Indigenous Peoples's rights. In 2016, the international community was horrified when Berta Caceres, a Lenca Indigenous rights fighter, co-founder of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, and Goldman Environmental prize winner was assassinated.

COP26 Summit: Thousands March In Glasgow For Action Against Climate Change

November 8, 2021 News Click. Resist! Climate Change, COP26, Protests

The protesters at the Glasgow march represented various groups, including indigenous organisations, frontline communities, trade unions, youth groups, peace and anti-war groups, communist and left organisations, and different environmental organisations. Despite a broad spectrum of platforms, the protesters were "united around the recognition that without system change, there is no way to take the urgent necessary measures to save the planet and advance climate justice." About 100 climate change protests and demonstrations were held in other cities of the UK. Similar actions also took place in another 100 countries as part of the global day of action.

‘We’re Fighting For System Change’

November 8, 2021 Eugene Puryear and Rania Khalek, BreakThrough News. Resistance Report Climate Change, COP26

World leaders are meeting in Glasgow for the COP26 climate conference, but the minimal promises made at these gatherings are not kept and are not enough. Communities in the Global South are demanding real and meaningful change -- an entire system change away from profit-driven, rather than people-driven, governments. Mozambique-based activist Dipti Bhatnagar discusses the conditions that the Global South is grappling with (from the climate change that the West is largely responsible for), and the dire necessity for real change. Bhatnagar is climate justice & energy coordinator with Friends of the Earth International, based in Justiça Ambiental (FoE Mozambique).

Holding Their Feet To The Fire

November 8, 2021 Mary Annette Pember, Indian Country Today. Resist! Climate Change, COP26, Protests

Protests and actions by civil society organizations are stepping up at the COP26 conference as the event enters its second week in Glasgow, Scotland. Thousands of climate activists from all over the world have arrived demanding genuine change. Young people and others, both inside and outside of the United Nations climate talks, are telling world leaders to hurry up and get it done, that concrete measures to avoid catastrophic warming can’t wait. On Friday, during a news conference shared via Zoom organized by It Takes Roots, several Indigenous and people of color leaders attending COP26 expressed impatience with the lack of substantive action by world leaders.

Empty, Toothless Pledges To End Deforestation By 2030 At COP26

November 7, 2021 Axomalli Villanueva, Left Voice. Educate! Climate Change, COP26, Deforestation, False Solutions

In his speech at COP26 on November 2, British prime minister Boris Johnson announced that more than 100 countries had joined the Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, which seeks to halt and reverse the alarming levels of global deforestation by 2030. The declaration also emphasizes the need for countries to facilitate sustainable trade and development policies, promote food security through sustainable agriculture, and “accelerate the transition to [a green] economy.” To that end, more than $19 billion in public and private funds have been pledged for the plan, backed by countries including Brazil, China, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Russia, and the United States.

Will The People With Guns Allow Our Planet To Breathe?

November 5, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! climate crisis, COP26, Joe Biden, Oil and Gas

It is perhaps fitting that United States President Joe Biden arrived in Glasgow for the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) on the climate catastrophe with eighty-five cars in tow months after declaring ‘I’m a car guy’ (for details on the climate catastrophe, see our Red Alert no. 11, ‘Only One Earth’). Only three countries in the world have more cars per person than the US, and these countries (Finland, Andorra, and Italy) have a much smaller population than the United States. Just before Biden left for the G20 summit, his meeting with Pope Francis, and COP26, he had his administration pressure the oil-producing states (OPEC+) to ‘do the needful when it comes to supply’ – namely to increase oil production.

Wall Street’s Latest Scheme Is Monetizing Nature Itself

November 5, 2021 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Educate! climate crisis, COP26, Nature-Based Solutions, Wall Street

A month before the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (known as COP26) kicked off in Scotland, a new asset class was launched by the New York Stock Exchange that will “open up a new feeding ground for predatory Wall Street banks and financial institutions that will allow them to dominate not just the human economy, but the entire natural world.” So writes Whitney Webb in an article titled “Wall Street’s Takeover of Nature Advances with Launch of New Asset Class”: Called a natural asset company, or NAC, the vehicle will allow for the formation of specialized corporations “that hold the rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land, services like carbon sequestration or clean water.” These NACs will then maintain, manage and grow the natural assets they commodify, with the end goal of maximizing the aspects of that natural asset that are deemed by the company to be profitable.

Can A Singing, Dancing Rebellion Save The World?

November 4, 2021 Medea Benjamin And Nicolas J. S. Davies, Nation Of Change. Resist! climate crisis, COP26, Neoliberalism, US military

COP Twenty-six! That is how many times the UN has assembled world leaders to try to tackle the climate crisis. But the United States is producing more oil and natural gas than ever; the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere and global temperatures are both still rising; and we are already experiencing the extreme weather and climate chaos that scientists have warned us about for forty years, and which will only get worse and worse without serious climate action. And yet, the planet has so far only warmed 1.2° Celsius (2.2° F) since pre-industrial times. We already have the technology we need to convert our energy systems to clean, renewable energy, and doing so would create millions of good jobs for people all over the world. So, in practical terms, the steps we must take are clear, achievable and urgent.

Indigenous Voices Are Missing At COP26

November 4, 2021 Nina Lakhani, The Guardian. Resist! Assassination, climate crisis, COP26, Indigenous Rights

As world leaders inside the COP26 conference centre in Glasgow boasted about pledges to slash greenhouse gas emissions and end deforestation, indigenous delegates gathered across the river Clyde to commemorate activists killed for trying to protect the planet from corporate greed and government inaction. At least 1,005 environmental and land rights defenders have been murdered since the Paris accords were signed six years ago, according to the international non-profit Global Witness. One in three of those killed were indigenous people. The dead include Berta Cáceres, winner of the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental defenders, who was shot dead at her home in Honduras in March 2016 for opposing the construction of an internationally financed dam on a river considered sacred by her Lenca people.

Capitalism Has Never Really Worked Out For The Earth

November 2, 2021 Jacqueline Patterson, Island Press. Educate! BIPOC, Capitalism, climate crisis, COP26

As we gather in Glasgow for two weeks of deliberations for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties #26, (COP26) otherwise known as the “Conference of Polluters” or the “Conference of Profiteers,” we must be like Jesus in the temple overturning the tables of the money changers. We can no longer accept business as usual in the vein of moneyed interests suppressing ambition and holding us back from the bold commitments necessary to turn the tide of climate change. Too often, we members of frontline communities convene at these meetings, raise our voices and demands, yet find ourselves unwitting spectators to the parade of dominating capitalists who are more concerned with maintaining the status quo and corporate interests than saving the planet.

Oil Industry Bigwigs Given Platform At COP26 Despite Organisers’ Claims

November 2, 2021 Adam Ramsay, Open Democracy. Educate! Big Oil, climate crisis, COP26, Energy

Representatives of major oil companies including BP will be speaking at COP26, despite reassurances from organisers that they wouldn’t be welcome, a programme from inside the venue reveals. Last month, it was revealed that oil companies including BP were being excluded from official roles at COP26, with organisers casting doubt on the firms’ claimed ambitions to eliminate carbon emissions. At the time, the exclusion was seen as a victory for environmental campaigners, who have long called for major polluters to be excluded from UN climate conferences. However, a programme of events obtained by openDemocracy reveals that representatives of Big Oil have been allowed into the conference under the umbrella of a trade association that has a stall at the heart of COP26.

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