A Request to All Women Attending the Durban Climate Talks

It was two years ago today that I sent out this heartfelt request to all the women who were going to attend the Copenhagen climate talks. Today, I send it again, to all the women, mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and nieces and godmothers who are attending the climate talks in Durban, South Africa. And to all the mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and nieces and godmothers of all the men who will be attending the Durban climate talks. Please ... speak up for the children, of all species!

A request to all women attending the climate talks!

PLEASE WEAR BRIGHT COLOURS! Please inject some life into the talks — wear the colours of flowers and forests and sunsets and fresh fruit and children's smiles.

BE A MOTHER OR A GRANDMOTHER FIRST. Believe in your power! The "powers that be" need to hear that all the mothers of the world want what's best for the children of all species. Please represent all the mothers and grandmothers around the globe. Even if you don't have your own biological or adopted children, you are still a mother of all the children, everywhere. Speak up for them.

REMEMBER THAT CLIMATE CHANGE KNOWS NO BORDERS. Try to forget that you're in Durban, South Africa representing a country. Think of the planet as one nation, under one atmosphere that knows no boundaries. Speak for all human beings, as well as the rest of nature, which has no seat and no voice at the talks.

LET COMPASSION BE YOUR COMPASS. Remember that prosperity and a thriving economy are impossible if the natural environment is ailing. We must get our priorities right! If a decision doesn't have the Earth and the children's future at heart, then that decision is not a compassionate one.

CALL FOR ZERO CARBON ALONG WITH SOME URGENCY IN ACHIEVING IT. Try to rev up the imaginations of world leaders and negotiators of all ilks (even the heartless, uncreative ones). Help them envision the Golden Age of Renewable Energy that we're heading into.

LET COURAGE GUIDE YOU. Women are courageous in so many — often unsung — ways. Courage in Durban, though it won't be easy, will be simple. What a privileged position you are in! Please take advantage of it and be brave enough to speak up for all those who have so little — now and in the future. Be the peaceful warriors who safeguard the children.

REMEMBER THE GREAT WOMEN WHO HAVE ALREADY DEMONSTRATED THEIR COURAGE, women like Rachel Carson, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas, Donella Meadows, Hazel Henderson, Sylvia Earle, Erin Brokovich, Sister Dorothy Stang, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, Lois Gibbs, the women of the Chipko Movement, Beatrix Potter, Wangari Maathai, Julia Butterfly Hill, Betty Krawczyk, Vandana Shiva, Starhawk, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Hildegard of Bingen, Harriet Nahanee. Stand on their shoulders — and be climate heroes in Durban!

STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS

(click here to listen to part of this song)

by Joyce Johnson Rouse

(aka Earth Mama)

I am standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before me

I am stronger for their courage, I am wiser for their words

I am lifted by their longing for a fair and brighter future

I am grateful for their vision, for their toiling on this Earth

We are standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before us

They are saints and they are humans, they are angels, they are friends

We can see beyond the struggles and the troubles and the challenge

When we know that by our efforts things will be better in the end

They lift me higher than I could ever fly

Carrying my burdens away

I imagine our world if they hadn't tried

We wouldn't be here celebrating today

They lift me higher than I could ever fly

Carrying my burdens away

I imagine our world if they hadn't tried

We wouldn't be so very blessed today

I am standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before me

I am honored by their passion for our liberty

I will stand a little taller, I will work a little longer

And my shoulders will be there to hold the ones who follow me

One Month Until This Year's Climate Change Circus Begins!

From Bali in 2007 (when we still thought we had a chance to get it right) to Poznan (where nothing whatsoever seemed to happen), then from Copenhagen in 2009 (where Obama and his henchmen, including the prime minister of my country, threw every climate change activist in the world into a depression of some duration) to Cancun in 2010 (where the very courageous Pablo Solón representing Bolivia was the lone voice for a rapid and scientifically rationale response to the emergency), the UN's climate change negotiations have become more and more circus-like.

As in circus: |ˈsərkəs| A traveling company of acrobats, trained animals, and clowns that gives performances, typically in a large tent, in a series of different places.

The Durban Climate Change Conference starts one month from tomorrow, and will run from November 29 to December 9, 2011. Durban is a (mostly) lovely seaside city in South Africa; too bad it, too, will be turned into a circus. (The name "Copenhagen" is now associated with farce and failure.)

We've had a Bali Road Map, a Copenhagen Accord (see? nothing happened in Poznan, Poland), a set of Cancun Agreements — and still, absolutely NO national or international declaration that we've reached "dangerous interference with the climate system" (a UN Framework Convention on Climate Change trick: if we don't declare it, we don't have to do anything about it). NO declaration that we're in a global climate change emergency. NO emergency response. NO result from any of these conferences that has actually led to any nation, anywhere, moving toward a zero-carbon economy. (Even the disappearing Maldive Islands are only heading for carbon neutrality, not zero carbon.)

Where's our global imagination? Why aren't we excited about working together to envision the zero-carbon economy? (After all, it'll be safer, cleaner, healthier, more equitable and more peaceful than what we've got now!) Why do our leaders and negotiators feel such disdain for our (and their own) children and grandchildren? For our whole species? For life itself? Why do they act the role of such ecologically illiterate, callous clowns when they get together at these climate change conferences?

May this year's negotiators keep the world's most vulnerable, the children of all species, and future generations in their hearts and minds as they do their negotiating. Who else could they possibly think they're negotiating for???

*******

Hey, great cartoon, eh? I commissioned it from Stephanie McMillan, award-winning editorial cartoonist. If you want to use it, let me know and I'll send you a high quality version. Visit her Code Green website to see more ("Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down..."), or to commission your own cartoon.

11 Days to Copenhagen - A Request to All Women Attending the Copenhagen Climate Talks

A request to all the women attending climate talks!

PLEASE WEAR BRIGHT COLOURS! Please inject some life into the talks — wear the colours of flowers and forests and sunsets and fresh fruit and children's smiles.

BE A MOTHER OR A GRANDMOTHER FIRST. Believe in your power! The "powers that be" need to hear that all the mothers of the world want what's best for the children of all species. Please represent all the mothers and grandmothers around the globe. Even if you don't have your own biological or adopted children, you are still a mother of all the children, everywhere. Speak up for them.

REMEMBER THAT CLIMATE CHANGE KNOWS NO BORDERS. Try to forget that you're in Copenhagen representing a country. Think of the planet as one nation, under one atmosphere that knows no boundaries. Speak for all human beings, as well as the rest of nature, which has no seat and no voice at the talks.

LET COMPASSION BE YOUR COMPASS. Remember that prosperity and a thriving economy are impossible if the natural environment is ailing. We must get our priorities right! If a decision doesn't have the Earth and the children's future at heart, then that decision is not a compassionate one.

CALL FOR ZERO CARBON ALONG WITH SOME URGENCY IN ACHIEVING IT. Try to rev up the imaginations of world leaders and negotiators of all ilks (even the heartless, uncreative ones). Help them envision the Golden Age of Renewable Energy that we're heading into.

LET COURAGE GUIDE YOU. Women are courageous in so many — often unsung — ways. Courage in Copenhagen, though it won't be easy, will be simple. What a privileged position you are in! Please take advantage of it and be brave enough to speak up for all those who have so little — now and in the future. Be the peaceful warriors who safeguard the children.

REMEMBER THE GREAT WOMEN WHO HAVE ALREADY DEMONSTRATED THEIR COURAGE, women like Rachel Carson, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas, Donella Meadows, Hazel Henderson, Sylvia Earle, Erin Brokovich, Sister Dorothy Stang, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, Lois Gibbs, the women of the Chipko Movement, Beatrix Potter, Wangari Maathai, Julia Butterfly Hill, Betty Krawczyk, Vandana Shiva, Starhawk, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Hildegard of Bingen. Stand on their shoulders — and be climate heroes in Copenhagen!

STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS

(click here to listen to part of this song)

by Joyce Johnson Rouse

(aka Earth Mama)

I am standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before me

I am stronger for their courage, I am wiser for their words

I am lifted by their longing for a fair and brighter future

I am grateful for their vision, for their toiling on this Earth

We are standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before us

They are saints and they are humans, they are angels, they are friends

We can see beyond the struggles and the troubles and the challenge

When we know that by our efforts things will be better in the end

They lift me higher than I could ever fly

Carrying my burdens away

I imagine our world if they hadn't tried

We wouldn't be here celebrating today

They lift me higher than I could ever fly

Carrying my burdens away

I imagine our world if they hadn't tried

We wouldn't be so very blessed today

I am standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before me

I am honored by their passion for our liberty

I will stand a little taller, I will work a little longer

And my shoulders will be there to hold the ones who follow me

88 Days - Let's Nip Climate Negotiation Shenanigans in the Bud

The 9th day of the 9th month of 2009. A good day to suggest that we all find out who our national climate negotiators are and what they're planning to take to the negotiating table in Copenhagen, and then start applying a little ... what? "Heat," as they say? Logic? Basic physics? Love and compassion?

I suspect we have some weird — and disingenuous — planning going on behind closed doors. It's time to swing those doors open wide.

A recent newspaper article here in Canada quotes our Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, who has been meeting with provincial leaders across this vast country to work out a "Canadian plan" before the Copenhagen climate talks in December. His words do not bode well for a Kyoto Protocol follow-up agreement that will safeguard the future of this planet:

"I think there is a common position to be found. Before we get to Copenhagen, we want to have all our domestic policies on the table," Prentice said.

There is not yet any decision on how to deal with the Alberta oilsands.

"There is no plan to curtail growth," Prentice said. "Part of the question is how you develop a cap-and-trade regime that can accommodate that growth."

OUCH! Did I read that correctly? No plan to curtail growth? Accommodating tar sands growth in our climate change plan? It would seem our environment minister (in a minority government elected by a minority of Canadians in a so-called democracy that does not allow proportional representation) is wearing too many hats. It sure doesn't sound to me like the hat closest to his heart is the environmental hat.

People like this appear to (a) have no regard for their children's future (b) be completely scientifically and environmentally illiterate, and (c) think that people will be able to eat and drink money — and bitumen — when the climate $#@! hits the fan.

I guess what I'm suggesting is that we all do our best NOW to find out what our respective countries are taking to Copenhagen to put on the negotiating table. And I'm betting it won't be a lovely table cloth and a flowered centrepiece — at least not if you're from a country that can't conceive of a future beyond carbon!

111 Days - My Own Predictions for the End of the World

I'm sure you've been hearing or reading about all the "prophecies" that say our world will end on 21 December 2009.

Well, I think the Mayans and others are out by just a couple of days. I believe the world as we know it will start to end on 18 December 2009, the last day of the Copenhagen climate change "talks."

My prediction goes like this: Between now and 7 December 2009, very drably dressed people, chosen for reasons most of us will never fathom, will feel they are doing important work together as "The Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention" and other such committees and working groups.

But these drably dressed people will not, in their endless talks and thoroughly boring negotiations, ever put the survival of life on Earth at the top of their agenda and at the centre of their discussions.

They will talk about what their country wants, needs and "deserves" and they will not budge.

They will (bless them and damn them, for they will be complicit in the greatest evil ever) let life on this precious, miraculous planet go to hell in a handbasket.

All because they will not bring themselves to see past their invisible borders and their small-minded economies. They will not bring themselves to talk of their children and grandchildren, and the gardens they love, and the animals that bring them joy. They will not share stories and photographs of the beautiful sacred places in their lives. They will not wear their hearts on their sleeves nor put what they love on the negotiating table. They will not represent humanity and they will not speak out on behalf of life and the children of all species.

On 19 December 2009, the end of the world will have begun, because our climate negotiators, in their drab grey suits, will have negotiated their way to nothing.

And then it will be too late to try again — with colour, with verve, with life! With heart and soul and love and compassion. With tears and heartache and some small offering of regret to our children and all future generations.

P.S. In the hope that my prediction will not come true, I send out this request to the dozen or so women who wore bright colours at recent climate talks in Bonn, Germany: Please speak out! Stand up! Take a stand! Dance on the tables! Wake your co-negotiators up! Save the world! Please!

177 Days - Stonewalling the Climate Negotiations: Who's Winning While Life on Earth Loses?

It's scary watching what's going on at the UNFCCC international meetings leading up to the Copenhagen climate talks in December.

It's scary because many developed/industrialized/Annex 1 countries continue to stonewall the talks (including, I'm ashamed to say, the representatives of my country's minority right-wing, in-Big-Oil's-pocket government).

Many of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are literally begging for their survival, and we fat cats just can't seem to see that their fate has anything to do with us — or ours.

The people and countries who gain from obfuscating and obviating, and from being obstreperous and obnoxious, what do they believe they are gaining? What's truly in it for them? If life is just a game (survival, obviously, is not a game) to these people and countries, why won't they even consider making it a cooperative game rather than a highly competitive one?

The planet's survival is not a zero-sum game, as in if "they" lose, we win. No, if anyone loses this game, we all lose. The atmosphere and the biosphere belong to every living being on Earth.

What outright imperious arrogance for some people and countries that they are so narrow in their view of winning the climate battle that they can't see past their own borders. It's criminal.

Has it not reached the point where these people and countries should be charged with crimes against humanity? And left out of the negotiations?