So what’s the bottleneck? By all accounts, on all sides of the debate except one, the single largest problem to solving the climate change problem is the United States. Everyone except for Jonathan Pershing, deputy US climate envoy, that is, who fiercely defends the US’s actions, which include proposing to end the Kyoto Protocol altogether in favor of a ‘pledge and review’ system of voluntary commitments from nations.

‘We know that the US needs to act, AND the US needs to be part of the deal,’ said a staffmember of the US congressional delegation attending the conference. Unfortunately that means acting as in the Waxman-Markey bill, with targets too low for most of the world to accept. In response, twice during this week’s meetings the African Union walked out of the Kyoto Protocol process; activists including RAN staged a string of actions, including blockading the exits of the convention center. The EU meanwhile seems committed to get the US into the deal at any cost. The US is in an unprecedented bargaining position – we are literally holding the rest of the world hostage to our inaction on climate change.

In defense of an indefensible position, the US negotiators I spoke to this week threw up their hands and said ‘what would you have us do? 350 ppm is not politically achievable in the US.’ A combative Jonathan Pershing, briefed us on the US position and blasted civil society for criticizing the Waxman-Markey commitment of 4% reduction targets from 1990 levels by 2020. (Climate science calls for a 40% emissions reduction target from 1990 levels by 2020. You’d think we could get at least a little bit closer.) Pershing denigrated the Kyoto Protocol, insisting that compliance for climate commitments will only be successful when done on a national level. This is the ‘fox guarding the henhouse’ proposal from the US which so frustrated the nations of the world.

Pershing claimed that while the climate deal will be negotiated by the executive branch, but without a national law we cannot comply. Not true: the US can deliver a great climate regime without any help from congress at all; after all, the US Supreme Court ruled that CO2 is a pollutant to be regulated by the EPA.

We have our work cut out for us. Political will doesn’t come from thin air, and it doesn’t tolerate hot air either. It’s time to build a true global movement against climate change, building on the great work done throughout this year, and bring some street heat to these decision makers, especially the obstructionists in the US that our preventing our climate bills from being robust and our negotiators in Copenhagen from embracing true global leadership.

Today, more than half a million people have received emails from organizations across the nation, including Rainforest Action Network, Appalachian Voices, 350.0rg and many others, asking supporters to send a powerful message to the Obama Administration to stop the blasting on Coal River Mountain and protect our clean energy resources. With your help, this could be a day of action that makes history.

Coal River Mountain must become our line in the sand. The Obama administration officials who could stop this need to know that it’s not just people in the hills of Appalachia who can hear the explosions–we all know what’s going on.  And we know that every lump of coal that comes out of those hills adds to the carbon burden of the atmosphere we all share.

Demand that the Obama Administration stop the blasting today.

Last week, blasting began on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia. This is a part of the country where dynamite routinely goes off — turning the region’s historic mountain ranges into dust for the tiny coal seams that lie beneath their surface.

But Coal River Mountain is special, or, rather, you can decide whether it becomes special. Right now, Coal River Mountain represents the best and worst our country has to offer. It is one of the most dangerous examples of blasting for dirty coal and one of the most profound examples of hope that exist in our country. It is a crossroads.

Coal River Mountain can be a wind farm that provides 85,000 households with electricity, creates 700 long-term green jobs, gives back $1.7 million in annual county taxes and stands as a model for clean energy across coal country. Or, it can be a 6,000-acre dirty energy wasteland.

Stretching across thousands of acres of diverse and pristine hardwood forests, Coal River Mountain is one of the last intact mountains in the vicinity. It is also home to some of the few remaining headwater streams that have not been polluted with heavy metal-laden mine waste. To local residents, the mountain is a last stand.

When blasting began on Coal River Mountain this week, explosives began going off less than 100 yards from the largest coal sludge impoundment in the country. To put this in perspective, we are talking about more than eight billion gallons of coal slurry held back by an earthen dam. Were the dam to fail, and it has happened in the past, hundreds of people would have less than five minutes to save their lives.

It’s unfathomable to think that there are people in Coal River Valley who went to sleep last night fearful that a tidal wave of toxic coal sludge could break down their door. Or, it should be.

But almost as hard to fathom is why any political leader paying attention would allow a coal company to obliterate intact mountain ranges, sacrifice precious drinking water or risk losing people to a tsunami of coal sludge, when the mountain could be a wind farm instead?

Coal River Mountain’s real economic worth isn’t underground, but up in the sky. It is for this reason that Coal River Mountain is a major test for our country’s climate and energy future. It’s not that we lack alternatives to fossil fuels. It’s that while our nation’s leaders debate which solutions to put in place and at what rate and by what time, the fossil fuel industry continues to build more pipelines, belch out more pollution, and destroy more mountains. We are moving backwards even as we talk of a better future. But we don’t have to be.

In the last several months, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken some good steps to curb mountaintop removal mining, largely through strict oversight of mining permits. But now it’s time for leaps.

To save Coal River Mountain and preserve our nation’s clean energy potential, it’s critical that the Obama Administration, in particular the EPA, the Council for Environmental Quality and the Army Corps of Engineers, hear from all of us to counter the pressure that they are getting from coal lobbyists and coal industry-pocketed politicians. The Obama Administration can and will intervene if we decide that Coal River Mountain is where we draw a line in the sand.

Over the next two days, RAN along with Credo Mobile, Sierra Club, NRDC, 350.org, the Center for Biological Diversity, Appalachian Voices among others have asked our supporters to contact those in the Obama Administration who have the power to immediately stop the blasting on Coal River Mountain and to protect our clean energy resources. With your help we can build the national outcry necessary for immediate action.

I was going to tell you that there are two urgent reasons to help save Coal River Mountain: because people are in danger, and because we are blowing up, literally dynamiting, one of our most promising sources of energy. But really, the most important reason for you to act is because you can.

It is time stop talking about a clean energy future and start living in a clean energy present.

To help save Coal River Mountain and protect our clean energy resources visit Save Coal River Mountain.

Early on, the RSPO identified accountability and transparency as key criteria to reduce the palm oil industry’s corrupt, dirty, and dangerous practices. Reflecting such, the first criteria for joining the RSPO are commitments to transparency.

But even a basic level of transparency is too much to ask from the USA’s largest producer and trader of palm oil, Cargill. Cargill was quick to sign up for the RSPO and to claim their support for the RSPO’s criteria. But when it comes to actually following the RSPO’s criteria for sustainable palm oil, Cargill is a non-starter. Hiring a questionable audit firm, Cargill has managed to pay its way into RSPO certification without living up to RSPO criteria.

This week, I attended the RSPO’s annual conference with two victims of Cargill’s oil palm operations in Indonesia. These community members, one of them the head of his small Indonesian village, traveled thousands of miles to meet Cargill face to face, to fight for the land Cargill has taken away from them.

Interested in their plight, one of the top-ranking members of the RSPO’s Executive Board agreed to help set up a meeting with Cargill. But William Griffiths, one of Cargill’s key managers based in Singapore, refused to meet with these effected community members. Cargill’s reply: “It is better we do not meet.”

William Griffiths had the time to travel from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, to spend multiple days at the RSPO, meeting with buyers and other palm oil producers, but he did not find 30 minutes to listen to representatives from his own plantations express their concerns about Cargill’s dirty, dangerous, and neo-colonial practices in Indonesia.

Palm oil production in Indonesia, where Cargill is a major player, is killing the last of the world’s wild orangutans, bringing poverty to forest peoples,  and causing global warming. The first step in addressing these issues is to bring access and accountability to these companies. As William Griffiths made painfully clear at the RSPO, Cargill has no interest in improving their negative practices, no interest in the welfare of local communities at their plantations, and has repeatedly failed to live up to their own commitments to the RSPO.

MORE on Cargill’s legacy of destruction and neo-colonial practices in Indonesia.

Students and community activists had something to say about that (including folks from St. Louis Rising Tide).

Just minutes ago, the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) passed a resolution, introduced by the Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS), to expel any member who clears portions of the Bukit Tigapuluh ecosystem, which has been found to contain large numbers of High Conservation Value Forests (HCVFs).

This is the sole bright spot of what has been a depressing RSPO, where oil palm producers have failed to address previous complaints against the worst of the worst oil palm producers like Duta Palma, and blocked any criteria limiting Green House Gas Emissions.

Pak Daud, one of Sinar Mas’ top managers, stood up to try and block the resolution: “There is no clarity on this, we need better data, this is a grey area.” He then tried to avoid responsibility by claiming that because a subsidiary of Sinar Mas is doing the clearing, the RSPO has no power to limit Sinar Mas’ actions. His plea met with boos from the crowd.

This surprising development at the RSPO puts some serious pressure on Sinar Mas to immediately stop all destruction of the only reintroduction site in Sumatra for orangutans, one of the largest habitats for the Sumatran tiger, and the territory of some of the most traditional hunter gathers in the world.

It is also a call for the RSPO to live up to their own criteria and take action against Sinar Mas if they continue their dirty and dangerous operations at Bukit Tigapuluh. This will be a new test for the RSPO.  For the sake of the world’s forests, forest peoples, and climate, I hope this deeply trouble palm oil group is up to the task.

David Gilbert is a Research Fellow at RAN. He has worked in the tropical forests of the Amazon and Indonesia, with a special focus on forest conservation and indigenous rights.

He can be reached at davidgilbert@ran.org

At the core of the controversy has been the effort to include a commitment by all members of the RSPO to reduce their Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. After two years of meetings, the Malaysian and Indonesian producers managed to block any such commitment. It was a disappointing moment for the RSPO, and a lost opportunity to address one of the most serious issues of oil palm production.

Supporters of the new criteria made lots of concessions, Tim Killeen of Conservation International and a member of the GHG working group told me. His main focus was to include a criteria that would effectively protect peat lands, the most carbon rich habitat in the world, from oil palm expansion. But even this was too much for the producers to stomach. It is clear that anything that would change ‘business as usual’ – which is the massive destruction of peat lands, burning forests, and significant contributions to climate chaos -  is unacceptable for producers.

Had GHG emissions standards been included, there might have been a chance that some of the dirtiest producers of oil palm would have pulled out, but the core of the RSPO was never in jeopardy. It is clear, the RSPO would rather be a diluted certification standard that includes everyone that wants to join rather than a true step towards palm oil that does not harm people, forests, and the climate.

So then, what relevance does the term “sustainable” have for the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil? In my opinion, which is shared by many of the social and environmental groups here, the short answer is none.

There is nothing sustainable about the social conflict, forest destruction, and climate change caused by RSPO members. In a visit to one of the worst of the worst palm oil producers, Duta Palma, this past summer, I witnessed the massive burning of primary forests and the use of force to evict a traditional community from their ancestral lands, all to produce a tasteless vegetable oil.  The actions of Duta Palma, which violates just about every criteria of the RSPO but who is still a RSPO member, have been subject to a complaint filed to the RSPO by a broad range of Indonesian NGOs. After four months,  the RSPO has still not responded to this complaint.

This is a critical moment for the RSPO. With no action on GHG emissions are multiple complaints about RSPO violations, it is time for the RSPO to live up to their use of the word sustainable or risk becoming an irrelevant group of stakeholders that can not seem to agree on anything.

David Gilbert is a Research Fellow at RAN. He has worked in the tropical forests of the Amazon and Indonesia, with a special focus on forest conservation and indigenous rights.

He can be reached at davidgilbert@ran.org

Today Gucci Group, the prestigious conglomerate of fashion and luxury brands, including such brands as Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, and Balenciaga, announced their move out of Indonesian and other endangered forests as a first step in implementing an industry-leading paper policy.  This policy is a continuation of the Gucci Group’s interest in curbing climate change, about twenty percent of which stems from forest loss, and through it, the Gucci Group has pledged to reduce the amount of paper it uses, eliminate fiber from high conservation value forests, and only purchase recycled products or those certified by the Forest Stewardship Council by December 2010.

Gucci Group’s leadership is commendable and sets Indonesian rainforest protection as the new fall trend for other fashion and luxury brands to follow.  Gucci Group’s policy puts it at the front of a list of major companies—including Tiffany & Co., H&M Group, Hugo Boss, and Ferragamo—that have decided  they don’t want their brands to be associated with the destruction of rainforests or with encouraging climate change.

Not everyone has caught onto the new fall fashion trend, however. Three companies that could use some encouragement to follow Gucci Group’s lead are Calvin Klein, Coach, and Marc Jacobs.

Our research indicates that these companies are implicated in Indonesian rainforest destruction through purchasing throwaway paper shopping bags from Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) and its affiliates. APP is the biggest Indonesian rainforest destroyer for paper and is responsible for past and ongoing clearing and converting of vast areas of rainforests and peat lands in Sumatra and Borneo.

I am sure that Calvin Klein, Coach, and Marc Jacobs can do better than doing business with some of Indonesia’s worst rainforest destroyers. Gucci Group has demonstrated that the fashion industry can make a difference for rainforests and for the climate. Now it’s time for the others to join.

Calvin Klein, Coach and Marc Jacobs should follow Gucci’s lead, and stop purchasing throwaway paper shopping bags from Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) and others who source from Indonesian and Endangered Forests. By implementing leadership paper policies, Calvin Klein, Coach and Marc Jacobs have the opportunity to protect rainforests and the climate and make Indonesian rainforest protection a fall fashion trend that won’t be forgotten.

African negotiators at the U.N. climate talks in Barcelona just refused to continue formal discussions about all other issues until wealthy countries live up to their legal and moral responsibility to commit to deep emissions reductions. Rich countries (also called “Annex 1 countries”) have ground negotiations to a halt by failing to agree their new targets under the Kyoto Protocol (KP), driving developing countries to put their feet down. This walkout is significant and opens up political space – it means many of the countries in Africa just stopped one half of the UN climate negotiation process until rich countries say how much they will reduce their carbon.

We’re down to the wire: just four negotiating days left before the big agreement in Copenhagen is supposed to go down. Its day one, and we saw just a taste of the breakdowns to come. While rich countries continue to undermine commitments for the Kyoto Protocol (one of two negotiating tracks for Copenhagen which is supposed to be renewed for a second commitment period of Annex 1 targets), the spin has already taken hold: they’re blaming Africa for their own delay-mongering. Oy vey.

In response, movement and civil society organizations held a demonstration at the U.N. building in support of African delegates’ insistence that developed countries commit to new, strong binding targets. Delegates and observers were invited to join a human shield against the killing of Kyoto targets (complete with an Annex 1 grim reaper) and instead urged to promote at least 40% emission reductions with no offsets by 2020.

Kamese Geoffrey of NAPE/ Friends of the Earth Uganda warned, “Rich countries are attempting to dodge their legal and moral responsibilities to reduce emissions. Developing countries and communities have historically had practically no fault in the creation of climate change, yet they will be the first to face the devastating impacts of climate change.”

Many of us have longstanding criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, particularly its market mechanisms. But here’s why Kyoto is important:

It contains a few core provisions and basic justice frameworks that the U.S. and other Annex 1 countries are trying to avoid.

1) Compliance. This means the international community evaluates whether or not you’ve come through on your commitments, and they are set to a specific time period.

2) Overall targets (aka top-down target setting). This means the international community decides what the targets for C02 reduction are, and then divide up responsibilities accordingly. Equity and science decide. The U.S. wants the opposite – each country consulting with industry to see what it thinks it can muster, and then we just see where we land.

3) “Common but differentiated responsibilities.” This is the most important framework to save. It means that the industrialized countries caused the problem of global warming, and the Global South is dealing with the worst of the impacts first (droughts, floods, famines, hurricanes, etc are all hitting the equator now in ways that will only come to the rest of the world later). In order for the Global South to reduce emissions, they need finance and technology from industrialized countries or else we are robbing them of their right to develop – there just isn’t space for everyone to follow the North’s dirty development path. “Ecological debt” is one way to think about it. This is the most basic framework of justice, which is what people mean when they say “the North must lead” and why the idea that both Annex 1 and G77 countries “need to act together” is actually a deeply corrupt and unjust framework.

The idea that we can somehow replace a legally binding instrument with a voluntary pledge system is insanity. In 1997 when the KP was first ratified, it had been watered down tremendously in the hopes of getting the U.S. to sign. The U.S. didn’t sign (though it remains party to the convention). Yet under the Bali Action Plan, agreed to in December 2007, the US is required to take on comparable efforts to other Annex 1 countries under the KP – which means that in theory, the rest of the world could continue the KP, and the U.S. would have to come along whether it signs or not. Instead, we’ve seen a race to the bottom – other Annex 1 countries hiding behind U.S. inaction and refusal to sign, claiming the world cannot make an agreement without the U.S. on board.

So the shit is hitting the fan. And Africa isn’t taking it. We should applaud their courage, and be skeptical anytime the media tries to shift the blame for the breakdown of negotiations onto G77 countries. Make no mistake, these talks have been polluted by self interested corporations and governments, and all roads lead back to Annex 1 (and the U.S. in particular).

It’s a myth that Kyoto expires in 2012 – only the first commitment period of Annex 1 greenhouse gas emission reductions ends. We need to support the basic frameworks of a legally binding treaty, and need to ensure there is a KP second commitment period. Period.

“They say oil palm is development. They say Malaysia has cars and big cities because of oil palm. But it is not oil palm, it is from other things, like our oil and our logging. Giant companies, most of them Malaysian, ignore customary land rights and take our land out from under us. They develop it into oil palm. They use only foreign workers, or people from Kuala Lumpur to drive the trucks and run the offices. For the day laborers, they will not even hire us local people, because we are Malaysians and have some basic rights. So they hire Indonesians who have come here illegally and have no rights, no one to protect them from the bad working conditions and horrible pay. The Malay people, who live near us, they all get a few hectares of land from the Company to have their own oil palm, but rather than work that land they too hire Indonesians. The government, using their oil and gas and timber money gives these Malay government jobs too, so even though they live in the countryside they can buy cars. The owners of the Company get rich, so rich. Then they take that money and invest it in oil palm in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, where they can do whatever they want, there are no laws there. And they get even richer.

But us, us people from the forest, who live in the longhouses, what are we left with? Nothing. And the Malay people, who have cars, is this a sustainable economy, that depends on illegal labor and government jobs to support the common man? I think not.

Oil palm does not lead to the development of a country. Wealth, contained in the natural resources of the our forests and controlled by us,  is flattened and burned, and then collected by the world’s rich, from Companies like Sinar Mas, Cargill, IOI, and Duta Palma. Oil palm does not bring wealth to the poor, it takes it away. Oil palm development, like so many neo-colonial trading systems, makes the poor poorer and the rich richer.

Supporting this argument, so powerfully and simply laid out by a man from the last of Borneo’s almost extinct forests with no formal education but a lifetime of wisdom,  is a year long research project. One I hope to complete some day. But for now, lets just take his word for it, as a man who has lost his livelihood, way of life, and future so one of the world’s largest companies, Wilmar, can become a little bit richer.

David Gilbert is a Research Fellow at RAN. He has worked in the tropical forests of the Amazon and Indonesia, with a special focus on forest conservation and indigenous rights. He can be reached at davidgilbert@ran.org