The police cracked down incredibly hard on the Reclaim Power protest today – both inside and outside the Bella Center – and arrested 240 people (on top of the over 1,000 that they’ve arrested in the past week), but they didn’t prevent the protest from being an incredibly powerful and formative moment in the global movement for climate justice.

The Reclaim Power protest was co-organized by Climate Justice Now! and Climate Justice Action, two international networks of people’s movements, Indigenous groups, and grassroots activists from around the world – including Via Campesina, Indigenous Environmental Network, Focus on the Global South, Kalikasan-People’s Network for the Environment. The action sought to subvert the undemocratic and unjust UN COP process by creating a People’s Assembly, which would privilege the voices for climate justice of Indigenous peoples and people from the Global South – those groups that have been most marginalized from the COP-15 talks.

While thousands of activists on the streets outside were marching towards the Bella Center, our goal was to march out of the Bella Center, and hold this People’s Assembly in the streets outside the conference.At 11am, we got reports that the outside protest was nearing the conference’s massive security perimeter. At that point, about 100 delegates – including two members of the Bolivian government delegation – linked arms inside the main hall, and began chanting “Respect Indigenous Rights,” “Listen to the South,” and “Join the People’s Assembly.” We then marched through the halls and out the front entrance of the Bella Center – trailed by a ridiculous entourage of news media.

The UN security didn’t try to prevent us from leaving the building – they were clearly happy to see us leave. Once we got outside the security fence, however, the Danish police – who were working closely together with UN security – refused to let us through their barricades to join the thousands of other protestors, who were only a couple hundred meters away. We spent the next half hour negotiating with the police – initially they told us that we’d be let through once they cleared some people that they were arresting out of the way, but then they changed their story, and told us that we’d have to go several kilometers around police lines to join up with the rest of the protest.

Determined to join our sisters and brothers and hold our People’s Assembly, we refused to take hours to walk around police lines. Those of us who were willing to risk arrest linked arms, and marched across a bridge in an attempt to push – nonviolently, but firmly – through police lines.

The UN security then stepped aside, and allowed the Danish police to beat us quite severely with batons. We pushed back and tried to hold this bridge as long as possible, but were eventually beaten back. I personally was hit with police batons dozens of times on the shoulders, arms, hands, and legs, and was punched repeatedly in the head – one blow broke my ear piercing, and bloodied my ear pretty badly. Several people were hit on the head with batons. As all this was going on, we held our hands in the air to signify our nonviolent intentions; at one point, an officer was beating my arms with his baton as I held them in the air.

You can see CNN’s footage here (can’t embed it). (I’m in the grey suit at the front.)

After we were pushed back over the bridge – and after we had taken several minutes to calm down, and take care of people who had been hurt – the majority of our group of delegates marched off around police lines to go join the protest. Others tried to return to the Bella Center, only to discover that the UN had closed the center to all NGO delegates for the rest of the day.

Like myself, the Reclaim Power action was severely bruised today, but was nonetheless ecstatic about its success. While we were pushing to join our comrades in the outside protest, the thousands of people outside were standing in the Vejlands Alle to the north of the Bella Center, holding the People’s Assembly (without us, unfortunately), and discussing key points of a people’s agenda for climate justice. This outside protest also included a broad cross-section of activists – from Latin American Via Campesina activists to German autonomists, and everything in between. But this broad and diverse group of people from around the world was united in its goals: to amplify an global people’s agenda for climate justice, an agenda that stands in stark contrast to the Global North-dominated negotiations that have prevailed in the past week within the Bella Center.

In the words of Stine Gry, from Climate Justice Action:

“We have no more time to waste.  If governments won’t solve the problem, then it’s time for our diverse people’s movements to unite and reclaim the power to shape our future. We are beginning this process with the people’s assembly.  We will join together all the voices that have been excluded—both within the process and outside of it. We will be both non-violent and confrontational. We will not let fences and physical barriers stand in our way, and we call upon the police to respect our right to make our voices heard.”

It’s clear that the UN and the police do not respect our right to protest, preferring to beat us than to let delegates from inside the Bella Center join – and thus grant legitimacy to – the outside protest. It’s clear that they want the voices of civil society, from the Global South and around the world, to be excluded from the talks. But today, the world heard our voices – as we shouted our message inside and outside the Bella Center, even as we were being beaten by the police. Now, we’ll see if the negotiators inside COP-15 are listening.

Whispers in the hallways at the COP-15 Copenhagen climate negotiations emerged as a full blown controversy yesterday, when the UK Guardian published leaked text that was written by a secret group of negotiators, the so-called ‘Circle of Commitment’.  The U.S., UK, Denmark and other rich countries are apparently responsible for the text, which was written in secrecy in a dirty backroom deal. The Danish Text, as it’s being called here in Copenhagen, utterly excludes the U.N. process, especially cutting out the developing countries that are pushing for a strong, legally binding deal, with targets of 40-45% emissions reductions below 1990 levels in order to avert the risk of catastrophic climate change.

By contrast, the leaked text effectively kills the Kyoto Protocol and its emphasis on compliance and binding targets, while gutting much of the negotiations that have been underway over the last two years. Here’s a short summary of a few of the problems with the leaked text:

• The Danish Text repeatedly refers to “the shared vision limiting global average temperature rise to a maximum of 2 degrees [Celsius] above pre-industrial levels.” This vision is certainly not shared - as the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance stated yesterday, “according to the IPCC a two degree increase in the global mean temperature will mean a three or more degree increase for temperatures in Africa, [causing] 50% reduction in crop yields in some areas.”
• The text also specifies that “developed country parties commit to deliver upfront public financing for 2010-201[2] corresponding on average to [10] billion USD annually for early action, capacity building, technology and strengthening adaptation and mitigation readiness in developing countries.” While this figure is still bracketed, the idea that the Global North is considering initially giving only $10 billion per year in mitigation funding to the Global South is viewed by many G-77 nations as a slap in the face – especially given that the governments of the Global North have spent over $4 trillion in the past two years on economic stimulus and bailouts of the banking and auto industries. (NOTE: In negotiating text, the brackets refer to sections that are still in negotiation.)
• In one of the most controversial sections, the draft specifies that ”a Climate Fund be established as an operating entity of the Financial Mechanism of the Convention. … Support from the Fund may be channeled through multilateral institutions.” This is a key point that has been denounced by much of the Global South: this plan would take trillions of dollars in climate funding out of the hands of the U.N., and put it in the hands of multilateral institutions like the World Bank – which are effectively controlled by the U.S. and Europe.
• The REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) outline in the text allows intact, natural forests to be replaced by tree plantations and includes poor provisions for monitoring, reporting and no verification at all.
• Indigenous peoples – whose rights the U.S. is famously reluctant to respect, as one of four countries in the world to refuse to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – are not even mentioned in the Danish Text. The unique rights of Indigenous peoples, and indeed human rights or climate justice in general, are not  part of this backroom deal.

After the draft was publicized yesterday, African delegates led a super high-energy protest through the halls of COP-15, chanting “One Africa, One Degree” and “Two degrees is suicide!” The Indigenous Environmental Network, Friends of the Earth, 350.org and many, many others led protests today in the main hall. The island nation of Tuvalu, after its call for legally binding targets in the plenary was opposed by the US and China, suspended the talksuntil just a few hours ago – a sentiment that is likely to continue, considering the atmosphere of protest andfrustration in the halls in Copenhagen.

But the Global North just doesn’t seem to get it. Some delegates here in Copenhagen, especially those from rich countries, were even dismissive of the situation, or were curious about which version of the text was leaked. US negotiator Jonathan Pershing, when asked about this text during his briefing yesterday, said: “There is no single text, there are many.” Pershing went on to defend Denmark for working behind the scenes and excluding so much of the world, claiming that as the president of the negotiations, Denmark is justified in developing secret text that is only available to inner-circle countries.

Which would be understandable if the leaked text weren’t so obviously exclusionary, and weren’t so clearly against the position of the developing countries. Which is all the more interesting because the text sugar-coats this poison pill for the Global South with justice-based rhetoric: the text recognizes ”the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” states that “gender equality is essential in achieving sustainable development,” and notes that “the largest share of historical global emissions of greenhouse gases originates in developed countries.” But the substance of this text – rather than its precise wording – is what’s really important: it shows that, in the end, the countries of the Global North are willing to make pitifully few concessions to the very real needs of the Global South.

And, most importantly, it shows that the Danish government – and the unknown delegates that they collaborated with in drafting this text – have a callous disregard for any kind of duly consultative process, preferring instead to draft a deal that satisfies the U.S. (at the expense of the G-77, which represents 80% of the world’s population).

And so, it’s understandable that the G-77 delegates aren’t swallowing this poison pill. “It is literally a matter of life and death for the friends and families of those that are here. A bad deal is a crime against humanity and we won’t sign a deal if it means signing a death warrant,” said Mithika Mwenda of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance yesterday.

REDD is intended to help developing countries protect their remaining rainforests and reduce the 15-20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation, forest degradation and peatland destruction.

Yet without key safeguards, REDD will fail to protect forests. Many countries hoping to benefit from REDD funding suffer from poor legal frameworks, high levels of corruption and illegality, and weak enforcement. Our allies at REDD Monitor summed up the situation with this graphic detailing rates of illegal logging in REDD beneficiary countries.

Key text that will prevent REDD from going the way of logging in terms of feeding corruption remains bracketed in the latest REDD text. [Brackets] means that some countries do not support this text, and from our conversations with negotiators it appears that the very same countries that stand to benefit from REDD funds are also working to undermine forest conservation and human rights in REDD. For example, here is the text that RAN and our allies in the Ecosystems Climate Alliance, working to include in the REDD negotiations in order for this forest deal to be a trustworthy alternative to logging and conversion:

• safeguards for transparent forest governance structures and support mechanisms {4(c)};
• safeguards for the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities {4(e)};
• safeguards on conservation of biological diversity and enhancement of ecosystem services {4(f)}.
• an objective for protecting intact natural forests.
• provisions to monitor compliance with these proposed safeguards should they be incorporated into the agreement;
• safeguards to prevent the conversion of natural forests to forest plantations.

Most worrisome is the likelihood that there is no legally-binding deal as an outcome of the Copenhagen meeting. If the parties still strike a REDD deal without a commitment from rich countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, REDD could end up as an offsetting mechanism rather than a key tool in reducing global emissions.

And without forest protection and enforcement of safeguards as its key priorities, REDD will threaten rather than preserve the world’s remaining natural forests.

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.

Right in the heart of our nation’s capitol is a coal fired power plant which kills. This is not unusual, all coal power plants kill. They are the largest anthropogenic source of the CO2 emissions (over 40%) which have now reached high enough levels of concentration in our atmosphere that many of the world’s leading experts in climate change fear the tipping point may have already been reached and catastrophic climate change may now be inevitable. There is no such thing as clean coal. The is no such thing as safe coal. Coal may very well end life on this planet as we know it. We absolutely must stop burning coal and we must do it yesterday.

The number 350 is now the most important number in the history of the human race. That is the safe level of atmospheric concentration of CO2 as expressed in parts per million. This threshold limit has already been exceeded with levels currently at 386PPM and rising. We are now creating a world vastly different from the one which has been so conducive to the biological diversity and global ecosystem which allowed the human species to evolve and human civilization to flourish. This is not a secret, although the energy industry would have you think it is, nor is it uncertain or alarmist. They are spending an exponentially increasing amount of funds on advertising, lobbying, and disinformation in an effort to cast doubt on what is now scientific certainty. In the last twelve months the number of climate change lobbyists on the Hill has increased 300%. The coal industry carries not only a big stick, but large piles of cash to go along with it. Judging from their actions and attitudes, one wonders if they don’t have another planet stashed somewhere close by that they can bail to in a few years while the Earth dies.

So what’s a person to do?

March 2nd, 2009 was historic — a shining example of what citizens in a democracy can achieve when united in a common cause. That cause is eliminating coal-fired power plants in the United States and the insanely destructive environmental degradation caused by coal mining and related activities.

The Front Line

A group of over 2,500 people from all across the country marched on the coal fired power plant in our nation’s capitol which for over 100 years has supplied heat and electricity to Congress by burning coal. In reality it was a shuffle much more than a march, there were simply too many people to take those nice long-stride parade steps which could properly be termed a march. The slush from fresh snow on the city streets and sidewalks made for a slow shuffle of happy courageous feet, many willing to risk arrest. Leading the march were the two men who first warned the world of the climate crisis rapidly approaching twenty and thirty years ago respectively; Bill McKibben the acclaimed author and activist, and James Hansen the director of NASA’s Goddard Center in Manhattan who was the first prominent scientist to testify before Congress that global warming posed a serious threat to all life on the planet as we know it. On the front lines they were joined arm in arm by Wendall Berry, Robert Kennedy Jr., Daryl Hannah, Kathy Mattea, Terry Tempest Williams, Vandava Shiva, Gus Speth, John Quigley, and Mike Clark. The march was organized and endorsed by over forty environmental organizations led by Greenpeace, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and The Rainforest Action Network.

I asked my new dear friend Terry Tempest Williams in looking back on the weekend what her thoughts were. Her words as is her entire being are luminous;

I thought that Monday’s Climate Change Action was full of vitality and presence. What I realized however, as the day wore on, was that this was really about energizing, engaging, and empowering the students. They were so strong and thoughtful in their gestures. Many were willing to risk arrest. Others were willing to be of support. The students I spoke with were determined and dedicated to making a statement by their presence that the path we have been on is not the path to the future. Their lives are committed to acts of conscience and consequence. This is what moved me most.
Jessie Carrier stood for hours in the cold blocking one of the side entrances. In those hours, she considered her actions, the course of her life, and what she wanted to commit her talents toward — “My heart was quivering.” she told me. “I became scared. And then, in time, I became calm and clear on what I was doing and why.” A young woman began to dance for her.
“She gave me energy,” she said. “I joined her.” Both young women danced. Movement. “I realized we are growing a movement.”

And then I think about what Wendell Berry said, when asked why he was there. “To begin a new kind of conversation.”

Yes. A new kind of conversation. A new kind of movement. We are now realizing that economic issues are environmental issues are social issues that are issues of social justice. This is my hope and faith as a citizen, that this kind of reflective activism can move us
collectively, one person at a time toward an open space of democracy that inspires a different kind of relationship to community in the largest sense, both human and wild. Direct Action is not an abstraction. Monday’s action was spirited and real. Empathy is a word that comes to mind as we walked arm in arm in solidarity. Climate Change.

Kathy Mattea & Terry Tempest Williams
For four hours all five entrance gates to the plant were blocked. An impressive number of law enforcement many with riot gear stood by and watched. No arrests were made, to the great disappointment of many including my brave friend Daryl Hannah who has been arrested before standing up for the environment, or sitting in a tree.

Closed: The Main Gate

Gus Speth said to the audience “There’s nothing wrong with the Holocene, it’s ending it that is crazy.” We were all amazed by the energy of the young people and as Kathy Mattea said, “I love it that we can now support them.”

More actions in the form of civil disobedience directed against coal power plants are planned in the near future. As the world prepares for the UN COP15 Conference in Copenhagen this December, it is a critical year for, as Bill McKibben said, “creating a political space for a climate treaty to be finalized.”

Time’s up.