It’s a movement thundering as they say “Ya Basta!” to climate change and fossil fuel extraction, and “Yes” to climate justice. Throughout the industrial North in Europe, North America, Australia and Aotearoa, Climate Camps are sprouting up next to their nation’s biggest polluters to take direct action. No more waiting on Obama, the United Nations, Duke Energy, Environmental Defense or whatever other all powerful entity to charge in and save the day.

Like Neil Young once said “We’re finally on our own.“

Climate Camp UK is setting up their camp next to the Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS) HQ outside of Edinburgh, Scotland. RBS is a major funder of the highly destructive Canadian Tar Sands. In Montreal, the Camp is focusing on the Enbridge Trailbreaker project this year, a transcontinental pipeline that would bring dirty tar sands bitumen to Montreal and beyond to Maine, eventually ending up on tankers heading to refineries in the Gulf Coast. In Australia, the camp is taking place at the Bayswater coal fired power station in the Hunter Valley. Other camps have, or are, happening in Sweden, New Zealand, Ireland and Wales.

In the U.S., there are no climate camps or convergences scheduled this year but much is still going on. Earth First! has had a revival and camps and rendezvous are happening from Colorado to upstate New York to Maine. Many of them focusing on corporate polluters. Much momentum is buiding around oil and gas lease auction monkey-wrencher Tim DeChristopher’s trial in Salt Lake City. Appalachians are joining activists from all over to country to rise up in Washington D.C. at a mass mobilization called “Appalachia Rising” on Sep 25-27.

Climate Justice Action, the organizing body around the direct action that took place in Copenhagen last December, is calling for a Global Day of Action for Climate Justice on October 12.

Since last year, we’ve had space open up for a global people’s climate justice movement. Mostly due to the inability of the ruling class to begin to resolve climate change.

Here’s what the “powers that be” have done so far to open up our political space:

* failed to give us an agreement in Copenhagen.
* failed to pass legislation in the U.S. that would have regulated carbon emissions. (The bill that they did have was full of industry giveaways, so I’m not crying too hard about the loss of that one.)
* And in contrast to the climate camps and people’s movements in the Global South, the Big Green NGO’s make climate and environmental movements look weak, craven and sold out. As long as we allow them to represent our movements, we are. Even Billl McKibben is beginning to sound like Peter Finch in Network.

This past April at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, people’s movement from all over the world came together to once again converge indigenous movements and anti-corporate globalization movements (the last such convergence began in Chiapas when the Zapatistas rose up against NAFTA and carried our movements into Seattle, Prague and Genoa.)

Climate Camps are fertile ground for our movements that need to look less like K Street and more like Chiapas.

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.

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.