Environment and development groups together with young people, trade unions and social movements will walk out of the UN climate talks on Thursday in protest at what they say is the slow speed and lack of ambition of the negotiations in Warsaw. Greenpeace, WWF, Oxfam, 350.org, Friends of the Earth, the International Trade Union confederation and ActionAid have all said they will leave the talks and not return.
In the northeastern tip of Colombia, fierce resistance to Cerrejón, one of the world’d largest open-pit coal mines, has seen indigenous communities block highways and railway lines in recent weeks. These protests take place in the context of a wider movement of indigenous people trying to safeguard their territories. “In 30 years of pillaging natural resources, [the company] has achieved absolutely nothing positive for us,” says Yasmin Romero Epiayu, an indigenous Wayúu woman who resides near the Cerrejón mine in La Guajira, Colombia.
Looks like Fox News and Congress are becoming ever more intellectually isolated from the American people, perched together on a sinking island of climate denialism. Stanford University Professor Jon Krosnick led analysis of more than a decade’s worth of poll results for 46 states.
In 1494, Spain and Portugal were in serious competition over other peoples’ lands. This bothered the church, and Pope Alexander VI made it his duty to write up the Treaty of Tordesillas, which dictated that Spain was free to attempt to conquer lands west of an imaginary line on the Atlantic, and Portugal could attempt the same for all lands east of that line, essentially creating eastern and western hemispheres. A little more than two decades later, Spain’s influence in what it thought was a new world grew nearly as much as its avarice.
Recently Wikileaks offered a reward for the text of the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). A people's hero must have stepped forward because today Wikileaks released the full text of the chapter on Intellectual Property Rights. Click here to see their report. The TPP has been kept secret by the Obama Administration for nearly 4 years because they know that if people find out what is in it, they will strongly oppose it.
Last Thursday a record smashing "hellstorm" called Super Typhoon Haiyan tore across the Philippines leaving unprecedented destruction in its wake. For the second year in a row the Philippines find themselves at the annual United Nations climate conference pleading with the world to take effective action to halt the climate crisis that they say is punishing their nation. Last year at the UN climate conference in Doha, the Philippines were struggling to cope with the aftermath of Typhoon Bopha.
It seems these days that whenever Mother Nature wants to send an urgent message to humankind, it sends it via the Philippines. This year the messenger was Yolanda, a.k.a. Haiyan.For the second year in a row, the world's strongest typhoon, Yolanda, barreled through the Philippines, following on the footsteps of Pablo, a.k.a Bopha, in 2012. And for the third year in a row, a destructive storm deviated from the usual path taken by typhoons, striking communities that had not learned to live with these fearsome weather events because they were seldom hit by them in the past.
An international conference in Edinburgh aimed at conserving wildlife is coming under attack from campaign groups for trying to "sell off nature" to multinational corporations. The first World Forum on Natural Capital on 21-22 November is due to attract business and conservation leaders to debate how to give natural resources a monetary value to try and protect them. The first minister, Alex Salmond, will deliver a speech to delegates.
As the Philippines reels from one of the worst storms in history, the annual U.N. climate summit is opening today in Warsaw, Poland. Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground, says rising sea levels caused by global warming increased the size of the storm’s surge, while the heating of the oceans threatens more extreme storms that could form into typhoons. We also air the emotional plea of Yeb Saño, a member of the Philippines Climate Change Commission, urging action on global warming at last year’s climate summit in Doha.
The people are still reeling from the impact of possibly the biggest typhoon to strike the country. Death toll numbers are rising rapidly. There is massive devastation. Many are still trying to contact their relatives, friends and comrades, but communication systems are down, in the hardest hit areas. How should we, as activists and socialists, respond to the crisis? Firstly, we have to support and take whatever measures are necessary to protect the people. This means all measures that bring the people immediate relief.
