“The most important question raised by the climate summit may be: Does the power to change the world belong to the people in the conference rooms of Le Bourget or to the people in the streets of Paris?” – Rebecca Solnit, “Power in Paris“
Can the earth be saved by bureaucrats in long meetings, reciting jargon and acronyms while surrounded by leaning towers of documents? That is what’s supposed to happen in France this month, when representatives from all the world’s nations gather for COP21, the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (U.N.F.C.C.C.), and the eleventh session of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol.
A handful of protesters from Sum of Us, Greenpeace, the Ecology Action Centre and the Clean Ocean Action Committee delivered a massive, 233,000-signature petition to the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board (CNSOPB) on Wednesday, opposing what they say are extremely lax safety standards around Shell's drilling program. Currently, if a subsea oil well blowout were to occur, the company would be allowed to take 12 to 13 days to contain it. Shell's original proposal suggested it could take 21 days to get a capping stack to the site.
The French government is trying to silence social movements, but we refuse to go quietly, says campaigner Pascoe Sabido.
In the days after the tragic events on 13 November in Paris, everything concerning the climate talks was in limbo. A state of emergency was called. Would the summit go ahead at all? What would it mean for the mass mobilizations being planned?
Peace Valley Landowner Assoc. [mailto:pvla@xplornet.com]
From: Peace Valley Landowner Assoc. [mailto:pvla@xplornet.com] Sent: November 21, 2015 1:09 PM Subject: Honouring Treaty Promises and Restoring Confidence in Federal Site C Decisions
Today in Victoria, lawyers representing two First Nations will be in B.C. Supreme Court arguing that the provincial government violated First Nation rights by rushing to approve the controversial $9 billion (and counting) Site C dam on the Peace River.
Regardless of the outcome of the case, which is one of three B.C. First Nations legal proceedings against Site C currently underway, First Nations opposition to Site C is understandable.