But something else happened during the first decade of the millennium. People around the world turned away from ways of life and practices that are endangering our world and worked to make communities, work places, and technologies green and egalitarian. And peoples movements challenged the power of corporations, the military, and finance interests, insisting on putting people and the planet first. It's this combination of smart, local innovation and people power that offers hopeful possibilities for the '10s, '20s, and beyond.

People fell in love with local foods. There are now more than 5,000 farmers' markets in the U.S., up 13 percent in just one year, many new school vegetable gardens, and CSA. People turned their lawns into gardens, and asked grocery stores and restaurants to offer local foods.

A home-grown U.S. pro-democracy movement brought greater integrity to the elections process. This movement, built on the voting rights movement, began after the questionable election of 2000. Through public scrutiny, legal challenges, and mobilization of poll watchers, it was able to counter election manipulation, voter suppression, black box voting irregularities, and to begin restoring voting rights to felons who had served their terms.

Happiness got redefined. As people discovered that debt and overconsumption cause stress to families, the planet, and each of us, many turned instead to friends, family, good works, spirituality, and personal growth as the keys to a good life.

Media became radically decentralized and inclusive, with anyone able to report on events and to post video, tweets, photos, and commentary. Governments found secrecy much harder to come by. Fact checking became a participatory activity.

Prison overcrowding, budget shortfalls, and powerful advocacy turned the public against draconian prison terms and the drug war in favor of limited prison time for nonviolent offenses and alternatives like treatment and community service.

People went local to rebuild the economy. Instead of competing to get corporations to locate in their communities, they began building economies based on local strengths and local needs, striving to be green and to offer living wages and dignity to employees. Worker-owned cooperatives are at the leading edge of this movement, especially in abandoned rust-belt cities. The new focus is on sustainably meeting the needs of ordinary people, not the greed of Wall Street.

Populist resistance grew to corporate power and big government. This movement pushed back against bailed-out Wall Street banks, the domination of health insurance and Pharma in the health care debate, and the power of big coal and big oil. Right-wing think tanks and media tried to morph this populism into an anti-Obama movement, so far with limited success. (But if Obama continues to capitulate to a corporate agenda, he could be in trouble with populists across the political spectrum.)

The stage was set for nuclear abolition: A global consensus grew around the need to abolish nuclear weapons. In the United States, conservatives like George Shultz are advocates along with progressive leaders.

Indigenous people’s rights were recognized in an official United Nations declaration. Indigenous peoples began using their new-found clout to protect their ways of life and the biosphere, stewarding sources of invaluable cultural and biological diversity.

The United States elected an African-American president. While this didn't usher in a utopian post-racial society, it did show the power of multi-racial organizing. And it set the stage for long over-due remedies to racial disparities and segregation. But, as has been painfully clear, it does not guarantee progressive policies will come out of the White House.

A new guiding philosophy emerged based on respect for all people and all life. This approach is gaining power after both neoliberalism and neoconservatism proved themselves out of touch with the challenges faced by humanity – and out of ideas.  The Earth Charter, formally launched in 2000, received endorsements of thousands of organizations representing millions of people during the ‘00s, revealing the potential for a new worldview to take hold based in environmental sustainability and social justice.

 A “Survival” Movement swept the world; millions took action to confront the climate crisis, making changes at home and at work, greening cities, resisting coal and deforestation. Look to this movement to grow rapidly, post-Copenhagen.

We may look back on the ‘00s as the time when we began to turn in a new direction – one that can sustain us and the planet, powered by the aspirations and power of ordinary people.

But that shift is far from inevitable. We could get stuck in denial and fear. Instead of reaching for powerful new solutions, we could spin our wheels trying to shore up a failing status quo or exhaust our energy scapegoating one another. The new approaches that were seeded in the '00s could still be swept aside by the entrenched forces of power and money.

But we could also build the new innovations and peoples movements that can change our course before climate disruption, social breakdown, and war bankrupt us. That will be the key challenge for the 2010s.

Sarah van Gelder is co-founder and executive editor of YES! Magazine, a national media organization the links powerful ideas and practical action towards a just and sustainable world.

Copenhagen was obviously a failure—if you judge it by “the numbers,” the formal emission targets and financial commitments that are needed to support a fair, effective, emergency global climate mobilization. If you judge it, that is, by what is necessary.

The more pressing question, though, is whether Copenhagen was a failure when judged against what was possible. This is a much more difficult question, and has far more to do with judgment than with calculation. And much more to do with the immediate future of climate politics.

The good news is that the truth is coming out, and that people all over the world are seeing it. Everyone, and I imagine this includes Barack Obama, knows a hell of a lot more about the climate crisis, and its politics, than they did a year ago. Not, to be sure, that we didn’t already know that climatic destabilization is triggering a planetary emergency. This has been obvious for years. The difference now is rather that—thanks to the 350 movement, and here I mean not only the folks at 350.org, but also Mohamed Nasheed, the President of Tuvalu and a whole lot of terrified scientists—we know that we know it. And that we know it with appalling, quantitative confidence.

The bad news is that after Copenhagen, we also know that the elites are at their limits. That what is needed, as the Copenhagen street had it, is “system change not climate change,” and that lacking system change, our governments are quite incapable of organizing a decisive response to the climate crisis. The bad news, more particularly, is that if we in “civil society” are to do better than our putative leaders, if indeed we are to help the elites break their own chains of powerlessness, we’re going to have to actually dare to assign a bit of responsibility for the Copenhagen fiasco. The bulk of which, alas, will have to go to the wealthy world.

The NGOs grouped into CAN, the Climate Action Network International tried to come to Copenhagen prepared. They even had a scenario analysis close at hand, one that categorized the possible outcomes with names like Breakthrough, Foundation, Greenwash, and Collapse. It was a useful exercise, but the power of the Copenhagen drama, as it finally played itself out, defeated all attempts at easy characterization. I suppose that if you had to pin it down, the outcome would have to be placed somewhere between Greenwash and Collapse. Or, to put a finer gloss on it, in the “not done yet” territory, which is how CAN decided to frame the result.

Looking at the generalities of the Copenhagen Accord and the 2010 negotiating schedule, this may be fair enough. Obama himself took the same line, in a late-night press conference that was actually pretty badly received, calling the accord a "meaningful agreement", but adding that "This progress is not enough,” and "We have come a long way, but we have much further to go.” Which is a fairly obvious point, given that the accord, such as it is, seems (see for example the Climate Scorecard) to condemn us to about 3.9 degrees Celsius of warming. This is the “Four Degree World” scenario, and it’s a fairly magnificent understatement to say that we want to avoid it at almost all costs.

Demonstrators demand climate justice during the Global Day of Climate Action, on December 12, in Copenhagen.

Photo by Matthew McDermott.

But of course Copenhagen is not the end of the game. The negotiations will continue, as will the organizing, and with the next major climate conference scheduled for Mexico City in November of 2010, they are quite certain to have a major impact on the United States. And if, in the meanwhile, we in America can manage to pass halfway decent climate and energy legislation, we may yet discover that the Obama strategy—which John Holdren, his chief science adviser, characterized during Copenhagen as, simply, “getting started”—offers a plausible way forward, one that can make real progress even in a nation overtaken by insane right-wing ideologues.

Or maybe not. The difficulty here is that understanding can too easily degenerate into accommodation. Yes, we are paralyzed by our right wing, and yes this constrains our choices, but the fact remains that, by not paying our way, by refusing to accept anything like our proper share of the responsibility for the crisis now threatening to overcome us, we make the dithering and dysfunction inevitable. Which of course brings us to the equity side of the story, and here there are several key points to report.

One is that, in a signal development, several self-defined vulnerable country blocs emerged in Copenhagen to play extremely significant roles, and managed to do so while protecting not only their local interests, but the interests of the developing countries as a whole. The first of these vulnerable blocs, of course, was AOSIS, the Association of Small Island States, which face rising seas and, in extreme cases like Tuvalu, actual short-term inundation. But Africa, which has discovered the extent of its own vulnerability, also played a critical role, and by so doing helped to protect the South as a whole from being blamed for Copenhagen’s failure to deliver.

Not that the right-wing press won’t blame it anyway, but at this point I doubt that the gambit has real legs. For while the African people are among the world’s most innocent, in terms of their historical contributions to the climate crisis, they will also be among the most brutally impacted, and this is an injustice too obvious to easily set aside. Witness the open letter that Desmond Tutu sent to all heads of state during Copenhagen, a letter that noted that:

“If temperatures are not kept down then Africa faces a range of devastating threats such as crop yield reductions in places of as much 50 percent in some countries by 2020; Increased pressure on water supplies for 70—250 million people by 2020 and 350-600 million by 2050; The cost of adaptation to sea level rises of at least 5-10 percent of gross domestic product.”

With these sorts of prospects at hand, it’s difficult to be too sympathetic to the North’s domestic political problems. Which is why—and this might perhaps just be wishful thinking—I believe that the rich world will fail to effectively evade responsibility for Copenhagen. There are counter-arguments, of course, and gross media distortions by the score, but so far the failure to reach a better deal is not being blamed wholly on the South. And given that the large “emerging economies” signed onto the accord, it’s unlikely that it will be.

Indeed, given the wealthy world’s failure to adopt strong domestic emission reduction targets, and its equally egregious failure to put a decent mitigation or adaptation support package onto the table, the Copenhagen endgame—in which the emerging economies agreed to the Accord while the weaker and more vulnerable states balked—may well have been the best possible outcome. (Watch the final, 3:10 a.m. plenary here; you won’t regret it!)

In this regard, it may not be absurd to hope that, as Copenhagen passes into history, the overall framework by which we understand rich-world commitments will shift in significant ways. For one thing, and despite a clear desire to do so (it inconveniently requires them to “act first” to significantly reduce their emissions) the rich countries did not succeed in setting the Kyoto Protocol aside. But while Copenhagen laid out a two-track negotiating process, including a “Convention track” in which both the US and China can, perhaps, both be eventually coaxed into accepting their fair shares of the global effort, the "Kyoto track" has also been extended. This gives us a clear mandate—to continue the battle to force the wealthy countries to make commitments on the scale demanded by the science, and by their own historical responsibility and capacity to pay—and just as importantly it gives us a context within which to do so.

The road ahead is clear enough. The next big date is February 1, 2010, by which time countries of all kinds are expected to pledge their emissions reductions. When they do, the battles will predictably, and quite properly, flare up all over again.

For the moment, let me add only that Copenhagen, for all its disappointments, marked a turning point. The need for a global emergency mobilization is obvious, and with it, a set of social and political challenges that can no longer be denied. These challenges will get clearer in the days and years ahead, but the essential situation is already before us, ready to be discovered—with the atmosphere’s ability to absorb carbon now critically limited, we face the greatest resource-sharing problem of all time.

The climate problem, in other words, was and remains a justice problem. If we fail to solve it, it will be in large part because we refuse to see it as such.

Tom Athanasiou wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Tom is the author of Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor, and co-author (with Paul Baer) of Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming. He is the executive director of EcoEquity, a core member of the Greenhouse Development Rights team, and a coauthor of The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework: The right to development in a climate constrained world.

We do not have the fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement that millions around the world hoped the world leaders gathered here would deliver.

Despite overwhelming scientific evidence, and massive popular support from citizens in countries North and South, world leaders chose national political self-interest over the fate of future generations and failed to resolve the issues blocking the road towards a just outcome. While this deal cannot be judged as a success, it is impossible to be without hope.

This year, from a strong, but small seed of climate campaigning, a movement touching millions of people in hundreds of countries around the world has grown. Over the last two weeks while leaders were dithering an additional 5 million people joined the campaign, resulting in a total of 15 million voices calling for a fair, ambitious and legally binding deal.

More than 250 partner organisations have come together to form an unprecedented alliance under the TckTckTck banner – including development, human rights, environment, religious and youth groups, trade unions and scout groups. Over three days of global action, these partners have mobilized unprecedented numbers of people campaigning for urgent action on climate change. In Copenhagen on December 12, one hundred thousand people marched in a powerful manifestation of this unity.

And, when naysayers, fearmongers, and the business-as-usual-crowd try to usurp the issue, they will be met by a surging sea of people from all around the globe and all walks of life unified in their demand for a real deal.

The global climate movement - more diverse than ever before - stands united in the face of tonight's disappointing news. This weekend we are mounting an unprecedented response, with joint messaging appearing on the global public websites of our partners, to ensure world leaders know we are unimpressed with their lack of real progress and failure to deliver a real deal.

We have come so far in a short space of time. Millions around the world look to the future and see hope, justice, and opportunity. It is up to each of us to make our voices heard and to get the real deal that the world needs.

The world’s leaders still have a chance to get it right. They must realize that we expect, and will not accept, anything less.

They’re not done yet. Neither are we.

The following organisations have taken the extraordinary step of adding this consistent response to take over the home pages of their global websites.

WWF, World Council of Churches, Oxfam, Civicus, Christian Aid, Greenpeace, Oneworld.net, Avaaz.org, 1 Sky.org, 350.org,  and others.

The deal, brokered between the U.S., China, South Africa, India, and Brazil, has not yet been accepted by the 192 nations represented in Copenhagen, many of which have decried it. 

The deal sets no definite target for greenhouse gas reductions. A goal of reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2050, present in earlier drafts, was removed. All references to keeping temperature increases below 1.5 degrees Celsius—a key demand of vulnerable countries, including African nations and small island states—were also dropped.

It calls for (but does not commit rich nations to) $30 billion over the next two years, followed by $100 billion per year after 2020, to assist poor nations with the costs of adaptation and mitigation.

Though some are defending the agreement as a first step, many others, particularly residents of the Global South and climate activists, say that the precedent set by the agreement is a dangerous one.

Early reactions

President Obama, during a press conference in Copenhagen:

Now, this progress did not come easily, and we know that this progress alone is not enough. Going forward, we’re going to have to build on the momentum that we’ve established here in Copenhagen to ensure that international action to significantly reduce emissions is sustained and sufficient over time. We’ve come a long way, but we have much further to go.

To continue moving forward we must draw on the effort that allowed us to succeed here today—engagement among nations that represent a baseline of mutual interest and mutual respect.  Climate change threatens us all; therefore, we must bridge old divides and build new partnerships to meet this great challenge of our time.  That’s what we’ve begun to do here today...

With respect to the emissions targets that are going to be set, we know that they will not be by themselves sufficient to get to where we need to get by 2050. So that’s why I say that this is going to be a first step. And there are going to be those who are going to—who are going to look at the national commitments, tally them up and say, you know, the science dictates that even more needs to be done. The challenge here was that for a lot of countries, particularly those emerging countries that are still in different stages of development, this is going to be the first time in which even voluntarily they offered up mitigation targets. And I think that it was important to essentially get that shift in orientation moving, that’s what I think will end up being most significant about this accord.

From the perspective of the United States, I’ve set forth goals that are reflected in legislation that came out of the House that are being discussed on a bipartisan basis in the Senate. And although we will not be legally bound by anything that took place here today, we will I think have reaffirmed our commitment to meet those targets. And we’re going to meet those targets, as I said before, not simply because the science demands it, but also because I think it offers us enormous economic opportunity down the road.

Pablo Solon, Bolivia's ambassador to the U.N.:

This is completely unacceptable. How can it be that 25 to 30 nations cook up an agreement that excludes the majority of more than 190 nations. We have been negotiating for months on one of the gravest crises of our age, and yet our voice counts for nothing? If this is how world agreements will now be agreed, then it makes a nonsense of the U.N. and multilateralism.

The agreement talks of setting targets that limit warming to 2 degrees. The leaders of the rich countries should come to Bolivia to see what global warming is already doing to our country. We have droughts, disappearing glaciers and water shortages. Imagine this scaled up three times. We cannot accept an agreement that condemns half of humanity.

Lumumba Di-Aping, chief negotiator for the G77 group of 130 developing countries:

This deal will definitely result in massive devastation in Africa and small island states. It has the lowest level of ambition you can imagine. It's nothing short of climate change skepticism in action.

It locks countries into a cycle of poverty for ever. Obama has eliminated any difference between him and Bush.

Kumi Naidoo, leader of Greenpeace International and TckTckTck:

Not fair, not ambitious and not legally binding. The job of world leaders is not done. Today they failed to avert catastrophic climate change...

We have seen a year of crises, but today it is clear that the biggest one facing humanity is a leadership crisis.

During the year a number developing countries showed a willingness to accept their share of the burden to avert climate chaos. But in the end, the blame for failure mostly lies with the rich industrialized world, countries which have the largest historic responsibility for causing the problem. In particular, the US failed to take any real leadership and dragged the talks down.

Climate science says we have only a few years left to halt the rise in emissions before making the kind of rapid reductions that would give us the best chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. We cannot change that science, so instead we will have to change the politics—and we may well have to change the politicians.

This is not over, people everywhere demanded a real deal before the Summit began and they are still demanding it. We can still save hundreds of millions of people from the devastation of a warming world, but it has just become a whole lot harder.

Civil society, the bulk of which was locked out of the final days of this Climate Summit, now needs to redouble its efforts. Each and every one of us must hold our leaders to account. We must take the struggle to avert climate catastrophe into every level of politics, local, regional, national and international. We also need to take it into the board room and onto the high streets. We can either work for a fundamental change in our society or we can suffer the consequences of one.

Bill Mckibben, founder of 350.org

[President Obama] blew up the United Nations. The idea that there’s a world community that means something has disappeared tonight. The clear point is, you poor nations can spout off all you want on questions like human rights or the role of women or fighting polio or handling refugees. But when you get too close to the center of things that count—the fossil fuel that's at the center of our economy—you can forget about it. We’re not interested. You’re a bother, and when you sink beneath the waves we don’t want to hear much about it... What exactly is the point of the U.N. now?

He [also] formed a league of super-polluters, and would-be super-polluters. China, the U.S., and India don’t want anyone controlling their use of coal in any meaningful way. It is a coalition of foxes who will together govern the henhouse. It is no accident that the targets are weak to nonexistent.

Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity:

We all know what we must do to solve global warming, but even the architects of this deal acknowledge that it does not take those necessary steps. Merely acknowledging the weaknesses of the deal, as President Obama has done, does not excuse its failings. If this is the best we can do, it is not nearly good enough. We stand at the precipice of climatic tipping points beyond which a climate crash will be out of our control. We cannot make truly meaningful and historic steps with the United States pledging to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by only 3 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. The science demands far more.

The people of the United States voted for President Obama based on his promise of change and hope. But the only change today’s agreement brings is a greater risk of dangerous climate change. And the only hope that flows from Copenhagen stems not from the president’s hollow pronouncements but from the birth of a diverse global movement demanding real solutions and climate justice — demands made with a collective voice growing loud enough that in short order politicians will no longer be able to ignore it.

In the last few days, 99 percent of civil society participants have been denied access to the talks over supposed security concerns, forcing groups like ourselves to improvise (lucky for 350.org, we’ve got an incredible team still on the inside: Subhashni Raj, one of our 350.org organizers, who is now officially on the Fijian delegation, and Mike Tidwell, who has a press badge from his excellent show at Earth Beat radio and is leading a small media team that’s still working the press room).

Yet, despite a lack of direct access and a prevailing sense that developing countries are failing to provide real leadership, many of the people that I have been talking to here in Copenhagen remain doggedly hopeful. Not because they expect a miracle speech from Obama or a breakthrough between the U.S. and China. Not because they think the EU will come up with an innovative finance package or that Australia and others will stop bullying smaller countries. In fact, their hope has little to do with our supposed “leaders” at all. It has to do with all of you.

Last night, I took part in a candlelight vigil at the Osknehallen warehouse to solemnly mark a day of fasting around the world that thousands of you took part in. At the vigil, Gopal Dayeneni, an organizer with Movement Generation who’s been working for years with social movements around the world, told the crowd that in his eyes the movement for climate justice and global equity has never seemed more united. Over the past few weeks, said Gopal, we have seen unprecedented collaboration and solidarity not just between organizers here in Copenhagen, but between citizens all over the planet.

I know I feel that sense of unity here in Copenhagen and I hope you feel it wherever you are, as well.

In less than an hour, hundreds of us will gather in a snowy courtyard outside the Osknehallen to stand with candles and torches and form the words “Climate Sham” and then transform into the words “Climate Shame” for an aerial photograph. The image will express the frustration and anger that we want to convey to the world leaders who are blocking progress here at the talks yet still trying to spin Copenhagen as some sort of success. We know that’s just greenwash and we need to get the world media to tell that story as well—AP, Reuters, and many other media outlets have confirmed that they’ll show to take the photo and send it around the world.

Yet, we’ll also be forming another message: “Climate Hope.” It’s not a message for our leaders or for the media, it’s a message for our movement. It’s a reminder that this fight isn’t over and that despite the odds stacked against us, we’re still keeping hope alive. Martin Luther King, Jr., who faced a lot of disappointments and setbacks in his life, once said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.”

Copenhagen will be a disappointment, that’s for sure, but this movement has been a resounding success in so many ways. When I’m standing in the cold this evening, I’ll be thinking of all of the citizens around the world who braved cold, wind and rain, burning heat, and yes, numerous setbacks and disappointments, to take part in the actions and events we’ve done together this year, especially on October 24 and just last weekend.

I’m infinitely grateful for all the work that so many people have contributed to this effort. I’ll end now with another King quote that comes to mind: “Keep moving.”

Jamie Henn is a co-coordinator of 350.org. In 2007, he co-organized Step It Up, a campaign that pulled together over 2,000 climate rallies across the United States to push for strong climate action at the federal level.

At this morning's session, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jibao hailed his country's efforts to curb greenhouse emissions. Wen implied that China would keep its emissions voluntary and unilateral, which was out of step with suggestions that China place its reduction goals within a binding treaty. Then, Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva complained about the COP 15 negotiations' lack of progress.

A visibly frustrated Obama took the stage immediately after (video below), saying he was in Copenhagen "not to talk, but to act." The question is no longer the nature of the challenge, Obama said, but leaders' capacity to meet it: "For while the reality of climate change is not in doubt, I have to be honest as the world watches us today. I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt right now and it hangs in the balance. I believe we can act boldly and decisively in the face of a common threat."

David Corn of Mother Jones wrote that Obama's speech "signaled a global train wreck... Obama was clearly venting. ... If an accord is not reached at this summit, Obama remarked, 'we will be back having the same stale arguments month after month, year after year, perhaps decade after decade all while the danger of climate change grows until it is irreversible.'"

Although Obama didn't mention China directly, he "took a dig at the way the country has resisted transparency measures for monitoring emissions cuts," as Jonathan Hiskes writes for Grist. "Is this a sign that the Copenhagen talks may fail to produce even a weak, tentative accord—a so-called 'fig leaf' deal that would provide world leaders the barest of cover? That’s one line of speculation. Of course, that could be out of date within a few hours."

Obama reminded the delegates of the United State's commitment to action on climate change, reiterating Hillary Clinton's statement Thursday that the country plans to mobilize $100 billion in financing for developing nations by 2020, but "if, and only if, it is part of a broader accord."

But is a broader accord still possible in Copenhagen? Grist reports that in a one-on-one meeting after Obama's speech, Obama and Prime Minister Wen discussed "three of the most contentious areas blocking the path to a climate deal on the last day of the summit: Verification guarantees, financing to help developing nations deal with climate change, and permitted emission levels." Afterward, they asked their negotiators to meet to search for an agreement.

Although China and the U.S. are the biggest players in these talks, it would be remiss to ignore the work of the G77 block of poor nations who are "still playing hardball," as Jacob Wheeler writes for In These Times. "They’re on the front lines, their people are already dying in the hundreds of thousands due to climate change, and they don’t have the infrastructure to greenify their infrastructure."

It looks like the world will continue to wait for our leaders to determine the course of action in Copenhagen. Check out LinkTV's live stream for Cop15 news as it unfolds.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Remarks of President Barack Obama,
As Prepared for Delivery

Copenhagen, Denmark
December 18, 2009

Good morning. It’s an honor to for me to join this distinguished group of leaders from nations around the world. We come together here in Copenhagen because climate change poses a grave and growing danger to our people. You would not be here unless you—like me—were convinced that this danger is real. This is not fiction, this is science. Unchecked, climate change will pose unacceptable risks to our security, our economies, and our planet. That much we know.

So the question before us is no longer the nature of the challenge—the question is our capacity to meet it. For while the reality of climate change is not in doubt, our ability to take collective action hangs in the balance.

I believe that we can act boldly, and decisively, in the face of this common threat. And that is why I have come here today.

As the world’s largest economy and the world’s second largest emitter, America bears our share of responsibility in addressing climate change, and we intend to meet that responsibility. That is why we have renewed our leadership within international climate negotiations, and worked with other nations to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. And that is why we have taken bold action at home—by making historic investments in renewable energy; by putting our people to work increasing efficiency in our homes and buildings; and by pursuing comprehensive legislation to transform to a clean energy economy.

These actions are ambitious, and we are taking them not simply to meet our global responsibilities. We are convinced that changing the way that we produce and use energy is essential to America’s economic future—that it will create millions of new jobs, power new industry, keep us competitive, and spark new innovation. And we are convinced that changing the way we use energy is essential to America’s national security, because it will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and help us deal with some of the dangers posed by climate change.

So America is going to continue on this course of action no matter what happens in Copenhagen. But we will all be stronger and safer and more secure if we act together. That is why it is in our mutual interest to achieve a global accord in which we agree to take certain steps, and to hold each other accountable for our commitments.

After months of talk, and two weeks of negotiations, I believe that the pieces of that accord are now clear.

First, all major economies must put forward decisive national actions that will reduce their emissions, and begin to turn the corner on climate change. I’m pleased that many of us have already done so, and I’m confident that America will fulfill the commitments that we have made: cutting our emissions in the range of 17 percent by 2020, and by more than 80 percent by 2050 in line with final legislation.

Second, we must have a mechanism to review whether we are keeping our commitments, and to exchange this information in a transparent manner. These measures need not be intrusive, or infringe upon sovereignty. They must, however, ensure that an accord is credible, and that we are living up to our obligations. For without such accountability, any agreement would be empty words on a page.

Third, we must have financing that helps developing countries adapt, particularly the least-developed and most vulnerable to climate change. America will be a part of fast-start funding that will ramp up to $10 billion in 2012. And, yesterday, Secretary Clinton made it clear that we will engage in a global effort to mobilize $100 billion in financing by 2020, if—and only if—it is part of the broader accord that I have just described.

Mitigation. Transparency. And financing. It is a clear formula—one that embraces the principle of common but differentiated responses and respective capabilities. And it adds up to a significant accord—one that takes us farther than we have ever gone before as an international community.

The question is whether we will move forward together, or split apart. This is not a perfect agreement, and no country would get everything that it wants. There are those developing countries that want aid with no strings attached, and who think that the most advanced nations should pay a higher price. And there are those advanced nations who think that developing countries cannot absorb this assistance, or that the world’s fastest-growing emitters should bear a greater share of the burden.

We know the fault lines because we’ve been imprisoned by them for years. But here is the bottom line: we can embrace this accord, take a substantial step forward, and continue to refine it and build upon its foundation. We can do that, and everyone who is in this room will be a part of an historic endeavor—one that makes life better for our children and grandchildren.

Or we can again choose delay, falling back into the same divisions that have stood in the way of action for years. And we will be back having the same stale arguments month after month, year after year—all while the danger of climate change grows until it is irreversible.

There is no time to waste. America has made our choice. We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say. Now, I believe that it’s time for the nations and people of the world to come together behind a common purpose.

We must choose action over inaction; the future over the past—with courage and faith, let us meet our responsibility to our people, and to the future of our planet. Thank you.

I am writing from Copenhagen. It is 3 a.m. and I am filled with incredibly conflicting emotions.

I am surrounded by those who face the consequences of global warming every day—families who watched their homes disappear in flood waters, farmers who can no longer harvest their crops because of drought, and those who have lived peacefully but are facing strife as they watch their homeland’s natural resources deplete rapidly.

A debate about the existence of global warming denies the human experience and hardship of millions of people around the world.

However, I carry with me a great hope and faith. Last year, the United States came together. We stood defiant in our affirmation of our commitment to one another. We recognized our desperate need to be one country whose values and purpose would withstand the test of time.

Yet, we are at a crossroads. Barack Obama was elected with the promise of a clean-energy economy that would restore our economic power and affirm our place as part of a global community. He left no doubt that global warming was real and was a threat to our existence. People of faith joined with young and old, rich and poor. We stood together because we loved our country and we wanted it to be better. We heard a call to our highest selves.

Now, that feeling has faded for so many. The political reality of our current system has given way to disillusionment, and in moments like this, despair.

This moment calls us back into action. The election is not the end of the mission. Change can only be measured by the translation of values and promise into action. Hope is not enough. It must become change.

We are being called into service. The United States must take bold leadership in Copenhagen. We act not just for the mother who spoke from Africa, but for those in Oakland and Coal River Mountain who want to see their children thrive and have opportunity in their communities.

Desmond Tutu’s words in Copenhagen reminded us that we have an ability to stop the injustice.

We must stand strong in our values and commitment to one another. Change is not easy and cannot be measured only by election cycles.

We need to match rhetoric to results. And my hope is to see it here, now, in Copenhagen. 

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Phaedra is the CEO of Green For All, a national organization working to build access and opportunity for all communities in the clean-energy economy.

La Paz, Bolivia, where I was born and spent my first 18 years, "could perhaps be the first large urban casualty of climate change," according to The New York Times. I've been tracking the melting glaciers that supply water to the La Paz metropolis for the last few years. Each year the pace of melting has outstripped prior predictions in dramatic fashion. As a kid and a teenager I used to visit Chacaltaya, the emblematic glacier mentioned in the Times article. It is now gone. Extinct.

Scientists speculated that it would be gone by 2020; it formally disappeared this year. The crisis is no longer a futuristic prediction. It has arrived. The human impact stands to be incredibly stark. Margarita Limachi Álvarez, a Bolivian woman living in a village impacted by receding glaciers was quoted in the Times article saying, “A lot of us think about not having kids anymore. Without water or food, how would we survive? Why bring them here to suffer?”

Let's transpose that experience to a U.S. context: Lake Mead, which is a major source of water for LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, Tucson, and Phoenix, has a 50 percent chance of being completely dry by 2021. That is only 11 years from now. Major urban centers in southwestern United States are going to suffer dramatic decreases in water supplies within the next decade.

Tens of millions of lives are at stake in Copenhagen and beyond. Literally. Our profit- and growth-based economy has pushed the planet's life systems to the brink. Hence the motto on the streets of Copenhagen this week: "We need Systems Change, not Climate Change." It's way too late for compromises.

Compromises are no longer viable, unless you are of the mind that some communities and populations are disposable. At this point, compromises mean the eradication of entire island states. Compromises condemn entire swaths of the African continent to death from drought and severe climate dislocation. Compromises point to massive displacement and repression for immigrants and poor communities of color in the U.S. in an era of intensifying resource scarcity. I’m not willing to settle for compromise. In my personal life, compromise may well mean the depopulation and implosion of my hometown as a “major urban climate casualty.”

No Fairness, No Deal
Equity is the only way to break the climate stalemate between the Global South and the North.

The core of our current conundrum is pretty simple, really: Wealthy corporations and national elites created the carbon problem and must fix it. My 5-year-old, Maya, gets it. She understands the basic Kindergarten notion of, "If you break it, you pay for it." She understands that social harmony, trust, friendship and true teamwork depend on some key values: sharing instead of hoarding, and being accountable when an injury is committed, whether it was intended or not.

That's the planetary moment we face. The U.S, Canada, Europe, Japan and Russia account for 70 percent of the historic CO2 emissions on the planet. Yet communities in the Global South, like folks in my Bolivian city of birth, stand to pay for the  broken dishes  with their lives and livelihoods. So we must share the responsibility for emissions reductions and the coming economic transition in a fair and accountable way.

Once upon a time, I remember candidate Obama inviting us to move away from a 'me society' and into a 'we society'. Well, Copenhagen gives him the opportunity to walk the talk. Business as usual is a dead-end deal, in the very real sense of the word "dead." As in, 50 percent of all species extinct by 2100 if we remain on the current growth and profit treadmill. As in, 70 percent of the world's arable areas suffering from drought by 2025 if we stay the course. What will it be, Mr. President? Rhetoric or reality? When the U.S. government's chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern, refuses to acknowledge our country’s historic “climate debt” to the world, he is defending business as usual.

To successfully weather the current climate transition, the world really needs:

• Greenhouse gas emission targets that are real, binding, enforceable, verifiable, and in line with the science; targets that reduce emissions at the source.
• Agreement that industrialized nations must pay for the damage they have done to the rest of the world over the last 200 years—they must pay their “climate debt” and fund mitigation and adaptation efforts throughout the Global South.
• A transparent, democratic funding mechanism to administer payment of the climate debt.
• The recognition and protection of the rights of all peoples in all aspects of climate policy.
  

Bolivia’s current president, Evo Morales, made the following insightful observation upon arriving in Copenhagen yesterday: “The current United States defense budget is $687 billion. And for climate change, to save life, to save humanity, they only put up $10 billion. This is shameful. The budget for the Iraq war, according to the figures we have, is $2.6 trillion ... Trillions of dollars. But directed towards paying the climate debt, $10 billion. This is completely unfair.”

President Obama, the whole world is waiting. Act now, while we still have room to breathe.

Mateo Nube wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Mateo is the Director of the Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project. Movement Generation provides in-depth analysis and information about the global ecological crisis to organizations working for economic and racial justice in communities of color.

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YES! Magazine's ongoing coverage of the climate negotiations in Copenhagen.

The mood may be a touch more subdued than usual, both because the conference is going badly (more on that in a minute) and because none of us are eating today—we're taking part in a symbolic one day fast, with people from around the world. The enthusiasm for this gesture overwhelmed us—when we sent out news on our website last night that a small group of fasters who had been going without food for 40 days were asking for others to join them today, it didn't take long before more than 1,100 people had signed up. They've been sending in thoughts and reflections all day to the 350.org website:

• Mike Grenville: Everything makes a difference. We are all more connected than is obvious from the surface. As your stomach growls send your thoughts to those making decisions that represent your country.
• Chloe Phalan: I will fast with you on Thursday. It is a pittance compared to what so many of you are doing, but if nothing else it will focus my compassion towards those whose hunger is not a choice. Fight on!
• Mohammed Yahia: I just had a little daughter and right now she's 55 days old.
  I want her to grow up in a world where she doesn't have to fight for her very existence.
  I want her to be able to grow up and live a happy, fruitful life like I did. And I want to see her grandchildren, and make sure they have a good fulfilling life too. That is why I'm fasting today.

I wish I could say that words like these were penetrating the conference six miles away at the Bella Center. (By this point, almost every NGO representative has been kicked out of the conference, which among other things deprives the poorer countries of the volunteer staff they need to help make their case). A few heads of state are saying similar things: about an hour ago, the prime minister of Tuvalu ended his remarks like this: "We just have to prepare ourselves for the worst. We have no where to run to. We must prepare ourselves individually, family wise, so that they know what to do when a cyclone comes or the hurricane blows. There is no mountain we can climb up. We just have to face it. And that’s why we’re making noises around the world."

It got some applause, but the powers that be—the United States, especially—are busying themselves pressuring one country after another to agree to a truly terrible treaty. How do we know it's terrible? Because we're paying attention to numbers, not rhetoric. Two floors up from our office the amazing folks at Climate Interactive are using their nifty software program to constantly recalculate the promises one country after another keeps making. They're using the scientific target as a reference—by now, everyone including the U.N. 's chief climate scientist has agreed that we need to head towards 350 ppm carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to have a chance of staving off truly devastating climate change. Currently, the proposal under negotiation would yield a world that in 2100 would have 770 parts per million CO2—which would be a working definition of hell.

So on we fight. Clearly we won't get what we need out of this conference, and the battle will have to continue. We have a lot of folks willing to make sure that happens. They're hungry today—hungry for justice, hungry for survival, hungry for a future. 

Bill McKibben wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Bill is the founder of 350.org and a scholar in residence at Middlebury College. His most recent books are Deep Economy, Fight Global Warming Now, and The Bill McKibben Reader.

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YES! Magazine's ongoing coverage of the U.N. climate negotiations in Copenhagen.

Video courtesy of Current Green.

The highly-anticipated second week in Copenhagen, when the outcome of the U.N. climate negotiations will be decided, has begun.

Thousands of newly-arriving government delegates and observers are pouring into the conference center, and the corridors are now full to capacity. Hallways are like a busy metro station; hundreds of delegates in suits and carrying briefing documents rushing by every minute. People’s faces express excitement and wariness. It’s sometimes challenging to focus amid the bustle.

The already-tight security is tightening down even further, in anticipation of 117 heads of state arriving later in the week. Traveling in the city center today, I saw vans of police patrolling the streets and helicopters flying overhead. A high, second security fence was erected around the conference center. Secondary badges have been issued to limit the number of entrants—including youth. Due to massive protest directly outside the conference center, U.N. security on Wednesday morning locked down the center and is prohibiting all non-governmental participants from entering, even with proper accreditation and secondary badges. There are reports that demonstrators outside have been tear-gassed by police.

Poor countries walk out

Inside the Bella Center, negotiations are heating up. On Monday, in full televised drama, delegates of the poor and developing countries (also known as the G-77) walked out of the plenary room during the middle of the Kyoto Protocol negotiation session. In these highly formal United Nations settings, it is unusual for government delegates to use overt protest tactics—although developing nations are doing so with greater frequency.

The protest was aimed at rich countries, which they claim are thwarting progress on key policies. Lead negotiators for the G-77 say rich countries like the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, and members of the European Union are working to weaken key pieces of the agreement, including a plan for quickly cutting emissions, new finance mechanisms to help developing countries make the transition to clean energy, strategies to reduce forest destruction in developing nations while allowing a livelihood for farmers, and funding to help poor counties adapt to worsening droughts, storms, and crop failures.

Negotiating tracks other than the Kyoto Protocol remain in session, but the walk-out by the poor countries sent a very clear message about their displeasure with the talks’ progress. Most observers clearly support the poor countries; international youth and NGOs immediately rallied to support the G-77 after the walk-out. One official said, “It is an injustice that the poorest nations are suffering the worst consequences of a problem to which they did not contribute. Rich countries must repay their climate debt.”

Will America lead?

Creating a fair, ambitious, and binding treaty will take extraordinary political will—and virtually everyone agrees that only the United States can provide it. On Sunday, a Canadian youth silenced a room of US youth by saying “I am a Canadian. And I’m giving up on working with Canada because Canada will only move when America moves. My country is waiting for you. The best thing I can do is help you get your government to act.”

The United States may be the most powerful country in the world, but has been notably silent in the negotiations in Copenhagen. The U.S. has a huge presence—it brought over 150 negotiators and built a massive briefing center next to the plenary rooms—but virtually everyone I have talked with in the Bella Center is disappointed by the lack of leadership from the US. With President Bush out of office, the international community had high hopes America would lead the world—just as America did in forging a treaty to phase out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which were depleting our ozone layer.

Some good news: last Wednesday, I sat 20 feet from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson, who announced that her agency ruled carbon dioxide is a pollutant. (Speaking to U.S. youth and NGOs, she said with measured humor, “The government finally realized CO2 endangers human health… news flash.”) The ruling allows the EPA to regulate greenhouse chemicals without new action from Congress. However, many people wonder whether President Obama will use this authority or hold it as a bargaining chip for talks with Congress.

Unfortunately, with a clean energy bill stalled in the Senate, it appears the State Department negotiators are “greenwashing” America’s stance in Copenhagen. For example, the US has proposed a (pathetic) reduction in carbon pollution of 4 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 — but, by using 2005 as a baseline year, actually claiming it is a “17 percent reduction.” Also, the government is even claiming the slight dip in emissions caused by the recession is a “sign of real commitment.”

The hundreds of American youth here in Copenhagen are now calling on President Obama to live up to his campaign promise to lead on climate change.

They want him to hold a joint session of Congress, just as he did with health care, to push the Senate to adopting a strong clean energy bill. Actions are being planned for Obama's Friday arrival to remind him “You have the Power” and “Yes, You Can.” Earlier this week, I joined in delivering a letter signed by one hundred American young elected officials calling on Obama and Congress to “lead once again by forging a bold, binding, and just agreement in Copenhagen that will secure a safe and abundant world for future generations of Americans.”

Being in Copenhagen, I am reminded just how much power the United States has—and how much its citizens have. Last week, Tuvalu’s negotiator said the entire international negotiating process, which could help the world avoid potentially catastrophic climate change, “is being held up by a handful of United States senators.”

“If there was ever a time..."

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to listen as Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, spoke to a gathering of clean energy entrepreneurs. After discussing the economic opportunities of clean energy for jobs, security, and innovation, he switched to a somber tone as he observed that “the pace of international negotiations seems not to reflect the severity and urgency of what we are seeing," such as the rapid disappearance of glaciers that provide water to millions of people and the rising seas which threaten coastal cities across the world.

In a marked departure from his known diplomatic neutrality, he stunned the audience by concluding, “It’s clear we cannot rely on the governmental sector on its own to act in time. World leaders are failing to respond with the urgency which the science demands. If there was ever a time for a grassroots mobilization, this is it.”

Global Climate Action
Photo essay: In vigils and protests around the world, activists stood up for a fair, binding climate treaty.

His profound statement still echoes in my ears. This past weekend, hundreds of thousands of people across the planet took place in a worldwide day of vigils and marches calling for a fair, ambitious, and binding treaty from Copenhagen. Over 3,000 events in 150 counties across the world made it one of the largest days of political action in history. In Copenhagen, international youth working inside the conference center joined an estimated 100,000 people in a climate change march from downtown Copenhagen to the Bella Center. Despite the cold, the crowd was upbeat, chanting, “We want a real deal” and “Blah blah blah: act now.”  Here is the latest video footage.

We have the power

I am continually reminded that the only way we will solve this climate crisis is by building the world of our dreams—by citizens from every nation working together across language, culture, and religion in a historically unprecedented way. If we can solve the climate crisis, we will certainly gain the moral courage to solve other global crises.

As a high-level government leader said in the main plenary today, “while we must recognize the gravity of the worst-case scientific scenarios, we must also imagine the opportunities if we succeed: a healthy, prosperous, and sustainable world.”

Dominic Frongillo, 26, is town councilor, deputy town supervisor, and leader of Energy Independent Caroline in the town of Caroline, New York. He was a member of the U.S. youth delegation to the U.N. climate negotiations in Bali, and is blogging from Copengagen at ItsGettingHotInHere.org. 

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YES! Magazine's ongoing coverage of the U.N. climate negotiations in Copenhagen.

© 2009 Democracy Now!

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop15) turned ugly today when police officers beat back hundreds of demonstrators, including a group of 50 to 100 delegates that were trying to meet with the protesters.

More than 250 people were arrested, including spokespeople for Climate Justice Action (CJA), a global network of NGOs that organized a walkout at the Bella Center today. CJA’s spokesperson Dan Glall told Mantoe Phakathi at Inter Press Service that “as a condition for going back to the negotiations, we demand industrialized nations uphold the Kyoto Protocol, commit adequate funds to adaptation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly.”

OneClimate has video (below) of today’s walkout.

“More than 1,000 people have been arrested, detained and released over the course of the past week,” Jennifer Prediger writes for Grist. “Some were made to sit on freezing sidewalks for six hours in a nasty version of time out. The people who threw rocks and set cars on fire were rightfully detained. But the droves who were dragged in last night for dancing awkwardly in Christiana? Seems like overkill to me.”

The chaos outside reflects the increasing pressure inside the Bella Center, as delegates turn to the United States and China for leadership in the final days of the summit. Together these countries account for 42 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.

In order to finalize a global climate agreement in Copenhagen, both countries need to take a big step forward, as David Doniger and Barbara Finamore report for Grist. For the U.S., this means aid for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people; for China, this means making steady progress to meet the country’s carbon reduction goals.

The U.S. has already committed to pay its share of a $30 billion fund to last through 2012. “But to lead in Copenhagen, the U.S. needs to back even larger investments to meet these core needs for the longer-term—2015 or 2020,” Doniger and Finamore write. “China has the opportunity to enhance its standing as a responsible world leader by building global confidence in the implementation of its carbon reduction goals.”

But as David Corn reports for Mother Jones, China and the U.S. are apparently “stuck in a standoff.” An Obama administration official insisted that it’s not about the money: “‘We have to get the developing nations into an international agreement,’ the official said… Yet China has forcefully resisted the idea of incorporating their self-professed emissions goals (essentially, slowing the growth rate of emissions) into a binding agreement. China has also repeatedly said that it will not submit its performance to official outside vetting.”

Corn writes, “But with 115 heads of states beginning to arrive, the Copenhagen talks have left some fundamental gaps for the last minute. Even if those gaps are bridged, the resulting agreement could fall far short of what experts say is necessary to redress the dire consequences of rising global temperatures. Just ask the scientists roaming the halls.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Copenhagen today in a last minute appearance. Clinton has booked a full day of meetings on Thursday and will join President Barack Obama in negotiations when he arrives Friday. Like Obama’s schedule switch at the conference (he originally planned to be there last week and instead will arrive Friday), Clinton’s arrival could indicate the U.S.’s intention to seal a deal by the end of the week.

For live updates of the negotiations and protests, check out The Uptake’s live video stream from the Bella Center.

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