The threat of climate change and global warming, fueled by relentless commercialization and excessive consumption, has turned into a fighting ground for both policymakers and concerned citizens. The coming decade is set to determine not only a collective response to reducing carbon emissions, but the entire future direction for international development and the global justice movement.
While diplomats wrangle over targets for 2020 and 2050, the new 10:10 campaign aims to cut the UK's carbon emissions by 10 percent by the end of 2010 - precisely the sort of deep, quick cut the scientists say
is needed, writes Ian Katz.
As world leaders remain reluctant to take meaningful environmental action, it is not only the
climate, but also climate talks that are in crisis. At the same time activists are meeting at venues around the world to plan a concerted grassroots response to the Copenhagen
summit, writes Robert Tokar.
Recognition of the urgency of the climate crisis is spreading fast enough to dot the globe with hot spots of protest. Ten years after the Seattle demonstrations, activists are envisaging an international
day of action that might create a unified global environmental movement, says Mark Engler.
Current strategies to address climate change remain woefully inadequate, with governments abdicating their responsibility to citizens in favour of special interests. Rather than 'cap and trade', we urgently need to increase the price of carbon with a rebate of money to the public, argues Dr James Hansen.
Many of the large-scale technologies that corporations and governments are proposing to prevent climate catastrophe are unlikely to be effective and should be replaced by more realistic and socially just solutions, says a report by Coporate Watch.
Since industrialised countries are most responsible for global warming, they owe poorer countries a ‘climate
debt’. Rich countries need to pay off that debt by helping poorer
countries adapt to climate change and by sharing the world's atmospheric space more fairly, says Nick Dearden.
Technological solutions to climate change cannot deliver enough carbon cuts if global consumption levels do not decrease. Beyond resorting to 'techno-fixes', governments should prioritise economic reform to meet human needs more equitably and sustainably, argues Merrick Godhaven.
