Copenhagen climate change summit hopes and action.

Both AS & A2 students have something to look forward to as the Climate Change debate promises a Seattle-like ending in Copenhagen.

Articles by Naomi Klein (No Logo) in Rolling Stone and The Nation are worth looking at.
For AS Students they touch on Pressure Groups and umbrella movements, and in the November issue of The Nation there is The UK’s Climate Rebels By Maria Margaronis. Very up-to-date info on British pressure Groups.
“London’s bare Blackheath, …………..spreads a city of colorful pop-up tents, kitchens under canvas, composting toilets and a solar-powered cinema. The bright pink banner over the entrance reads, Capitalism Is Crisis. Welcome to the 2009 Camp for Climate Action, a weeklong, late-summer strategy session, teach-in and experiment in sustainable living by Britain’s direct-action movement against climate change. ………………Blackheath is still common land, where any local is in theory free to graze his sheep. Wat Tyler’s Peasant Revolt assembled here in 1381 to march against the government, as did the Kent rebellion in 1450 and suffragettes in the early twentieth century. The campers see themselves as heirs to those traditions, and in a sense they are. If you are young (or not so young), idealistic and radical in Britain now, this is where you go for community, engagement and direct-action training.”

No wonder the young prefer such exciting activities to joining political parties!

For A2 students of both Global Politics and the American syllabus, there are neo-colonialism accusations aimed at the Global North in relation to suggested Climate Change solutions. In addition students will also gain insight into the Global South’s attempts to link with global pressure groups to force action on climate change. All good info on impact of globalisation, and on relationship between global north/global south.

“The movement converging on Copenhagen,………..is about a single issue—climate change—but it weaves a coherent narrative about its cause, and its cures, that incorporates virtually every issue on the planet. Climate-justice activists in Copenhagen will argue that, far from solving the climate crisis, carbon-trading represents an unprecedented privatization of the atmosphere, and that offsets and sinks threaten to become a resource grab of colonial proportions.”

See also;
Climate Justice Action
http://www.climate-justice-action.org/

Mobilization for Climate Justice
http://www.actforclimatejustice.org/

Students of American Politics may also be interested in criticism of Obama by Naomi Klein in ““Obama’s Bad Influence,” in which she deconstructs the myth that America has embarked on a new era of enlightened multilateralism.”