Courtesy 350reasons.org350.org is taking a big-tent approach to activism on its International Day of Climate Action this Saturday, inviting anyone who wants to help to join a climate-change demonstration, or create one of their own.
That open invitation means not everyone will be pushing the same message. In fact, a trio of groups will use the day, and the number 350, to highlight their opposition to market-based approaches to capping global warming emissions. In other words, to oppose cap-and-trade, the mechanism integral to the clean energy bill in Congress and to the United Nations approach.
Those groups—Rising Tide North America, Carbon Trade Watch, and the Camp for Climate Action—recently launched 350reasons.org, a collection of reasons why they oppose emissions trading. At climate-day events on Saturday they’ll be handing out pamphlets (sorry, “zines”), detailing some of those reasons. They’ve also promised a “video report,” to be released soon. They’ve essentially taken a no-compromise approach to climate action, preferring to defeat a flawed plan rather than see it succeed and hope it can be fixed later on.
“We’re trying to say there’s no way to reach 350 parts per million through carbon trading,” said Rising Tide’s Brihannala Morgan, a U.C. Berkeley graduate student. “It’s a false solution.”
Among the 350 reasons:
- “Carbon Trading means more coal.” The site notes that the Waxman-Markey energy bill passed by the House included not just cap-and-trade but provisions to allow 43 new coal plants.
- “It perpetuates the dominance of rich countries over poor.”
- “Carbon trading is based on an ideological belief in the omnipotence of the market.
- Carbon markets are fundamentally undemocratic.” Climatologist James Hansen opposes cap-and-trade. He says the proposed UN plan is “guaranteed to fail.”
Actually, the group has 450 reasons at the moment, Morgan said; it’s working to edit them down.
350.org founder Bill McKibben says the point of Saturday’s events was never to choose specific policies, but to build a broad movement demanding that leaders reverse the rising atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. For too long, he said, the climate problem has been a debate between experts—scientists, economists, and policy wonks.
“There’s been no movement to back them up, no counter-pressure big enough to stand up to the unrelenting pressure from vested interest,” he said last week. “We’re helping provide the popular part of that movement.”
While 350.org doesn’t take positions on specific policy strategies such as cap-and-trade, it shares the sense of urgency of the no-cap-and-trade groups. For that matter, most people working to push a climate bill through Congress share the same sense of urgency. Most readily admit that any bill that can pass through Congress will be too weak to stop climate change. But they would prefer to get started rather than to insist on a perfect bill.
“We have to start some place and we have to start now,” Daniel J. Weiss, director for climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, said in response to a Rising Tide campaign last month.
350.org organizers say they’re OK with off-message groups joining Saturday’s events.
“We encouraged lots of different groups to join,” said May Boeve, a 350.org partnerships director. “We’ve cast a very large net.”
Those groups will include churches, performance artists, and extreme athletes. They will include Chinese businessmen holding a black-tie gala in Shanghai, an odd partner for the 350reasons.org groups critical of corporate influence.
When I asked McKibben about how to engage the ‘no-compromise’ types last week, he said it was too soon to fight over plans. No legislation would be sufficient until the public was making more noise on the climate emergency.
“It’s too early to make calls on what happens with the legislation, because we haven’t built a movement to push that process as hard as it needs to be pushed,” he said. “Politicians aren’t feeling pressure either in Washington or in Copenhagen to do more than the minimum. We need to provide that pressure.
“Another way to say that is, we need to give people who want to do the right thing some room to do it. Barack Obama has not laid his cards on the table yet. We need to give him some maneuvering room, to show him that people have his back, not just here but all over the world.”
The question, then, seems to be whether 350reasons.org and the like will amplify the pressure on political leaders, or fracture it.
U.S. warns China against ‘stillborn’ climate deal
Comments
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ohfercleanenergy Posted 2:24 pm
22 Oct 2009
Sadly, that train does not exist, only this real-world slow train being built just now that creaks and groans with hard seats and and pretty slow speeds at first. The prototype. The ride will be bumpy.
People are asking me to roll up my sleeves and help build/fix this crappy existing train. And I might still miss the big game!
Humpf! I have a solution. I am going to stand here and stomp my foot, wait here at the station, and call attention to what a dorky train is being built. Maybe even stop it from being built. Look at the paint job! Look at how slow it goes at first!
Stomp, stomp!
I will absolutely miss the big game.
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Agent Simple Green Posted 3:55 pm
22 Oct 2009
The big game is upon us, and it's been upon us. Those that look to climate and think political "savior" machinations start and end around this subject are grossly mistaken. Thanks politicos, bureaucrats, and mainstream "environmental" NGO's, for starting to look at this. Where were you 10, 15, 20 years ago when communities were fighting against many of the things this Bill will intensify?
So a corporate-backed, multi-billion dollar corporate giveaway package of historic proportion is squeaking and groaning and part of some mass movement? Status quo is not the cruddy train you've described- status quo is the elaborate series of happenings that have led us to the point where mainstream enviro. groups are clambering onto a Bill that has little change in mind. Seems like that's the shiny train going backwards.
Slow speeds as that train starts, eh? That's an understatement: years before people realize that elements of a failed bill have created a bureaucracy that will not easily be undone, then what? How about a market-based mathematical system that has no real intention of reducing emissions to match scientifically venerated targets?
While I admire your chastising of people for reaching for what they believe is possible (wait, no, I don't admire that) -- it's no secret to grassroots organizers how "creaky" and "groaning" organizing and movement building is, NOT SO the journey of corporate-lobbied political policy, which has succeeded in
a) convincing lots of people it will benefit them (before corporations)
b) establishing good repute, appealing towards people's "do something, already" frustrations
How this hall of mirrors is so paralyzing is as unfortunate as the situation wherein "enviros" are willing to let Congress slide a little because now they've renamed/relabeled policy. We should be a little more critical of those who would pass off garbage as progress, and less critical of ourselves for knowing the time is well past due for not demanding, but creating a world we know is possible- step by grueling step.
(We'll save you a nosebleed seat at the game if you want to join us- hurry up, you're late already!)
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Waidy Posted 6:06 pm
22 Oct 2009
I am also in support of "350 dream 102409", in which I made an entry for my dream.
Waidy Lee
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lorax7 Posted 11:57 pm
22 Oct 2009
We have less than 10 years to turn this around, to make serious progress in the transition to a post-carbon economy & way of life.
Cap and trade has already failed in Europe, which saw a net increase in emissions - while corporations, particularly within the fossil fuel industry, have made a killing off of it.
How much time do people think we have to be messing around with these failed market solutions? There's no going back, there will be no chance to build another "train."
Runnaway climate change is not an option! Revolutions have been fought for much, much less than what the consequences of climate change are. I think what the groups involved are asking is that folks get involved in civil disobedience campaigns, build local economic/social alternatives, and support any strategies for their country, region, or community that have a reasonable chance of working.
Transitioning to a sustainable way of life is no easy undertaking, and the challenge for everyone alive in these times is monumental enough without wasting years of time and energy on something crafted in large parts by some of the biggest culprits of climate change, and something that has already failed.
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Chris Pratt Posted 9:42 am
23 Oct 2009
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randino Posted 9:55 am
23 Oct 2009
The question is what would've been the repurcussions for labor if the Wagner Act had not passed, or for African Americans if the civil rights acts had not passed? Answer. It would not have been good. In fact such defeats would've been considered disasterous.
The climate bill is a combination of the good, the mediocre and the dreadful. It is not our bill. It is Congress's bill. But of equal or greater importance is the overall message that would be sent out to the nation and the world, if this legislation is defeated. It will be looked upon as a historic defeat of the climate movement. Our foes will be delighted and our friends will be crushed. There will be a big sign hung around our necks saying Looser. It will be years if not decades before anyone will give us the time of day about the issue.
We would benefit from the message that would be sent out by the passage of climate legislation. We would receive an old fashioned ass whipping if it is defeated. The skeptics should beware of what they wish for. They might get it.
Randy Cunningham
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Chris Pratt Posted 10:14 am
23 Oct 2009
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Billhook Posted 11:43 am
23 Oct 2009
If it is an alternative to the forthcoming Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
then I wish you luck in getting even a response to your invitations from the many nations whose formal agreement of an annually declining global cap on GHG output, is prerequisite for cutting global emissions.
The idea that a cap is unnecessary since, by somehow imposing a swingeing carbon tax in the US you might somehow so advance non-fossil energy that it would, by market forces, displace the problematic global CO2 output (that forms just a fraction of our GHG problem), is patently false.
Without a formal legally-binding global cap on emissions, the fossil fuels supposedly 'displaced' by renewables are left on the international market for the next bidder to buy and burn.
They could, in theory, be taxed off the market worldwide, but only if you miraculously gained such power that unprecedented and intensifying fossil energy taxation became both politically feasible and sustainable globally for the next several decades.
A third rather insuperable problem for proponents of the un-capped notion of GHG emissions management is that, after 20 yrs of negotiations, no nation will even give the idea the time of day, as it is wholly lacking in numerical credibility, and is also essentially antithetical to an internationally equitable resolution of the problem of global warming: i.e. via "Common but Differentiated Responsibilities."
It is maybe worth noting that neither EU nor developing nations will sign up to a treaty that is less than evidently equitable, meaning that US activists' opposition to a US bill, and thus to a global treaty, is probably the best chance the global fossil lobby has left to it of continuing maximized global fossil fuel combustion.
Regards,
Billhook
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Royal Enfield Posted 1:30 pm
23 Oct 2009
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EnviroShow Posted 5:55 pm
23 Oct 2009
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Chris Pratt Posted 7:33 am
24 Oct 2009
It was GW Bush who said :you are either with us or against us". If that is your attitude then good luck getting to 60 votes. I am happy to share the planet with you, just don't make me work for an Energy Bill that I think is designed to fail. After you have done the hard work of "figuring out" how to get 60 votes, let me know how it's done, because I am just a dumbass eeking out a living insulating old windows and might be ready to do some really hard work.
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Gar Lipow Posted 10:59 am
24 Oct 2009
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