Sorry, will a coke do?
Here is a brief update from my first day here. After a long flight to Paris and another smaller leg to Copenhagen I found myself wandering rather aimlessly looking for info about where to go and what to do– how to plug in. I had wiped all such info from my computer, in a fit of customs paranoia after being denied entrance to Canada on the basis of activism last week. So I ended up, after some vague directions, at a place called Christiania, a squatted city of a thousand, which has now practically become a historic underground center in Copenhagen.
From there I was able to find directions to anther space recently opened just for the COP15 summit, to provide housing and workshop space for up to two thousand people. It is the largest of several such places as far as I can understand. It was a trek to get there, a compound located down a dark street a couple of miles from the city center. I passed the place once and then turned around before a couple of young danish women hailed me, wearing yellow safey vests over their winter clothing. They cheerfully asked me if I needed accommodation, and pointed me towards the “info-cafe.”
I found a good spot to sleep, with some friends on a classroom floor, as per usual.
I really missed Europe. Amid the tension and stress amazing gatherings take place. No one is in charge, everything is shared. Even after being awake and in travel mode I couldn’t take myself away from the evening’s action info meeting that took place until ten o clock.
There is a lot of good thinking here about the context in which the summit is taking place, as world leaders react to the climate crisis by trying to save the economic crisis. Like Naomi Klein makes so clear in “The Shock Doctrine,” destructive economic reform is almost always preceded by catastrophe or crisis. The shock leaves a vacuum, and provides an excuse to corporatize more of our lives and common resources. Now the new heroes of the climate crisis are on their way to save neoliberalism, through new “green” markets, carbon offsetting and trading, without actually bringing us back down to 350ppm, or winning us sustainable local economies.
Ah, back to the meeting.. Several hundred activists gathered in a semi-circle in a large warehouse room, and the weeks plans were laid out. Here, from the very bottom of the climate summit, each day is distilled into a particular theme, with individual groups coordinating the message and focus of the collective action, and bringing it to the group to ask participation. Each theme was well articulated, as two representatives stepped forward for each action to provide a brief political and theoretical background for the action, as well as logistics and specific does and don’ts. Some were more subdued than others. Hit the production day, which targeted shipping in and out of the port of Copenhagen, was an example of a harder action, the tactical elements of which were only required to be unified by a commitment to cause no personal harm to others, but anticipated heavy confrontation from police, groups could participate in any way they saw fit.
Other actions, like food and agriculture day, focused on including delegates from the global south, creating positive dialogue and handing out food, besides sound systems and a “good fun party” in the streets. Another theme drew links between climate justice and immigration. A final closing action to the week will be an attempt to get as close to within the COP15s comfort zone as possible, using strength of numbers and diverse color coded groups to penetrate the actual conference center, and putting under-represented delegates in the forefront of a “people’s summit from below.”
All of the actions seemed courageous, some beyond belief. A specific police state has been created for the summit itself and the movement seeks to draw the connections between the climate crisis and the economic crisis, and show that the latest rounds of climate talks have aimed more than anything at using climate as just another way to push neoliberalism, in greenwashed milleu of corporate ridiculousness. The new corporate slogan, on billboards around town is “Welcome to Hopenhagen,” featuring front and center, you guessed it…a big coca-cola bottle.
A lawyer from the legal team gave a brief update. The police can detain people on mere suspicion of protesting and hold them for 12 hours. People and their belongings can be searched at any point without due process or warrant and the courts now have the authority to hold protesters for up to 40 days without a hearing, for simply blocking a road. Temporary jails have been shipped in from Switzerland, of all supposedly ‘neutral’ places, as the government seems to be building their capacity for mass arrests in, sorry, I have to say it again…Hopenhagen.
Most of my work is going to be with a group of indigenous activist from the US and Canada, particularly as Canada continues to make a joke of climate progress with the tar-sands. For the time I am enjoying being here, at the very bottom of Hopenhagen where the dodgy truth about greenwashing is most evident.
Peace, Logan
At this point, I would rather have a carbon-neutral beer
Will a coke do instead?
In September Nick and Aleythea (now our third musketeer!) and I dropped off the observation deck at Niagara Falls with a large banner proclaiming the Canadian tar sands development as a roadblock to a clean energy future in north america. The action preceded Canadian PM Stephen Harper first visit with Obama. Both of them are leaders who need to be held accountable. The tar sands are being called the “dirtiest project on earth,” but gets almost no publicity in the U.S. It will soon become our primary source of fossil fuels, in barrels three times dirtier than crude oil. We must try to keep the future in mind.
