Get ready for a rocky year. From now on, rising prices, powerful storms, severe droughts and floods, and other unexpected events are likely to play havoc with the fabric of global society, producing chaos and political unrest. Start with a simple fact: the prices of basic food staples are already approaching or exceeding their 2008 peaks, that year when deadly riots erupted in dozens of countries around the world.
Infamous for fomenting mass disobedience on bicycles during the Copenhagen climate Summit, touring the UK recruiting a rebel clown army, running courses in post-capitalist culture and falling in love with utopias, the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination exists somewhere between art and activism, poetry and politics. The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination is not an institution or a group, not a network nor an NGO, but an affinity of friends who recognize the beauty of collective creative disobedience. It treats insurrection as an art, and art as a means of preparing for the coming insurrection.
They did it! After pre-announcing that no major decisions would result from Cancun talks and nearly two weeks of debates and discussions, the army of international climate change negotiators reached an agreement fully in line with the low expectations for it. In fact, they even managed to lower the bar on key issues.
Is China smartening up its environmental and social act in Africa? It certainly wants to be seen as doing just that. One telling example was the recent Chinese government-sponsored ‘top Chinese enterprises in Africa’ competition, won by China Road and Bridge Corporation [CRBC].
Despite the recent reports showing the alarming advancement of global warming trends, climate negotiators at Cancun were destined to abandon the essential goal of mandatory emissions controls. The result, a set of voluntary, market-based incentives, is a worst-case scenario for the planet. These will not only spare polluters from having to reduce emissions, but they will also likely allow polluters to strip indigenous communities of their land rights as industries seek out carbon offsets.
When Ok Chin was a child, her mother brought her to an orphanage. The family was poor, and her mother heard that the girl would get fed and clothed. Ok Chin would get an education. Maybe if the family’s fortunes improved, she could rejoin her brothers and sisters.
What happened next was unexpected.
American exceptionalism: destructive. Earth exceptionalism: a planet-saving strategy.
Cancun was not a surprise. Nor was it a failure. This much is easy to say.
But was it a success? This is a more difficult question. I used to have an irritating friend. Every time you made a strong, implausibly simple claim – something like “Cancun was a success” – he would reply “Compared to what?” It was a pedantic device, but it worked well enough. It made you think, which, I suppose, is why it was irritating.
Rumors running through the halls of the Moon Palace, the Cancun resort where delegates from the 192 countries that belong to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are meeting, paint a bleak picture of the possibility of moving toward a fair and effective climate deal in the near future.
The UN Climate Conference (COP16) in Cancun is turning out to be both anti-climactic and anti-climatic.