The United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop15) turned ugly today when police officers beat back hundreds of demonstrators, including a group of 50 to 100 delegates that were trying to meet with the protesters.
More than 250 people were arrested, including spokespeople for Climate Justice Action (CJA), a global network of NGOs that organized a walkout at the Bella Center today. CJA's spokesperson Dan Glall told Mantoe Phakathi at Inter Press Service that "as a condition for going back to the negotiations, we demand industrialized nations uphold the Kyoto Protocol, commit adequate funds to adaptation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly."
OneClimate has video (below) of today's walkout.
"More than 1,000 people have been arrested, detained and released over the course of the past week," Jennifer Prediger writes for Grist. "Some were made to sit on freezing sidewalks for six hours in a nasty version of time out. The people who threw rocks and set cars on fire were rightfully detained. But the droves who were dragged in last night for dancing awkwardly in Christiana? Seems like overkill to me."
The chaos outside reflects the increasing pressure inside the Bella Center, as delegates turn to the United States and China for leadership in the final days of the summit. Together these countries account for 42 percent of the world's carbon emissions.
In order to finalize a global climate agreement in Copenhagen, both countries need to take a big step forward, as David Doniger and Barbara Finamore report for Grist. For the U.S., this means aid for the world's poorest and most vulnerable people; for China, this means making steady progress to meet the country's carbon reduction goals.
The U.S. has already committed to pay its share of a $30 billion fund to last through 2012. "But to lead in Copenhagen, the U.S. needs to back even larger investments to meet these core needs for the longer-term-2015 or 2020," Doniger and Finamore write. "China has the opportunity to enhance its standing as a responsible world leader by building global confidence in the implementation of its carbon reduction goals."
But as David Corn reports for Mother Jones, China and the U.S. are apparently "stuck in a standoff." An Obama administration official insisted that it's not about the money: "'We have to get the developing nations into an international agreement,' the official said... Yet China has forcefully resisted the idea of incorporating their self-professed emissions goals (essentially, slowing the growth rate of emissions) into a binding agreement. China has also repeatedly said that it will not submit its performance to official outside vetting."
Corn writes, "But with 115 heads of states beginning to arrive, the Copenhagen talks have left some fundamental gaps for the last minute. Even if those gaps are bridged, the resulting agreement could fall far short of what experts say is necessary to redress the dire consequences of rising global temperatures. Just ask the scientists roaming the halls."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Copenhagen today in a last minute appearance. Clinton has booked a full day of meetings on Thursday and will join President Barack Obama in negotiations when he arrives Friday. Like Obama's schedule switch at the conference (he originally planned to be there last week and instead will arrive Friday), Clinton's arrival could indicate the U.S.'s intention to seal a deal by the end of the week.
For live updates of the negotiations and protests, check out The Uptake's live video stream from the Bella Center.
<This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
UPDATE: Negotiations stalled today in Copenhagen when African nations walked out in protest of perceived attempts by rich nations to kill the Kyoto Protocol, Talking Points Memo reports. The talks are back in session now. Watch Link TV's live stream from Copenhagen for more on this story as it develops.
On Saturday, December 12, climate activists rallied to call for a binding climate agreement. Vigils, fasts, and protests were held around the world, and in the largest environmental demonstration in history, 100,000 activists marched in downtown Copenhagen from the Christiansborg Palace to the Bella Center, where the United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop15) is being held.
Overall, the march was peaceful and positive, ending with a vigil outside the Bella Center, where the demonstrators were greeted by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. However, Danish police detained more than 500 activists at the back of the line, where European "black bloc" anarchists were trying to infiltrate, as Jacob Wheeler and Chuck Olsen report for The UpTake.
Kumi Naidoo, the first African leader of Greenpeace, is optimistic and enthusiastic about a deal in Copenhagen-and the role activists will play in making it happen. In an interview with Madeline Ostrander for Yes! Magazine, Naidoo says that the "... summit itself would not be taking place had it not been for groups like Greenpeace and others who have fought for a very, very long time. The fact that we are here is in itself an expression of innovation, courage, and willingness to speak truth to power."
According to Naidoo, activists are putting pressure on leaders by working both inside and outside the negotiations, and "delegations are reaching out to us as they try to figure out what's happening. Sometimes we civil society folks get to know what these countries are doing and thinking before some of the other negotiators do." Without the "sweat of activist groups," Naidoo says, Copenhagen wouldn't even be happening.
OneClimate posted a video overview (below) of demonstrators' work at the Cop15 climate march on Saturday. "People are not in Copenhagen to bury the climate treaty, " said Vandana Shiva, Director of Navdanya, a women-centered movement for the protection of biological and cultural diversity. "They are here to implement it! Let this be the time where, you, marching to the Cop15, tell the leaders, 'We have the power... we will be the change we want to see, and no one is going to stop us.'"
In other news, Tuvalu and other small island nations introduced a proposal that would commit the world's developed nations to reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep their islands habitable. They want Cop15 to produce two binding agreements: One to extend the Kyoto Protocol and make it stricter, and another that would require the United States to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
Tuvalu's lead negotiator, Ian Fry, made an impassioned plea to the U.S. Senate, President Barack Obama, and the entire UN climate conference Saturday, telling them that his country's very survival depends on the decisions they make in the next week, as Jeffrey Allen reports for OneWorld. Fry's speech brought other nations' officials to tears.
"The fate of my country rests in your hands," Fry told the other delegates.
This weekend's action helped set the stage for an exciting second week in Copenhagen, as Geoffrey Lean writes for Grist. "If the conference is successful, then the more than 100 world leaders due to come to the Danish capital this week will initiate the biggest economic change since the Industrial Revolution."
There are still arguments over the details of any final deal, such as how the measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions will be monitored and verified, who will fund it, and how to retain and improve the Kyoto Protocol.
"The likeliest outcome is a toughened Kyoto Protocol, with a linked treaty covering the United States and developing countries (at present excluded from its provisions) and new agreements made in Copenhagen," Lean writes. "... It will be one big package, or nothing. And it may all come down to the last few hours of the last day-or night, since no one wants to move until the last minute. The outcome of the Copenhagen talks is going to be a cliffhanger."
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Over 15,000 people from 192 countries began to work towards an international climate deal today in Copenhagen. These discussions are part of the largest and most important United Nations climate change summit in history. After two years of contentious negotiations, heads of states are convening through Dec. 18 to curb greenhouse gases, encourage the development of clean energy, and transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to help developing nations curb climate change.
It's going to be a lively 11 days. Jacob Wheeler has already posted video of a demonstration to save the climate for In These Times' blog, The ITT List. For live coverage of the Cop15 summit, make sure to check out video streams hosted by The UpTake and OneWorld.
Robert Eschelman reports in The Nation that Cop15's probable outcome will be a draft agreement. But what will this potential deal look like? "Four issues will dominate the negotiations taking place inside Copenhagen's Bella Center. First, developed nations, such as the United States, must commit to significant reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions. Second, developing countries like India and China will have to reduce the rate at which their emissions increase over the next several decades. Third, developed countries will have to provide clean energy technologies and funding to developing nations as they address the effects of climate change. And, finally, negotiators will have to agree on how to monitor and enforce an international climate agreement."
The U.S. has taken some good first steps to reaching such an agreement. Last week, President Barack Obama announced the country's commitment to a global fund that will mobilize $10 billion per year by 2012 to support developing countries that are already experiencing the effects of climate change. It's an important first step. But as Yes! Magazine reports, using the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to manage this money isn't a good idea. "Both have track records of saddling poor countries with debt, requiring government spending cuts that undermine national economies, and handing lucrative contracts to transnational corporations."
President Obama has also changed the timing of his Copenhagen visit from this Wednesday, Dec. 9, to the conference's big finale on Friday, Dec. 18. Grist consulted with a panel of experts regarding the significance of the schedule switch. They all agree: It's a big deal. Obama's arrival on the last day "changes the game," according to Kenneth P. Green, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "It suggests that a 'deal' is already in the bag, and Obama's expecting that he'll get to bask in the glow of a new global agreement, flagrantly repudiating the position of the Bush administration in previous climate negotiations." Andrew Light, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, believes that Obama's appearance at the end of the conference will "transform the Copenhagen climate conference into the largest summit yet of world leaders focused on global warming."
Scientists warn that without such an agreement in Copenhagen, the Earth will face ever-rising temperatures, flooding of coastal cities (about half of the human race lives within 100 miles of a coastline), more extreme weather events, and the spread of diseases.
Air America features a comprehensive look at what's at stake in Copenhagen. "The change in U.S. administrations a year ago had aroused hopes the long-running climate talks might finally produce an all-encompassing package in 2009 to combat global warming and help its victims. Too little time and too little agreement, however, especially between rich and poor countries, mean the 192-nation Copenhagen conference is likely to produce, at best, a framework - a basis for continuing talks and signing internationally binding final agreements next year."
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Opponents of health care reform are trying to pit the insured against everyone else. Conservative Republicans like Rep. Mike Pence warn that if we get a public option, millions of Americans will lose their private coverage because so many employers will stop offering private insurance. What Pence doesn't say is that right now, employers can stop providing insurance at any time and their workers will have nothing to fall back on. As costs rise, fewer and fewer employers are providing any health insurance at all.
Most insured people have no idea how fragile their coverage is under the status quo.
The Uptake carries President Obama's address on the uninsured, in which he hammered home the message that anyone under 65 can lose their coverage at any time. Luckily for those over 65, they have a popular public option, Medicare.
There are lots of ways to become uninsured, including job loss, employers cutting off benefits, or insurers kicking customers off the rolls. As Obama said:
Over the last twelve months, nearly six million more Americans lost their health coverage - that's 17,000 men and women every single day. We're not just talking about Americans in poverty, either - we're talking about middle-class Americans. In other words, it can happen to anyone. And based on a brand-new report from the Treasury Department, we can expect that about half of all Americans under 65 will lose their health coverage at some point over the next ten years.
It's common knowledge that insurance companies drop customers with preexisting conditions and cut paying customers off when they get sick. It might surprise you to learn that domestic violence counts as a preexisting condition in many states.
Amie Newman of RH Reality Check reports that the insurance industry figured out what feminists have been saying for decades: Once a man becomes a batterer, chances are he'll continue to abuse his wife with increasing brutality. If you're a human being, that's an outrage and a tragedy. If you're a conscience-free health insurance provider, it's a big red flag to drop victims because their wounds will cost you money. This is the logic of for-profit health insurance in a microcosm: Identify the most vulnerable and purge them because they hurt your bottom line.
Meanwhile, the Senate Finance Committee is set to unveil its long-awaited bill today. The committee will vote on the bill next week. We'll examine the bill in tomorrow's Pulse.
After a seemingly endless quest for a bipartisan bill, Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) is signaling that he's prepared to move ahead without GOP support. Good thing, too. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) swears he's serious about bipartisanship, according to the Iowa Independent, but he spent the summer telling tall tales of death panels and fundraising as an opponent of "Obamacare." Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), one potential Republican swing vote, now says she rejects the very idea of public/private competition, according to Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly.
Finally, you can use the Washington Independent's new Public Option Scoreboard to keep track of every senator's position, based on their public statements.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care and is free to reprint. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on health care affordability, health care laws, and health care controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Today, President Obama will spell out his vision for health care reform before a special joint session of Congress. The president's speech marks the final phase of health care reform. This is Obama's last chance to recapture the momentum that Democrats lost to corporate-backed town hall hooligans and misinformation during the August recess.
The Uptake asks movers and shakers in Minnesota what they want to see from the president today (video above). Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn) says he wants to see the president explain why the public option is necessary to hold down costs, and reassure them that the public option will not threaten private insurance or lead to cuts in Medicare. "It's going to be the biggest moment of his presidency," Ellison tells the Uptake, "I hope he makes it a Roosevelt moment, a Kennedy moment, a Lincoln moment, because I think he has the ability to do that."
Devona Walker of New America Media on what Obama needs to do today: Explain the plan clearly, enforce party discipline, and convince the public that reforming health care is the only way to reduce deficits in the long run.
Brooke Jarvis of Yes! Magazine offers a history lesson on why so many presidents have tried and failed to achieve universal health care:
In each case, says historian Beatrix Hoffman, "the relentless opposition of medical, business, and insurance interests pushed reformers to design health care proposals around placating their opponents more than winning popular support. In turn, ordinary people had trouble rallying around complex proposals [that didn't recognize] a universal right to health care."
The root of the problem, Hoffman says, was that the proposals came from elites who sought to compromise with interest groups, where they believed real power lay, rather than to ally with grassroots movements.
In the Progressive, Cristina Lopez argues that, while everyone needs affordable high quality health insurance, Latinos and women are most in need of a public option because they are at greater risk of being uninsured and unable to afford private insurance.
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo wonders if the Democrats are courting disaster by forcing people to buy heavily subsidized private insurance with no public option to reign in costs:
Am I the only one who thinks that if the Dems pass a bill with mandates and subsidies for poor and moderate income people to purchase it but no public option or competition with the insurers, that it will be pretty much a catastrophe for the Democrats in political terms?
You 'solve' the problem of the uninsured by passing a law forcing them to buy health insurance which, by definition, most a) cannot afford or b) are gambling they won't need because they're young and healthy. Either you end up with low subsidies which still leave it onerous to buy, thus creating a lot of disgruntled people, or you get generous subsidies, which cost a lot of money.
The health care reform battled has created deep divisions within the Democratic Party. Tonight, the president will pick his side. Will he stand with the progressives for a public option, or will he back the Blue Dogs and their watered-down, politically risky compromise proposal? Keep your eyes on tomorrow's Pulse for the post-game breakdown.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care and is free to reprint. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on health care affordability, health care laws, and health care controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
After Ben Bernanke allowed an $8 trillion housing bubble to ravage the global economy and nearly destroy the U.S. financial system, President Barack Obama has decided he deserves another term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. (The UpTake has video of Obama's announcement here.) As the Fed Chair, Bernanke has more economic power than any other person on the planet. By heading the committee that sets interest rates, he can control the economy's rate of growth or contraction; as head regulator of the largest banks, Bernanke has more influence over the rules of the economic game than anyone else.
Why is the Bernanke reappointment a mistake? Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive turns to Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent democratic socialist from Vermont. Put simply, Bernanke is completely culpable for allowing an economic crisis to foment.
"Like the rest of the Bush administration, he was asleep at the wheel during this period and did nothing to move our financial system onto safer grounds," Sanders said.
Corporate media generally neglects to mention Bernanke's role at the Fed prior to 2008, and instead credits him with stopping a second Great Depression. It's true that the Fed has done everything possible to keep Wall Street from imploding, but Bernanke also repeatedly insisted that the subprime mortgage crisis would be "contained" as late as 2007 and made no plans for a situation that might prove worse than his rosy forecasts.
As William Greider explains for The Nation, it's a bit too soon to celebrate our economic salvation at Bernanke's hands. Small banks are failing at an alarming rate, job losses remain heavy and households are being squeezed by plummeting property values and growing credit card debt.
Greider emphasizes that Bernanke repeatedly bailed out financial giants without demanding anything in return, which bodes poorly for any future economic crisis. Kenneth Lewis remains Bank of America's CEO, even though the company has needed $45 billion in taxpayer funds to date, and high-level Fed officials think Lewis may be guilty of securities fraud. On the one bailout where the Fed did assume ownership of the company and discharge it's top-level management, AIG, the deal was structured to funnel no-strings-attached money to other Wall Street companies. Goldman Sachs raked in $12.9 billion from the arrangement. It's one thing to funnel money to financial firms in the name of economic necessity. It's quite another to allow executives at those companies to be paid like princes and subsidize their shareholders.
As economist James K. Galbraith discusses in a piece for The Washington Monthly, it's not clear if Bernanke and Co. actually saved the economy. Even if the financial system gets back to normal functioning, that stability has been purchased with massive taxpayer support. In order to do just about anything involving finance in the United States, a company now needs a very explicit government seal of approval to convince investors that they're safe to do business with. Just ask Colonial Bank, which failed earlier this summer after being denied bailout funds under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
But there has been secret support as well. Bernanke's Fed committed over $2 trillion in emergency loans to keep the financial system from collapsing during the crisis, and has refused to tell the public who got the money, and on what terms. We don't know who we saved, or at what the consequences of this massive bank support operation will be. Bernanke always believed that rescuing Wall Street would prevent major damage to the broader economy, but Galbraith questions whether the economy would be stronger if policymakers had focused more on direct aid to workers and homeowners, including an earlier, more robust economic stimulus package.
"Perhaps the right thing would have been less focus on saving banks, and much more on saving jobs, families, and homes."
Writing for In These Times, Roger Bybee profiles a new group called Americans for Financial Reform, which is pushing for changes on Wall Street and fighting against business-as-usual at the Fed. The bank lobby is probably the most powerful interest group on Capitol Hill. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a strong and consistent voice urging lawmakers to protect the entire economy, rather than the banks. The very structure of the Fed makes it more responsive to Wall Street interests than those of the general public. Private-sector banks like Citigroup and Bank of America are shareholders in each of the Fed's regional branches, while private-sector bank executives sit on the board of directors at each branch. Since the boards get to name the regional presidents, private-sector bank CEOs are given major power to name their own regulators. Regional presidents also rotate through positions on the Fed's monetary policy board, making decisions to set interest rates.
The Fed's institutional structure, and its reliance on mainstream economists overly acquiescent to the financial sector has helped fuel the boom-and-bust bubble economy, as the Real News explains in this video piece:
In addition to the turmoil surrounding the Bernanke appointment, the recent budget deficit projections have been receiving a lot of attention lately. By throwing around a lot of big numbers that end in "trillion," deficit hawks have created the impression of crisis where none exists. The government will have a $1.6 trillion shortfall this year, equal to about 11% of the U.S. economy. That's the highest such number since the U.S. economy started to soar in the years after World War II, high enough to mobilize CNBC pundits to warn of financial apocalypse and a bankrupt U.S. government.
But as Robert Reich notes for Salon, it's not really worth getting too worked up over the current deficit projections. In a recession, countries want to run a deficit: the government needs to fill hole created by the drop-off in private-sector economic activity. If the U.S. doesn't run a big deficit, it will shed millions of additional jobs. And the country is nowhere near losing control of its currency. The federal debt stands at about 54% of our economic output right now, and is projected to reach 68% by 2019. But Reich notes that in 1945, the number was far higher: 120%. This number shrank dramatically over the next few years, not because of draconian cuts to government programs, but because the economy grew so much that the debt burden became less severe. We are nowhere near a crisis with the budget that compares to the current unemployment crisis, so pulling back spending right now doesn't make much sense.
Bernanke has always argued that the Fed chair's only duty is to control inflation. But managing the economy means not only attending to inflation, but making sure the true engine of economic growth-financially secure households-isn't sacrificed to the short-term interests of a few Wall Street elites. Bernanke failed to block that economic predation early in his tenure as Fed Chairman. If Bernanke is going to be with us for another four years, President Obama needs to find other ways to restore our economic balance.
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