Imagining a Ministry of Mother Earth

The bolivians must now institutionalise, translate and hone a new environmentality.

Imagine a river, objecting to being dammed, in a court, with fish and otters and the like bearing witness to the injustice of the matter. Luckily the river will not be represented as idealised point particle, a 'resource' or curvilinear flows in a computer model.

I hope Islamic movements and shaykments have their pencils sharpened and avoid Thamudian ingratitude and perversity.

Mother Earth Rights in the Plurinational State of Bolivia

Alhamdullillah its now official. The cooliest environmental law of our times.
A different way of looking and being. Tool up lawyers.

Climate Bribe Money

Basically over the next months and years the big power are going to be bribing smaller, climate vulnerable countries with adaptation goodies in order to institute a carbon regime of their choosing and timing on the world for all time.

They will extoll the virtues of the carbon market, a 4 degree global burn, patronising technological transplant solutions to impacts and most funnily of all, have the World Bank to administer it all.

Now which short termist developmentia ridded Southern country could disagree to that?

I guess we shall see.

Bolivia have a good stance, based on Mother Earth Rights, They trialled this last December at Cancun. We need a Southern bloc to unite to tackle this appropriation of nature.

The World Bank and the Climate Change Adaptation Fund

At the recent COP-16 climate talks in Mexico, the western powers (Europe, Japan and US) made their World Bank trustee of the Adaptation fund. Apparently a status to be reviewed in 2011. http://unfccc.int/cooperation_and_support/financial_mechanism/adaptation_fund/items/3659.php
(Not having access to  a TV wasnt a problem because democracy now! covered i the fortnight long conference quite well)

The World Bank is a profit seeking, local expertise decimating, unimaginative Bretton Woods institution that probably should have been kicked into last century. They get things very wrong with great frequency and their consultants absorb much of any proported financial benefit that proport to supply.

Much work needs to be done in exposing the bank's total inadequacy for the job. Its hard because there are more people working for the Bank, than against. Let alone for its superscession.

On the other hand leaders of many of the desperate at-risk countries are going to be running with open arms at this new apparent cash cow. Cash which has strings. Efforts need to be made so they negotiate most powerfully in their society's interests and promote their own ways of knowing instead of the ways that got us into this problem in the first place.

The common sense that must be broken is that which says that the countries on the periphery and semi-periphery do not and cannot have the social-political and technological capacity to adapt to the impacts of Climate Change.

This common sense inhibits the development of a truly multiversity of soci-technical  profusion and promotes certain pretty alienating ways of doing technology.

Outsource eyes, play,  mind and hand. Bring in the consultants, bypass local expertise. replay argument about limited local capacity.

mock climate change trial by bangladeshi development industry

The Daily Darkness Reports:

Another climate change contrivance
Some pornographic technocratic theatrix

Complete with sustainable livelihood cabal
And carefully handpicked subaltern ganj pals

Awami beholden unimportant british mp
Token affirmative action alabi api

Appeal to whitey internationalist imagination
Sucking the teat of mother disinvention.

Behold this disgrace and gherao these poor fools
Misleading gatekeepers essentially mules.

Postcolonial Copenhagen

Where do we start? These big meetings are ways to see global politics unfold.

Neoliberal capitalism took a bite out of the Ethiopian leader's 'legitimacy' and authority to voice the climate vulnerable people's cause. A lot of decoloniser leaders flopped in the end. pfft!

G77 (developing countries) faced difficulties being heard and being taken seriously. The walkout was ridiculed by the white press. I think they should have been more forceful, theatrical and employed novel tactics. A crap agreement is worse than no aggrement.

Much of the stuff was manipulated to avoid addressing 'difficult' developing nation demands. Like ' 2 degrees rise means more than 3 degrees in Africa, that will totally screw us up'.

Obama showed how captive he is to his bog oil owned senate. He doesn't have any post colonial testicles or ovaries. US unilateral bribery and extortion play was again very visible. Is obama just an oil poodle?

The UK didn't say anything against the US interest and did the 'mediator-diplomacy' thing.

UK Energy and Climate Minister showed his true colours in his blamestorm of the Climate awkward squad, demanding reform of the UN body to avoid such inconvenience in future.

China turned things interestingly, by bringing carbon intensity (CO2 emissions divided by GDP unit) into play, because we cant all be post industrially guilt tripped into buying all western 'low carbon development technologies'. China also asserted her sovereignty by being irked at being 'monitored'.

Bangladesh Finance minister put the cat amongst the pigeons by saying that the polluting countries could open their borders to climate refugees, while the Environment minister demanded 15% of any Adaptation Fund on a per capita logic.

George Monbiot was made to look rather silly by London's Mayor Boris Johnson
' I'm sorry but I cant hate the rich in the same way you do. A zero-carbon Porshe causes you fundamental ideological problems doesnt it?'

Radiohead's Thom Yorke, 'climate roadie' really didnt make much sense.

One of the serious climate protested was arrested by the coppers, before his group's plan to mix things up a little could successfully deploy.

Banksy was inspired by events to do some grafitti.


erm... more later.... possibly, but for now here's a new word.

Climate Septic
Someone who simply doesnt care about this earth and the people living on it, and spends their efforts oozing bile at scientists over politicians; error bars over observation; and anthropogenicity over environmental justice. I hope i am not a Climate Septic.

oh. decent Naomi Klien reflects on it here.

UEA Climate Change email issue

The unfolding the the Hacked Tyndall Center Email Revelations story has been interesting, this mini post is mainly to remind myself to write about it.

• Fishy timing, with tories seemingly cool on the issue with election year in the UK approaching, and the very hyped Copenhagen negotiations imminent.
  
• Why is it such a surprise that science is actually socially and politically produced?
• Is this really such a big deal? simply scientist banter?
• Is this like the ball tampering issue from cricket? standard practice but a good few get their knickers in a knot over it.
  
• How much is the 'media' responsible for bad communication on this issue?
  
• Incredible that climate denial had joined the ranks of genocide denial and holocaust denial isnt it?
• What part has the isolation of human and physical disciplines played in this mess up? fake interdisciplinarity doesn't count.
• What part has governmental technocracy played in cynicising the public towards decarbonisation?
• Climate Change is a discourse of power, its terms are contested from the academy to the parliament. This must be unpicked and refreshed because it has repressed certain trajectories of knowing. (cf. research funding streams) and perhaps entrenched soulless intellectual activity.
  
• There is too much bandwagonning and therefore waste of precious scientific capital in this area, this isnt just about climate change field but any contemporary science policy perogative.
  

Its time for political ecology to hit the Public Sphere, please.

Thankyou George Monbiot, thankyou Nigel Lawson

oo, and big ummah love to all the hajis out there!

[New word] EcoNaivety

Probably a temporary state, but i feel that certain publics are being rendered thus by the lifeless technocracy that has set in following neoliberal appropriation of environmental values specifically in the mitigation of human induced Climate Change.


Can you hear it?

Mrs Jones please turn of the light to save the environment (money), I shall just build a coal power station over your mothers grave, ok?

New parking charges are now in place in the university, we are letting a private company run the operation because we care about the environment.

Look at me, I'm an environmental consultancy sucking off the teat of local government funding streams, would you like a keyring.

I am an ecocrapitalist. I have decided to crade imaginary carbon in order to exploit the current policy space for every last grain of hope it might have left.


I can always hear it.

Maybe it was the Stern Report, maybe its just us, maybe its just the trappings of our times and powerlessness.

EcoNaivety is stuck in linearity and must get out. It builds a wall of carbon kajoosity around potentially creative relationships with each other. Dont get me wrong, accountancy has its place. Along with Family, Islah, Ummah and Baraka.

I suppose this was what we were getting at all those years ago with the banner
'Let's not let our postindustrial guilt suffocate our wanderlust'

Instead of regarding humankind as a permenant blight upon the face of the earth, we might conceive of ourselves as a potentially custodial, sympathetic constellation of forces. This is not a new revelation.

UN Conference on Climate Change

It has been called a 'High Level Event', (which is cute) and split into 4 this time, adaptation, mitigation, technology and financing.

here are the programs, and country contributions

Bangladesh's piece, delivered by Dr F did not rock my world when i read it. somehow river erosion has become soil erosion and the 1 metre sea level rise will now inundate one third of the area country(how did that figure double?!?). Our national water management plan's climate readiness is stressed as is the transboundary river issue, if lightly. If i were to hazard a guess as to who wrote his speech...

Cuba's contribution had great spine and a dignified leg to stand on, the chap from there said that growing fuel through crops was an insidious idea, the west had no leg to stand on in telling developing countries what to do and that luxury and waste are the central issues here. The inuit lady is quaint and moving, getting the indigenous peoples boot in.

As i listen, Dr F has taken over chairing duties. This is the first time i have seen the good doctor interact in an international, if not epecially high powered arena. On the 28th he speaketh at colombia university, where pm ahmedinejad has been causing a stir today.

The chap from the Indian Finance ministry has come having done his homework with recent stats to hand and the concept of 'differentiated responsibility' on his lips. They are studying the phenomena quite autonomously, using their scientists and looking for their interest, strategically. I guess they would have a 'view' on Action Aid India's howling report that the BD daily star interpreted as saying 'Kashmir must cut green house gases'

"make concerted efforts to tackle climate change"

Riight.i see it all so clearly now lets all take it in turns to milk the Climate Cow.