Political Platform For Klimaforum10 By Mexico's Grassroots
By Miguel Valencia
09 August, 2010
Culturechange.org
Preparations made for Klimaforum10, parallel to the United Nations COP-16 climate conference in Cancún, Nov. 25 - Dec. 10:
Press release # 8
México D. F., July 9, 2010
After several meetings, we, the Mexican Promotion Committee for Klimaforum 2010, have adopted the following Political Platform of Klimaforum10:
1. THERE IS A CLIMATE CATASTROPHE, NOT CLIMATE CHANGE
The weather patterns of the world are undergoing a rapid and disturbing disruption, which is increasing in both force and catastrophic impact. This change could end up being life-threatening for many human communities in coming years, for the large majority of people in this century. Describing this process as “climate change,” amounts to distorting reality.
2. THERE IS NO TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CATASTROPHE
There will be no technological solution to climate disaster as long as certain economic values continue to predominate in the world, including mercantilism, utilitarianism, “development-ism,” and militarism. In this framework, “productivity,” competition, and manipulation reign supreme. As long as the system which generates these values (and therefore also shapes the dominant social imagination) remains in force, there will be no real solution. Neither nuclear energy, nor geoengineering, nanotechnology, GMOs, or biofuels (among other technologies) will offer us real solutions to the climatic disaster; they are false solutions. The only appropriate solutions to this predicament will come from a world-wide expansion of solidarity, cooperation, and friendship, valuing the pleasure of free time and playfulness, social life, autonomy, wisdom, the techniques and beauty produced by craftsmen and artists, practical and adaptive approaches, approaches based on relationships and co-existence, a spiritual approach, and mainly, respect for the sacredness of mountains, rivers, the seas, forests, the forests, the animals: Mother Earth, whose gifts have no price. This change in values must be systematic – meaning, we must change the system, not the climate - beginning with a different personal ethics, like voluntary simplicity. We must learn to live better with fewer objects, and to act in defense of the global commons.
3. THERE IS NO GOVERNMENT SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CATASTROPHE
Because of its violent nature and concentration of power, which removes it from local and cultural diversity, and because of its pyramidal, authoritarian character, governments are incapable of providing authentic solutions to climate catastrophe; they are capable only of false solutions. False solutions are costing us precious time as we face this threat, experiencing greater calamities such as long heat waves, stronger hurricanes, droughts, forest fires, a drop in global food production, the rise and spread of diseases, the melting of glaciers, ocean acidification and sea-level rise, changes in ocean currents, the death of coral reefs, and species extinction, among others. State-sponsored false solutions include “market-based” solutions (such as carbon markets), offsets, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), REDD, and perverse finance schemes. Only a great diversity of small-scale, locally appropriate solutions, involving a great social mobilization, can mitigate the catastrophic effects of this modern disaster.
4. RADICAL REDUCTION IN CONSUMPTION AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION BY THE POWERFUL IS REQUIRED
In order to face the climatic disaster, we must urgently reduce consumption in the powerful countries, especially the United States, England, Germany, France, Italy and Japan, due to their historical responsibility in the generation of the climatic disaster. Further, we must reduce consumption by the rising middle-classes of the emerging economies, including China, India, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico and South Africa. As soon as possible, the present “American way of life,” which has grown into a cancer on the world, and which is the main cause of this catastrophe, must disappear. In particular, it is indispensable to vastly reduce the consumption of bottled water, red meat, paper, and mobile phones, among other things. Of course, this means vastly and rapidly reducing the global industrial over-production which gives rise to this untenable wastefulness. Centralized industrial agriculture and factory farming must be rapidly abandoned in favor of a return to local, small-scale food production.
5. WE MUST LEAVE OIL, GAS, COAL AND OTHER GIFTS OF NATURE UNDERGROUND
The consumption of fossil fuels is not only the main cause of climatic disaster. Their extraction also generates enormous ecological damage; Peak Oil (which is already creating world-wide tensions and causing great misery) forces industry to riskier extractions every day, creating spills like the Gulf of Mexico gusher, and disasters like those in Maracaibo, Nigeria, and the Alberta tar sands. Mining, whose environmental damage is excessive, is in the same category. Without a rapid and radical reduction of energy consumption in the United States, the European Union, Japan, China, and India, it will not be possible to achieve real solutions to the climatic disaster which is causing the destruction of the modern world. It is urgent to establish severe restrictions to the use of the automobile, airplanes and high speed trains; to discourage “free markets;” to eliminate privatization; and to prohibit mega-projects. We must re-conceptualize and reconstruct governments with the purpose of substantially increasing civic collaboration, relocalize both production and consumption, and intensively reuse materials. It is essential to abandon the era of oil now, to move beyond the economy of “growth without limit” and to enter a stable era of low energy consumption and shared frugality.
6. WE MUST DE-NUCLEARIZE THE WORLD
Nuclear energy is a fundamental pillar of the dominant system – an unjust system responsible for creating climatic disaster, growing global injustice, and the predominance of values that reign today. We live under the tyranny of nuclear-armed states which initiate the wars and extreme violence that destroys modern societies. These states impose dominant modes of consumption and production, which foment the construction and operation of very dangerous nuclear plants in support of nuclear weapons, and which are leading to the world towards its rapid destruction. In order to face the climatic disaster, it is essential that the United States, Russia, France, England, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan eliminate their nuclear weapons. In addition, all the existing nuclear plants in the world must be dismantled, because their risks are excessive and their waste products leave an unacceptable burden to future generations. Only social awareness of the nature of nuclear energy and the continuous opposition of movements along with independent organizations can curb this insane activity by ministers, industrialists and the scientists loyal to them. There is no nuclear solution to climate change.
7. WE SUPPORT THE BLOSSOMING OF SMALL SOLUTIONS TO CLIMATIC CATASROPHE WHICH:
A. Give top priority to very low energy consumption.
B. Contain high percentages of reused materials and support traditional production methods and craftsmanship.
C. Guarantee food, clothing, housing, education, happiness and the spiritual needs of the most vulnerable.
D. Strengthen the local and regional communities where they take place.
E. Remain critical of industry and modern-day consumption.
MEXICAN PROMOTION COMMITTEE FOR KLIMAFORUM 2010:
Adriana Matalonga; Eugenio Cabrera; Gabriela de la Vega; Jorge López; Mauricio Villegas; Miguel Valencia; Miguel Ángel Rosas; Raquel Rodríguez.
contacto @ klimaforum10.org.mx / nacional @ klimaforum10.org.mx internacional @ klimaforum10.org.mx
Web page: www.klimaforum10.org.mx Telephones: 52 (55) / 5553-2340; 5212-1886; 5540-7866
ORGANIZATIONAL ENDORSERS OF THIS PLATFORM
CAMBIOS, (Cooperative for a Biodiverse and Sustainable Environment or “Cooperativa por un Ambiente Biodiverso y Sustentable”)
Ecoactivists from the Civil Association of the community of Magdalena Mixhuca (“Ecoactivistas de la Magdalena Mixhuca AC”)
ECOMUNITIES Autonomous Ecologists Network from the region “Cuenca de Mexico” in the Mexican Basin (“ECOMUNIDADES, Red Ecologista Autónoma de la Cuenca de México”)
EDENAT (Network In Defense of Mother Nature) (“EDENAT, Red en Defensa de la Naturaleza”
Reduction or Cruelty! Network for the Reduction (“¡DESCRECIMIENTO O BARBARIE! Red por el descrecimiento”)
Front of the Peoples of Anáhuac (“Frente de los Pueblos de Anáhuac”)
Front of the Left (“Frente Izquierda”)
Front for Human Rights, Baja California (“Frente de Derechos Humanos, Baja California”)
Civil Society for Environmental Action Network (“Red Acción Ambiente SC”)
Theater Popular Association PC- CLETA
Timbers of the People of the Southeast, Civil Association (“Maderas del Pueblo del Sureste, AC)
Network for the Defense of the City of Mexico (“Red en Defensa de la Ciudad de México”)
Civil Association For a Change with Dignity (“Por el Cambio con Dignidad AC”)
Pitahaya Growers’ Society, community of Chan Tza Can, Kinchil, Yucatán (“Sociedad de Productores de Pithaya Chan Tza Can de Kinchil”)
Civil Association of the Tecolote Theater Workshop (“Teatro Taller Tecolote, AC”)
INDIVIDUAL ENDORSERS OF THIS PLATFORM
Aina Barag, tree guardian, Herradura, State of México
Alejandro García Núñez, Social Change Movement
Alejandro Aceves Jiménez, environment consultant and adviser
Alejandro Velarde, eco-techician
Alfredo Rojas Díaz Duran, Social Change Movement
Antonio Vital, Aliance for Health and Public Workers
Antonio Figueroa, Proyect Alternative of the Nation
Araceli Flores, The Other Campaign
Carlos Zaragoza Cibrián, Rayo Zaragoza
Carmen Ventura Quintal, of EIS 2012, Yucatán
Denise Alamillo, campaign Vote Nullification
Dr. Álvaro de la Chica, coordinator for the Civic Alliance, Ensenada, BC
Dr. Luis Tamayo, coordinator, Research Group in Ecosofia UEF/CIDHEM
Dr. José Ignacio Félix Díaz, Autonomous Metropolitan University, Cuajimalpa
Dr. Rafael Huacuz, College of Mexico
Dulce Karina Fierros Barquera, the De-Growth Department, Political and Social Sciences, UNAM
Edith González, the Civil Association Echoes, Voices and Actions
Edgardo Mota, Political Ecology Workshop, UAM, Xochimilco
Eduardo Rincón Mejía, Energy Program, UACM
Enrique Cisneros, del grupo de teatro popular PC-CLETA
Eugenio del Valle, coordinator of enviromental issues, CROC
Flor de Mayo Rouko, EIS2012, Yucatán
Gabriel Eduardo Gallegos Labastida, De-Growth Group, Department of Political and Social Sciences UNAM Gerardo Martínez of the Left Front
Gerardo Montes de Oca Sierra, of the Civil Society for the Environmental Action Network
Guillermo Samaniego Martínez, Faculty Higher Studies, Iztacala, UNAM
Gustavo Romero from the Civil Association Fomentosol
Hugo David Uriarte Bonilla, Social Transformation Movement
Iván Azuara Montes, UCCS (Union of Scientists Committed to Society or Unión de Científicos Comprometidos con la Sociedad)
Jan Lundberg, Culture Change, U.S.
Jesús Solís Alpuche, Pitahaya Growers’ Society, community of Chan Tza Can, Kinchil, Yucatán
José Enrique González Ruíz, coordinator for the graduates in Human Rights at UACM
José Enrique Tec Poot del EIS2012, Yucatán
José Ignacio Gutiérrez de Velazco, Cooperative Self-Management Program UACM
José Luís Hernández Jiménez, Civil Association For a Change with Dignity
Liliana Zavala Nieto of the Alternative Project of the Nation
Lucy Torres of the Klimaforum10 initiative, Puebla
Luisa Ortiz Garduza, Social Transformation Movement Luis Cisneros Lujan, general director of the Civil Association Theater Workshop Tecolote
Luis Gabriel Urquieta, Political Science, UNAM
Lucrecia Noemí, environmental trainer
Marco Antonio Tafolla Soriano of the Xoxocotla Movement, Morelos
Marisol Valverde Yáñez, Social Transformation Movement
Miguel Ángel García of the Civil Association Timbers of the People of the Southeast
Oscar Montaño of the Front for Human Rights, Baja California
Oralia Silvia Rocha de la Organización Mundial Ambientalista Educativa AC
Pedro Echeverría, columnist, México
Pedro Pliego from the Civil Society Enviromental Action Network
René Molteni, Social Transformation Movement
Ricardo Guzmán, Political Ecology Workshop, Metropolitan Autonomous University, Xochimilco
Sebastian Silva, activist from colonia Condesa
Silverio de la Mora, from the civic Movement in defense of the Parque Central Benito Juárez en Tijuana, Baja California
Víctor Ariel Bárcenas Delgado, environmental issues adviser
* * * * *
Contact: Miguel Valencia
ECOMUNIDADES
Red Ecologista Autónoma de la Cuenca de México
¡DESCRECIMIENTO O BARBARIE!
Acción inmediata frente al Pico del Petróleo y al Cambio Climático
Textos recientes en red-ecomunidades.blogspot.com
Email: contacto "at" klimaforum10.org.mx
