Bolivian president at “people’s” conference on climate change: “Planet or death!”
Via The Guardian:
“Planet or death!” chanted Bolivia’s leftwing president, Evo Morales, to a crowd of 20,000 people. “We will be victorious!” the crowds answered back, waving rainbow-coloured, chequered Andean indigenous flags.
Morales was officially inaugurating the first international “people’s conference” on climate change – the grassroots alternative to last year’s failed United Nations talks in Copenhagen.
The meeting in the city of Cochabamba has attracted people from more than 125 countries, although many delegates from Africa, Europe and India were unable to come because of the travel chaos caused by the Icelandic volcano. The meeting has no direct bearing on the UN climate talks, which continue this year, but is billed as a venue for the grassroots movements to put pressure on governments to act on climate change.
“The positive thing here is that people have a space. Until now, the voice, the lead, was always given to governments. And now it is the turn of the people because the governments, particularly some governments from developed countries, did not understand that we are on the verge of a catastrophe and they are not assuming responsibility,” said Juan Pablo Ramos, Bolivia’s deputy environment minister.
His president will have raised some eyebrows though with bizarre comments in his opening address that baldness is the consequence of genetically modified chickens and potatoes and that Coca-Cola is “poison and sewage water”. Bolivia’s first indigenous president, a former llama herder and coca grower, added: “Either capitalism dies, or it will be Mother Earth.” [read more on his speech here – ST]
Later this week, Morales and other Latin American leaders are expected to call for the establishment an international climate court, demanding compensation from rich countries to assist poor nations, and urging countries to open their borders to future waves of climate refugees.
“We are not part of the problem, we are part of the solution, we the indigenous peoples, the peasant communities, so let us offer you the solution because we are the ones suffering,” said Justo Cruz, an Aymara indigenous leader. “Ordinary people are never allowed to talk, [yet] we are the ones paying the price for what the rich are doing to our planet, to our Mother Earth.”
The UN, which organised the Copenhagen talks is not popular here. The UN representative in Bolivia struggled to make her voice heard over a chorus of booing and during a presentation, the former president of the general assembly, Nicaraguan Catholic priest Miguel D’Escoto, declared that the “fraud, lie and dictatorship” that is the UN should be “re-invented”.
Yeah, it should be – but definitely not the way these buffoons think it should be.
BTW, Morales has a lot in common with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and many other green fascists on the issue of capitalism and free markets. He/they hate(s) it, too.
And speaking of Bolivia and climate change:
For the Incas, and most of the Andean civilisations, snow-capped mountains were divinities to be honoured, as they supplied water.
But now it seems those gods are losing their powers. Researchers say that the glaciers are in dramatic retreat across the Andes due to rising temperatures.
In the small village of Khapi, below the stunning – and still snow-covered – Mount Illimani, the sense of anxiety is profound.
An idea has taken root there – that those who have caused the snow to retreat and the waters to slow should be brought before an international court.
What they want is an international court of environmental justice, an idea that is being pushed by Evo Morales, Bolivia’s president.
[…]
What they want is an international court of environmental justice, an idea that is being pushed by Evo Morales, Bolivia’s president.
Following the perceived failure of the COP15 climate change talks in Copenhagen last year, President Morales called an alternative civil-society conference.
It is taking place this week in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba, bringing together indigenous groups, NGOS, scientists, activists as well as government delegations.
[…]
Mr Morales hopes activists will lobby for the creation of an international environmental court where the people from Khapi want to be the first ones to fight for compensation.
The idea is to present a draft proposal to the next climate change meeting, COP16, that will be held in Mexico late this year.
“What we want to achieve is justice,” Pablo Solon, Bolivia’s ambassador to the United Nations, told the BBC.
“When we say climate justice tribunal, we are speaking about how to sanction actions that seriously affect the environment and have consequences for populations, for nations that may even disappear beneath the ocean,” he said.
An international court of “environmental justice.” Sound familiar?
These clowns hate capitalism and want to eradicate it, but yet they want “compensation” from these same evil capitalists who, if radical climate change fanatics had their way about it, wouldn’t even have the money to pay any sort of “compensation.” Not only that, but even the thought of a “court of environmental justice” sounds scary, especially when you think of all the prominent fascists, socialists, and communists who would likely be the judges, juries, and ‘executioners’ (of sorts), and especially when you know that they’ve already judged in advance anyone who doesn’t fall in line 100% with their viewpoint on so-called “man-made” global warming …