I have been reading numerous accounts fo the Copenhagen summit over the past week and will post some more soonish--also note that we will be doing heavy analyses of the summit in both my environmental ethics and global ethics classes this spring. The one thing i would say at this point in my post-event analyses, is that the political ramifications of the meeting are quite positive--a significant political realignment of states is underway--but of course the environmental impact of the "agreement" is less than modest. in part that is good because there was no agreement on for example a cap and trade scheme--thats why the europeans were in part so mad, good!--but whats gonna happen on that front remains to be seen, but a positive move can only happen AFTER a major political realignment (as when the final negotiation was between the us and china along with south africa, brazil and india (not a white dude in the room BTW! but yes all men of course). mm
The outcome of Copenhagen is depressing if you only look at what happened at the official summit, and persist in the belief that those guys are "world leaders". They are not: they are followers, guardians of a dying regime.
So don't look at them. I'm looking at these locally grown flowers as I type. The flowers remind me that hundreds of thousand of groups are already busy, in countless ways, preparing their communities for the changes and shocks to come.
Elements of an alternative global framework have started to emerge. Several hundred of these groups helped draft a 'People’s Declaration' from Klimaforum09 entitled
System change – not climate change
