15-12-2009, 05:57 PM
AMY GOODMAN: Angelique Kidjo has been in Copenhagen for the past week in her role as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. On Saturday, I had a chance to sit down with the singer just after she spoke before thousands of demonstrators in the front of the Danish Parliament. We went into her trailer.
ANGELIQUE KIDJO: [singing] Agolo, Agolo.
That song, Agolo, means, “Please pay attention.” I wrote this song in 1993. I was talking about the planet, climate change. And here we are in 2009, and nothing has changed. How long are we going to die while the leaders of this world stand by and look at us dying? How long are we going to wait for floods to come and flood away our cities? I haven’t seen snow in Denmark since 1996. That is a sign. Don’t they see it? Where are they living? Which planet are they living in? Are they living on the same planet we are living? What is wrong with our leaders?
My name is Angelique Kidjo. I’m a singer from Benin, West Africa. And I’m here today in Copenhagen because, as a citizen of the world and a child of Africa, I’m a witness of what is going on with the climate change. Farmers in Africa, desperate to have food, to have a crop that is decent enough to be sold and to feed their family. Today it’s getting harder and harder for the families in Africa basically to have a regular life. Rain comes when it’s not supposed to come. And when it comes, it comes so much that it floods everything away. Climate change is not a fantasy; it’s a reality. And I want, from the leaders of the world in this summit, this is the momentum they have to seize.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the big messages coming out of the African nations, the small island nations, the developing world, is this issue of climate debt. And I’m wondering if you could comment on that, kind of reparations to countries that didn’t cause the pollution but are devastated the most by it.
ANGELIQUE KIDJO: Climate debt is something that has to be put in the agreement, because most of the people that are paying a higher cost for the climate change are the countries that have no money and have no say and no action in the climate change. They don’t—they are not the one that pollute the most. Why should they pay the cost? They’re already paying a big and high cost in lives. What do they want from them again? What can we lose more? I mean, what is it going to take for the rich countries to realize that not only that they are jeopardizing the global economy, but they are jeopardizing the lives of the very people that vote for them and put them in offices everywhere around the rich countries.
AMY GOODMAN: Angelique Kidjo, people might say, you have this magnificent voice; why don’t you save it for music? Why get involved with politics?
ANGELIQUE KIDJO: As a singer, I have a voice to tell people, together, we can make a change. I’ve written a song in 1993 about the environment. And that song, the video of that song has been nominated in the Grammy, competing with the Rolling Stones, Pet Shop Boys, Jurassic Park, and so on and so forth, because I realized at that time, as I was pregnant of my daughter, that three times a day my garbage cans were full. Why do we need to consume so much?
I care for people. I care a lot and have been [inaudible] that since I was born, because I believe in life. I believe in us as humanity, within our diversity and unity, to be the future, the today and the yesterday. And we have to do that by preserving Mother earth. She nourishes us. She nurtures us. If we don’t take care of Mother Earth, there’s no more humanity. We think otherwise is arrogant and is deadly arrogance.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama only mentioned climate once in his Nobel Peace address, though he was using it to justify the war in Afghanistan.
ANGELIQUE KIDJO: I think that President Obama comes to power in a very difficult time. And I think he will have to take step by step and make sure that the decision that he made will last long and will become a legacy for the next generation to come. He was at the Nobel Peace Prize to receive a prize, and it’s up to him to say whatever he wants to say.
What I want Mr. President Obama to do is to think about his two daughters, because we’re talking about their future. If there’s no more safe planet for Sasha and Malia, then there’s no more place for my daughter Naima. And as a parent, I urge him to do everything in his capacity, because he loves dearly his daughters and his wife. Just those three people in his life have to make him go back to bed and think about it again and press whoever need to be pressed for something to be done. And I have hope and faith in him.
AMY GOODMAN: The name of the song you wrote about the environment?
ANGELIQUE KIDJO: It’s called “Agolo,” which means “Please pay attention.”
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
VANDANA SHIVA: This is what earth democracy looks like: the diversity, the integrity, the joy, the beauty. That’s what we are going to build on. What’s happening at COP15 is the death of democracy. It’s an attempt to undo twenty years of work on a legally binding agreement. People are not in Copenhagen to bury the climate treaty; they are here to implement it, with an acceleration.
To the governments who would like to cheat the world, cheat the earth, cheat their own people, like the Danish government, which comes with a mysterious text out of nowhere, or the United States government that is playing games with India and China to undo the international obligations, we want to tell you from before, when you arrive for your political service circus, we will not be supporting you. We will not be cheering you.
We know we need climate action now. I come from the Himalaya. I just had an office in Delhi; I don’t live in Delhi. It’s a polluted city. The automobile has taken over. I come from the Himalaya. Our glaciers are melting. Our villages are getting flooded out or drying up. Agriculture is collapsing. Ninety percent of the food production in my area has collapsed in this year. Seventy percent of the streams have dried up. And that is not happening because of what the local people did. My journey in the environment movement began with Chipko, where women came out to hug the trees. We are now hugging our mountains and telling the polluters, “You’ve got to stop polluting, because you are stealing our water, you are stealing our food, you are stealing our snows.
AMY GOODMAN: Voices from Saturday’s protests in Copenhagen, produced by Jacquie Soohen. That last voice, Vandana Shiva, the world-renowned environmental leader and thinker from India.
On Sunday, I caught up with her at Klimaforum, the People’s Climate Summit, which is taking place across Copenhagen from the Bella Center, where the official talks are taking place. I asked Vandana Shiva for her assessment of President Obama and what he represents at the climate change talks.
VANDANA SHIVA: I think President Obama represents a captive White House, captive to the industrial interests and the corporate interests of America. I would like to see President Obama represent Michelle’s organic garden. But he doesn’t bring the organic solution to Copenhagen. He brings, first and foremost, the juggling of figures, a reduction that will be of four percent, which is announced as a 16 percent reduction, but, even more, the juggling of politics, where, behind all this, he tries to say we don’t need the UN treaty, we don’t need to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol. During his elections, he talked a lot about joining the Kyoto Protocol. I think the most important thing President Obama could do would be sign the Kyoto Protocol and then shape it democratically.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your message to him as he comes this week to Copenhagen?
VANDANA SHIVA: My message to him is, do not destroy the international treaty; abide by it, and enlarge and deepen it. But do not dismantle it, because you will be dismantling the only legal framework the world has to make the polluters pay, to create a system in which we can start shifting from a fossil fuel-driven civilization to a renewable energy-driven civilization.
AMY GOODMAN: Who are the interests you say he is captured by in the United States?
VANDANA SHIVA: He’s captured by agribusiness, which wants to sell more fertilizers, like Cargill. He’s captured by the Monsantos, who would like to continue industrial agriculture and take the GMO way. He’s captured by the automobile industry, that will continue to—continue to sell new automobiles. What’s it called? “Chunkers for Cash”? Cunker?
AMY GOODMAN: Clunkers.
VANDANA SHIVA: Clunkers for Cash. Keep making more cars. Keep destroying them. Plunder the planet. And somehow the planet will get saved. And, of course, the oil industry. All of this.
AMY GOODMAN: For those who debate in the United States, still the issue is, is global warming caused by human beings? What message do you have to them? Very concretely, the evidence of this around the world?
VANDANA SHIVA: I don’t think we should talk about what’s happening only as global warming. What’s happening is climate instability, and it is threatening lives. I’ve just shown a film this morning of what climate instability is doing to peaceful communities of the Himalaya, who never use fossil fuels. But today their glaciers are disappearing. Today, instead of snow, they’re getting rainfall that washes away their villages in flash floods. We have climate instability.
And to the climate skeptics, I would say, just look around you. Look at the season. Remember Katrina. All these extreme events are part of climate instability and climate uncertainty. That is happening; no one can deny. And we’d better be prepared to deal with it.
AMY GOODMAN: There is a big campaign here called “Hopenhagen.”
VANDANA SHIVA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Among the corporate sponsors are Coca-Cola.
VANDANA SHIVA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the global effects of Coca-Cola?
VANDANA SHIVA: Yeah, my heart just sank, because when I got off the flight, the first thing I saw was a Coca-Cola bottle, “Hopenhagen.” Well, if you’ve been to Plachimada, India, where 1.4 million liters, 1.5 million liters were extracted by Coca-Cola every day, and—
AMY GOODMAN: Liters of water?
VANDANA SHIVA: Liters of water to make these soft drinks and to do the bottling of water. The women had to rise up against Coca-Cola. The women had to say, “Shut this plant down, because we are having to walk ten miles to get clean and safe water.” That would not be Hopenhagen. The women of Plachimada would not see hope in a Coca-Cola bottle.
AMY GOODMAN: Where is Plachimada?
VANDANA SHIVA: Plachimada is a little village in Kerala where the women organized and shut down a Coca-Cola plant, and this triggered a movement across India. Three plants have been shut down. Coca-Cola does not bring hope, and Coca-Cola should not be the symbol of finding solutions for the climate crisis.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the effect of climate disruption on cultures?
VANDANA SHIVA: The most important disruption of climate havoc on cultures is fear. Peaceful communities start becoming scared. For example, this year, as the monsoon failed in India, and its failure was much more extreme than normal droughts, farmers have waited to get a crop, and they haven’t got a crop. They become afraid.
Beyond a point, as the water disappears, because your groundwater hasn’t being recharged, your rivers and streams haven’t been recharged, beyond a point, conflicts emerge in local communities, which is why the G-77 constantly refers to Darfur as linked to climate change with the disappearance of water from Lake Chad.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain.
VANDANA SHIVA: As the rainfall has failed in the sub-Saharan Africa, Lake Chad has shrunk. The communities that used to be supported in a very generous way by that lake are having less and less water. Pastoralists and settled agriculturalists have come in conflict. It so happens they belong to different religion. This has been presented as a religious conflict. It’s really a conflict that emerges from climate change and climate change degradation of already degraded environments.
AMY GOODMAN: What is a climate refugee?
VANDANA SHIVA: A climate refugee is someone who has been uprooted from their home, from their livelihoods, because of climate instability. It could be people who’ve had to leave their agriculture because of extended drought. It could be communities in the Himalaya who are having to leave their villages, either because flash floods are washing out their villages or because streams are disappearing. We’ve just finished a participatory study that’s showing that 70 percent of the water in my region of the Himalaya, from where the Ganges emerges, has gone. The streams are dry. It could be a cyclone victim—30,000 one time, 100,000 one time. They never go back home. This number will continue to increase.
There are ways we can deal with it: stop the pollution of the atmosphere that’s leading to it, which is why COP15 becomes so vital; and secondly, recognize we’re all citizens of an earth family, and we need to start giving shelter to each other in times of distress. There is an attempt to turn this into a Security Council issue, into a defense issue, into an issue of the Pentagon. That would be the most dangerous way to go.
AMY GOODMAN: The US climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing—
VANDANA SHIVA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —said that the donor countries only have so much largesse.
VANDANA SHIVA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your response to that?
VANDANA SHIVA: I think it’s time for the US to stop seeing itself as a donor and recognizing itself as a polluter, a polluter who must pay, a polluter who must pay compensation and pay their ecological debt. This is not about charity. This is about justice.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
traveled to Copenhagen this weekend to urge world leaders to tackle the climate crisis by signing a binding treaty. The longtime anti-apartheid campaigner and Nobel Peace Prize laureate spoke on Saturday at a candlelight vigil to a group of children just outside the UN climate summit.
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: We want to remind you that they marched in Berlin, and the wall fell. They marched in Cape Town, and apartheid fell. They marched in Copenhagen, and we’re going to get a new deal.
I want to say a big thank you to all of you, especially you beautiful young ones. We oldies have made something of a mess of the world. And we want to say to the leaders who are meeting, look in the eyes of your grandchildren.
Climate change is already a serious crisis today. But we can do something about it. If we don’t—if we don’t, hoohoo!, there’s no world which we will leave to you, this generation. You won’t have a world. You will be drowning. You will be burning in drought. There will be no food. There will be floods. We have only one world. We have only one world. If we mess it up, there’s no other world. And for those who think that the rich are going to escape, ha! ha! ha!, we either swim or sink together. We have one world. And we want to leave a beautiful world for all of these beautiful, wonderful young generation. We, the oldies, want to leave you a beautiful world.
And it is a matter of morality. It is a question of justice. Haha, ha! Haha, hahahaha! Isn’t it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! If—if—if—if you are responsible for most of the mess, then you are responsible for getting rid of that mess. That’s justice. That’s justice. If you are responsible for most of the emissions, which are—look—look—look at the ozone layer. People are now suffering from all kinds of skin diseases, because we are thinning the ozone layer. Whoa! Whoa-ho!
So, you, wonderful rich people, you are wonderful! You are wonderful! You really are wonderful! But—but remember, if—if you are responsible for most of the emissions—it’s not “if”; we know it is the case—then you’re going to have to be responsible for any adjustments. We, too, who are poor, want to become rich. And if you are able to bail out the banks—they gave [inaudible] billions and billions and billions and billions and billions! They just throw billions! Now, please, just give us a few billions to enable the poor to use alternative fuels. They can’t do it if you ask them to pay for it. Please—actually, for your own sakes, OK? For your own sakes, rich people, please, for your own sakes, for your children’s sakes, for the sake of our world, be nice. Be nice, and pay up. Pay up, please. Please, for your own sake.
The world, the world, we, the world, expect a real deal. Eh? Now, let us say that all of us – [with crowd] we, the world, expect a real deal. One. Two.
CROWD: We, the world, expect a real deal.
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: Again!
CROWD: We, the world, expect a real deal.
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: Woohoooo!
AMY GOODMAN: South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaking at a candlelight vigil Saturday just outside the Bella Center. Afterwards, I caught up with him.
AMY GOODMAN: Archbishop, Archbishop Tutu, your message for Barack Obama, for President Obama?
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: Please, please help give the world a real deal. Give the world a real deal. Help, help, help. Make sure that there is enough money to help developing countries make the adjustment. OK?
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you. Bishop Tutu, do you think President Obama is following through on climate change?
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: We hope. We hope he will, yes. He has given the world a great deal of hope. And we—I have said he’s now a Nobel laureate—become what you are. Come on, bye-bye, bye-bye.
ANGELIQUE KIDJO: [singing] Agolo, Agolo.
That song, Agolo, means, “Please pay attention.” I wrote this song in 1993. I was talking about the planet, climate change. And here we are in 2009, and nothing has changed. How long are we going to die while the leaders of this world stand by and look at us dying? How long are we going to wait for floods to come and flood away our cities? I haven’t seen snow in Denmark since 1996. That is a sign. Don’t they see it? Where are they living? Which planet are they living in? Are they living on the same planet we are living? What is wrong with our leaders?
My name is Angelique Kidjo. I’m a singer from Benin, West Africa. And I’m here today in Copenhagen because, as a citizen of the world and a child of Africa, I’m a witness of what is going on with the climate change. Farmers in Africa, desperate to have food, to have a crop that is decent enough to be sold and to feed their family. Today it’s getting harder and harder for the families in Africa basically to have a regular life. Rain comes when it’s not supposed to come. And when it comes, it comes so much that it floods everything away. Climate change is not a fantasy; it’s a reality. And I want, from the leaders of the world in this summit, this is the momentum they have to seize.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the big messages coming out of the African nations, the small island nations, the developing world, is this issue of climate debt. And I’m wondering if you could comment on that, kind of reparations to countries that didn’t cause the pollution but are devastated the most by it.
ANGELIQUE KIDJO: Climate debt is something that has to be put in the agreement, because most of the people that are paying a higher cost for the climate change are the countries that have no money and have no say and no action in the climate change. They don’t—they are not the one that pollute the most. Why should they pay the cost? They’re already paying a big and high cost in lives. What do they want from them again? What can we lose more? I mean, what is it going to take for the rich countries to realize that not only that they are jeopardizing the global economy, but they are jeopardizing the lives of the very people that vote for them and put them in offices everywhere around the rich countries.
AMY GOODMAN: Angelique Kidjo, people might say, you have this magnificent voice; why don’t you save it for music? Why get involved with politics?
ANGELIQUE KIDJO: As a singer, I have a voice to tell people, together, we can make a change. I’ve written a song in 1993 about the environment. And that song, the video of that song has been nominated in the Grammy, competing with the Rolling Stones, Pet Shop Boys, Jurassic Park, and so on and so forth, because I realized at that time, as I was pregnant of my daughter, that three times a day my garbage cans were full. Why do we need to consume so much?
I care for people. I care a lot and have been [inaudible] that since I was born, because I believe in life. I believe in us as humanity, within our diversity and unity, to be the future, the today and the yesterday. And we have to do that by preserving Mother earth. She nourishes us. She nurtures us. If we don’t take care of Mother Earth, there’s no more humanity. We think otherwise is arrogant and is deadly arrogance.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama only mentioned climate once in his Nobel Peace address, though he was using it to justify the war in Afghanistan.
ANGELIQUE KIDJO: I think that President Obama comes to power in a very difficult time. And I think he will have to take step by step and make sure that the decision that he made will last long and will become a legacy for the next generation to come. He was at the Nobel Peace Prize to receive a prize, and it’s up to him to say whatever he wants to say.
What I want Mr. President Obama to do is to think about his two daughters, because we’re talking about their future. If there’s no more safe planet for Sasha and Malia, then there’s no more place for my daughter Naima. And as a parent, I urge him to do everything in his capacity, because he loves dearly his daughters and his wife. Just those three people in his life have to make him go back to bed and think about it again and press whoever need to be pressed for something to be done. And I have hope and faith in him.
AMY GOODMAN: The name of the song you wrote about the environment?
ANGELIQUE KIDJO: It’s called “Agolo,” which means “Please pay attention.”
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
VANDANA SHIVA: This is what earth democracy looks like: the diversity, the integrity, the joy, the beauty. That’s what we are going to build on. What’s happening at COP15 is the death of democracy. It’s an attempt to undo twenty years of work on a legally binding agreement. People are not in Copenhagen to bury the climate treaty; they are here to implement it, with an acceleration.
To the governments who would like to cheat the world, cheat the earth, cheat their own people, like the Danish government, which comes with a mysterious text out of nowhere, or the United States government that is playing games with India and China to undo the international obligations, we want to tell you from before, when you arrive for your political service circus, we will not be supporting you. We will not be cheering you.
We know we need climate action now. I come from the Himalaya. I just had an office in Delhi; I don’t live in Delhi. It’s a polluted city. The automobile has taken over. I come from the Himalaya. Our glaciers are melting. Our villages are getting flooded out or drying up. Agriculture is collapsing. Ninety percent of the food production in my area has collapsed in this year. Seventy percent of the streams have dried up. And that is not happening because of what the local people did. My journey in the environment movement began with Chipko, where women came out to hug the trees. We are now hugging our mountains and telling the polluters, “You’ve got to stop polluting, because you are stealing our water, you are stealing our food, you are stealing our snows.
AMY GOODMAN: Voices from Saturday’s protests in Copenhagen, produced by Jacquie Soohen. That last voice, Vandana Shiva, the world-renowned environmental leader and thinker from India.
On Sunday, I caught up with her at Klimaforum, the People’s Climate Summit, which is taking place across Copenhagen from the Bella Center, where the official talks are taking place. I asked Vandana Shiva for her assessment of President Obama and what he represents at the climate change talks.
VANDANA SHIVA: I think President Obama represents a captive White House, captive to the industrial interests and the corporate interests of America. I would like to see President Obama represent Michelle’s organic garden. But he doesn’t bring the organic solution to Copenhagen. He brings, first and foremost, the juggling of figures, a reduction that will be of four percent, which is announced as a 16 percent reduction, but, even more, the juggling of politics, where, behind all this, he tries to say we don’t need the UN treaty, we don’t need to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol. During his elections, he talked a lot about joining the Kyoto Protocol. I think the most important thing President Obama could do would be sign the Kyoto Protocol and then shape it democratically.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your message to him as he comes this week to Copenhagen?
VANDANA SHIVA: My message to him is, do not destroy the international treaty; abide by it, and enlarge and deepen it. But do not dismantle it, because you will be dismantling the only legal framework the world has to make the polluters pay, to create a system in which we can start shifting from a fossil fuel-driven civilization to a renewable energy-driven civilization.
AMY GOODMAN: Who are the interests you say he is captured by in the United States?
VANDANA SHIVA: He’s captured by agribusiness, which wants to sell more fertilizers, like Cargill. He’s captured by the Monsantos, who would like to continue industrial agriculture and take the GMO way. He’s captured by the automobile industry, that will continue to—continue to sell new automobiles. What’s it called? “Chunkers for Cash”? Cunker?
AMY GOODMAN: Clunkers.
VANDANA SHIVA: Clunkers for Cash. Keep making more cars. Keep destroying them. Plunder the planet. And somehow the planet will get saved. And, of course, the oil industry. All of this.
AMY GOODMAN: For those who debate in the United States, still the issue is, is global warming caused by human beings? What message do you have to them? Very concretely, the evidence of this around the world?
VANDANA SHIVA: I don’t think we should talk about what’s happening only as global warming. What’s happening is climate instability, and it is threatening lives. I’ve just shown a film this morning of what climate instability is doing to peaceful communities of the Himalaya, who never use fossil fuels. But today their glaciers are disappearing. Today, instead of snow, they’re getting rainfall that washes away their villages in flash floods. We have climate instability.
And to the climate skeptics, I would say, just look around you. Look at the season. Remember Katrina. All these extreme events are part of climate instability and climate uncertainty. That is happening; no one can deny. And we’d better be prepared to deal with it.
AMY GOODMAN: There is a big campaign here called “Hopenhagen.”
VANDANA SHIVA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Among the corporate sponsors are Coca-Cola.
VANDANA SHIVA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the global effects of Coca-Cola?
VANDANA SHIVA: Yeah, my heart just sank, because when I got off the flight, the first thing I saw was a Coca-Cola bottle, “Hopenhagen.” Well, if you’ve been to Plachimada, India, where 1.4 million liters, 1.5 million liters were extracted by Coca-Cola every day, and—
AMY GOODMAN: Liters of water?
VANDANA SHIVA: Liters of water to make these soft drinks and to do the bottling of water. The women had to rise up against Coca-Cola. The women had to say, “Shut this plant down, because we are having to walk ten miles to get clean and safe water.” That would not be Hopenhagen. The women of Plachimada would not see hope in a Coca-Cola bottle.
AMY GOODMAN: Where is Plachimada?
VANDANA SHIVA: Plachimada is a little village in Kerala where the women organized and shut down a Coca-Cola plant, and this triggered a movement across India. Three plants have been shut down. Coca-Cola does not bring hope, and Coca-Cola should not be the symbol of finding solutions for the climate crisis.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the effect of climate disruption on cultures?
VANDANA SHIVA: The most important disruption of climate havoc on cultures is fear. Peaceful communities start becoming scared. For example, this year, as the monsoon failed in India, and its failure was much more extreme than normal droughts, farmers have waited to get a crop, and they haven’t got a crop. They become afraid.
Beyond a point, as the water disappears, because your groundwater hasn’t being recharged, your rivers and streams haven’t been recharged, beyond a point, conflicts emerge in local communities, which is why the G-77 constantly refers to Darfur as linked to climate change with the disappearance of water from Lake Chad.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain.
VANDANA SHIVA: As the rainfall has failed in the sub-Saharan Africa, Lake Chad has shrunk. The communities that used to be supported in a very generous way by that lake are having less and less water. Pastoralists and settled agriculturalists have come in conflict. It so happens they belong to different religion. This has been presented as a religious conflict. It’s really a conflict that emerges from climate change and climate change degradation of already degraded environments.
AMY GOODMAN: What is a climate refugee?
VANDANA SHIVA: A climate refugee is someone who has been uprooted from their home, from their livelihoods, because of climate instability. It could be people who’ve had to leave their agriculture because of extended drought. It could be communities in the Himalaya who are having to leave their villages, either because flash floods are washing out their villages or because streams are disappearing. We’ve just finished a participatory study that’s showing that 70 percent of the water in my region of the Himalaya, from where the Ganges emerges, has gone. The streams are dry. It could be a cyclone victim—30,000 one time, 100,000 one time. They never go back home. This number will continue to increase.
There are ways we can deal with it: stop the pollution of the atmosphere that’s leading to it, which is why COP15 becomes so vital; and secondly, recognize we’re all citizens of an earth family, and we need to start giving shelter to each other in times of distress. There is an attempt to turn this into a Security Council issue, into a defense issue, into an issue of the Pentagon. That would be the most dangerous way to go.
AMY GOODMAN: The US climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing—
VANDANA SHIVA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —said that the donor countries only have so much largesse.
VANDANA SHIVA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your response to that?
VANDANA SHIVA: I think it’s time for the US to stop seeing itself as a donor and recognizing itself as a polluter, a polluter who must pay, a polluter who must pay compensation and pay their ecological debt. This is not about charity. This is about justice.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
traveled to Copenhagen this weekend to urge world leaders to tackle the climate crisis by signing a binding treaty. The longtime anti-apartheid campaigner and Nobel Peace Prize laureate spoke on Saturday at a candlelight vigil to a group of children just outside the UN climate summit.
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: We want to remind you that they marched in Berlin, and the wall fell. They marched in Cape Town, and apartheid fell. They marched in Copenhagen, and we’re going to get a new deal.
I want to say a big thank you to all of you, especially you beautiful young ones. We oldies have made something of a mess of the world. And we want to say to the leaders who are meeting, look in the eyes of your grandchildren.
Climate change is already a serious crisis today. But we can do something about it. If we don’t—if we don’t, hoohoo!, there’s no world which we will leave to you, this generation. You won’t have a world. You will be drowning. You will be burning in drought. There will be no food. There will be floods. We have only one world. We have only one world. If we mess it up, there’s no other world. And for those who think that the rich are going to escape, ha! ha! ha!, we either swim or sink together. We have one world. And we want to leave a beautiful world for all of these beautiful, wonderful young generation. We, the oldies, want to leave you a beautiful world.
And it is a matter of morality. It is a question of justice. Haha, ha! Haha, hahahaha! Isn’t it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! If—if—if—if you are responsible for most of the mess, then you are responsible for getting rid of that mess. That’s justice. That’s justice. If you are responsible for most of the emissions, which are—look—look—look at the ozone layer. People are now suffering from all kinds of skin diseases, because we are thinning the ozone layer. Whoa! Whoa-ho!
So, you, wonderful rich people, you are wonderful! You are wonderful! You really are wonderful! But—but remember, if—if you are responsible for most of the emissions—it’s not “if”; we know it is the case—then you’re going to have to be responsible for any adjustments. We, too, who are poor, want to become rich. And if you are able to bail out the banks—they gave [inaudible] billions and billions and billions and billions and billions! They just throw billions! Now, please, just give us a few billions to enable the poor to use alternative fuels. They can’t do it if you ask them to pay for it. Please—actually, for your own sakes, OK? For your own sakes, rich people, please, for your own sakes, for your children’s sakes, for the sake of our world, be nice. Be nice, and pay up. Pay up, please. Please, for your own sake.
The world, the world, we, the world, expect a real deal. Eh? Now, let us say that all of us – [with crowd] we, the world, expect a real deal. One. Two.
CROWD: We, the world, expect a real deal.
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: Again!
CROWD: We, the world, expect a real deal.
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: Woohoooo!
AMY GOODMAN: South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaking at a candlelight vigil Saturday just outside the Bella Center. Afterwards, I caught up with him.
AMY GOODMAN: Archbishop, Archbishop Tutu, your message for Barack Obama, for President Obama?
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: Please, please help give the world a real deal. Give the world a real deal. Help, help, help. Make sure that there is enough money to help developing countries make the adjustment. OK?
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you. Bishop Tutu, do you think President Obama is following through on climate change?
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: We hope. We hope he will, yes. He has given the world a great deal of hope. And we—I have said he’s now a Nobel laureate—become what you are. Come on, bye-bye, bye-bye.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass