Global issue spurs global protest

Even as politicians dial down expectations for the December 7-18 U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen, analysts and activists detect a groundswell of anger, channeled through the Internet and voiced especially by the young, demanding action on global warming.

Conventional wisdom says environmental issues wax at times of prosperity and wane when belts are tightened.

But these sources believe that adage no longer holds true in the face of the unique threat posed by climate change.

When the talks to craft a post-2012 climate pact get underway, leaders may find themselves facing a coordinated movement cutting across continents, creeds and class, they argue.

“As evidence mounts of the severity of the threat, civil society groups will be fuelled by the urgency of acting now to avoid the worse consequences of a problem for which future generations will surely hold us accountable,” said British expert Peter Newell.

“We can expect the continued and expanded use of all resources available to them -- legal and non-legal, constructive and coercive, national, regional and international,” said Newell, a professor at the University of East Anglia in England.

Over the past half-century, broad-based movements -- from civil rights in the United States to anti-missile protests in Europe, “people power” revolts in the Philippines and South Korea -- have been largely confined to national borders.

Climate change, though, cuts across all frontiers. Some regions will be hit earlier and harder than others, but no place on Earth will be spared the greenhouse effect.

Awareness has also been boosted by disasters. Typhoon-driven floods that ravaged east Asia last month drove home the perceived links between warming and extreme weather, even if scientists point out such connections are far from linear.

“There is a growing awareness in developing countries that this issue is impacting them now and that they need to do something about it. That awareness is especially strong in Asia,” Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official, told AFP.

Then there is the Internet, an infinitely more powerful organizational tool for protest than the cassette tapes, fax machines and roneo-copied “samizdat” leaflets of the recent past.

In authoritarian countries, notably China, it has helped civil society cohere around environmental and climate issues to a degree not tolerated for political and human rights, or trade unionism.

The prospects for a borderless protest movement will be put to the test on Saturday, selected by grassroots group 350.org as a “day of global action” with some 3,000 events around the planet.

1|2|Next Page>>

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos Respond to this email