trade and climate | Cathy's Class Blog

Thursday, December 10 – State Department warning and Naomi Klein

December 10 2015December 26, 2015

Today started with an email from the U.S. State Department warning me that the French government is likely to crack down on climate demonstrations planned for Saturday. As it happened, my plane flight home was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Saturday, so I can’t take part in this anyway. Knowing that UN climate negotiations have a history of going over by a day, I asked Place to B before my trip if I could stay until Sunday. But they said they had another event starting Saturday and would not have room, and I didn’t want to try to find a place to stay in Paris for just one night.

So I scheduled my flight to return home Saturday, and now I am just as glad. I nearly got swept up at Place de la Republique my first day here, and do not want to try my luck again. It sounds as if there will be mass arrests not only at Place de la Republique but also Le Bourget. Although I respect each person’s decision about practicing civil disobedience, and under the right circumstances I might decide to do so myself, I am not interested in getting arrested in France.

I spent the day in a low-key way trying to catch up on news from the Blue Zone and touch base with my friends back home though social media. The truth is, I have been here 12 days and am ready to go home — but negotiations over the agreement are entering a crucial phase, and I want to see this through. Yesterday at 3 p.m. the UNFCCC released its latest version of the draft text — to the pleasure of no one. Many important areas of disagreement still have not been hammered out — for example, there are still three options regarding temperature target, and some of them still have brackets. Activists staged a huge sit-in near the replica of the Eiffel Tower in the Blue Zone while negotiators stayed up most of the night working on the text, with another draft due today. I’m thankful that Amy Goodman with Democracy Now is inside reporting on events.

I also got news from back home of a Senate hearing organized by Ted Cruz this week on “Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Earth’s Climate” — featuring testimony from a right-wing radio host and three of the only scientists in the world who disagree with the 97 percent consensus that climate change is real and caused by humans chiefly through burning of fossil fuels. Cruz’s stance on climate change is to claim that his denial is based on science, even though pretty much every scientific academy in the United States and across the rest of the world disagrees.

However, Greenpeace had a surprise going into this hearing. Earlier it conducted an investigation in which its agents posed as representatives of a Middle Eastern oil company and offered one of the witnesses, William Happer, professor emeritus of physics at Princeton, $250 an hour in exchange for a research paper touting the benefits of carbon dioxide. The parties even discussed how to route the money through a nonprofit called Donors Trust, known for its support of climate denial, so that Happer could state he was not paid for the research. Happer bragged that he had been paid $8,000 by Peabody Coal in exchange for testimony at regulatory hearings in Minnesota, and that he had donated the funds to CO2 Coalition, run by a man with ties to the George C. Marshall Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and American Petroleum Institute.

Just before the hearing, Greenpeace confronted Happer personally, and it was this footage I saw today. While I wish such investigations were not necessary, unfortunately right now they are. Scholars such as Robert Brulle and Riley Dunlap have documented the vast network of dark money front groups that fund climate change denial — groups that are completely legal under our current system because they don’t have to disclose their donors, but which are used to mislead the public based on a model pioneered by the tobacco industry. The subject has gotten comprehensive treatment in Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, now available as a documentary.

Oreskes and Conway argue that climate denial is not about science but about politics, and is rooted in free-market fundamentalism that has transferred the old Cold War mentality of fighting Communism to fighting environmentalism. Despite the emphasis on money, Oreskes and Conway think that the few scientists involved with climate denial front groups are motivated not by money but by ideology. This makes sense in Happer’s case, as he was donating any money he got to a climate denial front group.

3,000 people ready to hear Naomi Klein.

Today in Paris I decided to visit the Climate Action Zone, or ZAC, held in the Centquartre, an arts complex located near the basin where the indigenous flotilla took place. It is yet another multi-day conference held in conjunction with the negotiations at COP21. ZAC started on Monday, but today is the first day I was able to get there. Each day ends with a general assembly, and tonight’s assembly featuring Naomi Klein was on “Capitalism Against Climate: How Free Trade Agreements Undermine Climate Actions.” This time I heard about the event in advance because the Sierra Club is a co-sponsor through its campaign on trade and climate, and we were asked to tweet from the event.

Naomi Klein speaks at the Climate Action Zone.

The Centquartre, or “104” turned out to be an enormous open building — which was good because 3,000 people were already there to see Klein when I arrived 15 minutes early. I had wanted to get there earlier, but had a hard time finding a place to eat in the area. There were few restaurants, and the one I found through Yelp turned out to be closed – but fortunately another one was open across the street where I got a delicious potato-cheese casserole with a side salad for about 12 euros. Up and down each side of the main auditorium were large climate banners and posters, and I managed to find a place to stand on some steps in the back where I could see proceedings.

Naomi Klein kicked off the event with a 20-minute talk on trade and climate. Calling the rise of awareness about climate change coupled with the rise in multinational trade agreements an “epic case of bad timing,” Klein gave examples of cases in which trade agreements allowed corporations to sue governments to stop projects that would be good for climate – a solar plant in Quebec and community ownership of power plants in Germany. She argued that the Kyoto accord contained express provisions stating that trade agreements trump climate agreements, and that while the United States was insisting the Paris agreement not be legally binding, fossil fuel corporations were heavily involved in insisting that trade agreements such as the TPP be as binding as possible. My Citizens Voice colleague Jeremy Lent was there and recorded her talk.

Also speaking was German climate activist Tadzio Mueller; Ilana Solomon of the Sierra Club Responsible Trade program, and Joseph Purugganan, a climate activist from the Philippines. Mueller discussed how the trade and climate movements don’t talk to each other but should. Here is video of his talk from Jeremy Lent of Citizens Voice:

Panelists for “Capitalism Against Climate: How Free Trade Agreements Undermine Climate Actions.”

The event made me think a lot more about the crossover between trade agreements and climate. I disagree with Klein’s implication that the Paris Agreement needed to be binding, because that would require it go before the U.S. Senate, which as we know would never approve it. The world cannot afford for the United States to pull out of this agreement as it did from Kyoto. On the other hand, I did not know about the rules allowing trade to trump climate, and believe we will need to take action to ensure trade does not multiply greenhouse-gas emissions or that corporations can sue to dismantle climate programs and regulations to guard their own interests.

After the trade and climate event, I walked to Generator Hostel to catch the discussion after their showing of Groundswell Rising. I got there as a doctor with Physicians for Social Responsibility was discussing the health aspects of fracking. This is what ultimately got Gov. Cuomo to ban fracking in New York, and has not been seriously considered by states like Ohio where fracking is rampant. Several British fracking activists were present, including Maria from Scotland, and they made plans to have a tour of the movie there. I also met a former fracking worker named Ray from Dimmock, Penn., the epicenter of fracking problems in the United States. He was featured in Josh Fox’s Gasland and knows every anti-fracking celebrity in the book. Discussion went so long that there was not a second showing of the film, so I hope to catch it another time.

Tuesday, December 8 – Trade and frustration

December 8 2015December 26, 2015

Today was a down day. I had planned to go to an afternoon meeting on trade and climate, but had a hard time getting out the door. First I slept later than planned. Then it took over an hour to get breakfast at the hostel. I have not been happy with the food at the hostel which is basically bar food. A cold breakfast is free, but it is only bread and sugary cereals, and practically impossible to get to with the throngs of people. That normally runs until 10, but for this conference it stops at 9.

Trade and climate meeting that I was late to

To get a hot breakfast, you have to wait until after 9 when the kitchen opens. Then you have to track down a bartender, which is easier said than done. They fly around stacking a lot of glasses, but to get someone to take your order, you have to almost physically detain them – and even then you are often told to wait. Before my trip I bought upgrades for a hot breakfast every day, not knowing the circumstances. I have come to regret that. Not only is the breakfast late, but there is only one option – a huge plate that includes eggs over easy, a hamburger bun, beans, and extremely fatty bacon and sausage. And today was an hour wait. I have tried twice to get the hot breakfasts refunded, but to no avail. The manager of the restaurant claims I should have known the conditions — I have no idea how — and the desk staff says it is “not refundable.”

Lesson learned: Do not buy extras on anything in a foreign country because you can’t tell the conditions from home, and there may be other options when you get there. There are certainly better options in Paris – at least a dozen restaurants between the hostel and the train station serve a very good breakfast at a good price. This may be the last day I do breakfast at the hostel. I’m just not sure I can eat those beans again.

Handouts at trade and climate event

So as I finally got food, then got showered and dressed, and started out the door, I got a Facebook message from my sister that my 84-year-old mother is in the hospital. It sounds like a serious infection that may not respond to antibiotics, complicated by the site of radiation and scar tissue for cancer treatment decades ago. I went back and forth on that for awhile, and finally arranged with my other sister for a time to call her using What’s App since I have no international voice minutes. I’ve been using What’s App to make calls with my husband over the Internet, and it works very well.

I finally set out for the trade meeting, only to find it was raining, the first day since I’ve been here that it rained. I didn’t want to spend money on an umbrella that I have no room to take back, so did the best I could with my coat hood. But coming out of the metro stop for the meeting, I got lost. I couldn’t keep my phone out as usual because of the rain, and in any case, the phone maps sometimes get really confused in the jumble of streets in Paris. That happened today. I walked for several blocks first one way, then another, always being told to do a U-turn and go the other direction, getting rained on the entire time. By then it was to after 2 p.m., and I had not had lunch. One thing these wanderings did was put me near a little sandwich shop, so I stopped for a quick bite and then tried again.

Trade and climate meeting

I finally found the trade meeting a little after 3 p.m., so it had already been going for over an hour. It was in what looked like a small meeting hub on a side street, and it was packed. I had to go through a line of smokers to get in — everyone seems to smoke in France, yet no one is overweight. The room was full of people discussing the ways multinational corporations have taken over many aspects of our lives. When I came in they were talking about corporate agriculture, but judging from the notes on a large display pad, it looked like they had covered other areas too. They had also talked about how that widens inequality and affects less powerful people across the world.

Translators in the back of the room spoke into small microphones

I stood in the back of the room for awhile, but it was stuffy and I was wet, so I ended up waiting in the hallway until they had a break. Then I found a chair and laid out my coat to dry and waited for the second half of the meeting. That part consisted of breaking up into small groups and talking about specific solutions to the problems discussed in the first half. I was in a group but didn’t speak since I had missed the first half. But I did observe, and it was very interesting. First they assigned roles to a moderator and note taker. My group had good people in both roles. Second, there were people from all over the world speaking different languages, but that did not stop communication. Several people in the group were bilingual, so for most people who spoke, someone else translated his or her words into one language or another – English, French or Spanish.

People with headsets on could get the translations

Most of the suggestions revolved around major dates of action planned in various parts of the world. By knowing about major marches or boycotts in Latin America, for example, organizers could make plans to coordinate worldwide. Once the large group reassembled, these events were reported back in English and put onto a master calendar. I noticed that as the notetakers were reporting back, there were translators in the back of the room speaking into small microphones, and that several people in the room were wearing headsets with earphones. The event was operating like a mini-UN which was very cool, and impressive considering they had nothing like the resources of governments or corporations.

After the trade meeting, I went to a Sierra Club gathering at the CAN hub, then a quick dinner and another swim, since I hadn’t made it the night before and knew I could not go on Wednesday or Thursday. Over dinner I managed to talk to my mother for a few minutes on my sister’s phone. I was so concentrated on that that I didn’t even see that CCL had posted on Slack that they were having an 8 p.m. dinner that night. But as on Friday, I would have had to choose between getting my swim and meeting with CCL. I am simply not one of those people who can go for weeks without any real form of exercise, so the swim it was. Even so I spent too much time trying to take advantage of the CAN hub wifi to upload the Kerry video onto YouTube or my Facebook page. It had failed several times previously, but tonight it was somehow successful. But the time it took made me late to my swim, and I initially went the wrong way on the subway, also costing precious time. But I did manage to get in 30 laps in just over an hour.

Handout at trade meeting