FryingPanFire

Environmental pressure groups have abandoned their moral integrity by clubbing together with arms manufacturers and corporate energy giants. So why should you go to Copenhagen?

Over 50,000 members of the “I Only Fly to India” militia will descend on Copenhagen over the next week to demonstrate over a shopping list of demands longer than J-Lo’s rider. Attendees are an international who’s who of the best-branded campaign groups from Oxfam to Action Aid to superglue and D-lock specialists Plane Stupid. Lesser-known groups like Brazil’s Land Reform Movement will be there to boost everyone’s ethnic credentials.

Developed countries like the USA and the UK have pledged to cut carbon emissions (on their terms) by 2020 alongside developing nations like China and India cutting their carbon intensity (on someone else’s terms). The finer points over who does what by how much and who’s going to police 192 countries will also be debated.

A sore point has already come up with the leak to The Guardian of the ‘Danish text’ – a leaked draft agreement that gives rich nations more power, marginalises the UN’s role and abandons the Kyoto protocol. All the jaw jaw about making a difference to the world’s global temperature becomes hot air in the cold Copenhagen wind.

The feeling that a potentially powerful global movement is being hijacked by some very slick PR is keeping me away from Denmark. The talk around and within the conference seems to be an exercise in appearing to make a difference without actually changing a damn thing.

Initiatives like the 10:10 campaign (who recently accepted missile makers MBDA onto their scheme with the lines “Of course arms manufacturers can reduce their emissions by 10%. What they do with the rest of their time is a different matter, on which we couldn’t possibly comment”) ask individuals and companies to pledge to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. I had a recent Twitter debate with one of their worker ants, @malchadwick, who failed to see the hypocrisy in cosying up with a firm whose business it is making things that kill people.

If it makes you feel better about yourself turning off a few lights and flushing the loo only for solids, just be aware that the bandwagon you’re joining broke down a long time ago and your cooperation is helping corporations wash their sins away in the green haze of a well-run publicity campaign.

This weekend and next week will see a range of so-called direct action protests. How direct and effective will sitting in a street getting water-cannoned be if you’re an Indian farmer considering suicide to get out of debt because your crops failed?

What’s needed is justice. Fair rights and fair pay for workers and bold international policing of commerce and corporate structures. Grass roots movements that tackle tangible goals, not semantic abstract concepts. Proper justice and action directed at those who use and exploit. Not branded climate justice and a spectacle only likely to achieve hypothermia.

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This article was originally published in The Guardian, 11 December 2009, and republished on The Comment Factory.