After a 5 am arrival at the Ottawa airport for a 6:45 am flight to Chicago, we are now having a quick breakfast before departing for Mexico (via Dallas) for the beginning of our intervention at the upcoming COP 16 climate summit in Cancun.

I’m here with Council of Canadians climate campaigner Andrea Harden-Donahue and several colleagues from the Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Polaris Institute.

To be honest, there are numerous reasons not to be hopeful about this summit.

The major powers are not willing to take even modest action – and certainly not the kind of action needed to meet the demands of climate justice.

And the Harper government is going without a meaningful climate plan, committed to the tar sands, tied to the politically-deadlocked US, with a combative new environment minister, on the heels of defeating C-311 in the Senate. Canada’s chief climate negotiator is already commenting on the UN process, signaling the substantive talks could be moved to the G20.

It’s unacceptable – as the mainstream media reports – to say that there will be no progress in Cancun, but that a deal may be reached next December, a full year from now, at the climate summit in South Africa.

It’s unacceptable because there is an urgency to this crisis, emission reduction targets have been timid and climate financing offers too modest, and ‘market solutions’ still dominate. And because there’s no guarantee of progress in South Africa either.

It’s unacceptable, but at this time it appears to be the likely outcome.

But what’s also in the mix is an inspiring global climate justice movement that will be represented in Cancun over the next weeks to counter this situation.

Andrea and I will be joining Council of Canadians colleagues Maude Barlow, Anil Naidoo, Emma Lui, Leticia Adair and Claudia Campero shortly. We in turn will be joined by thousands of others demanding action.

We will be participating in a caravan, workshops, panels, protests, a film screening, and more than we can foresee at this moment.

Across Canada, chapter activists will be participating in more than a dozen peoples’ assemblies for climate justice.

This is where the hope is. The next weeks will inform the next steps to get to where we need to be. Stay tuned.

Brent Patterson, Director of Campaigns and Communications, Council of Canadians
www.canadians.org

 

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Brent Patterson

Brent Patterson is a political activist, writer and the executive director of Peace Brigades International-Canada. He lives in Ottawa on the traditional, unceded and unsurrendered territories of the Algonquin...