Thursday, July 3, 2014

The Climate Pledge of Resistance


The Climate Pledge of Resistance
Diana Bradley, NOVEMBER 13, 2013 beyondtalk.net

The ongoing resistance to climate change has started to assume gigantic proportions. In the latest development, a coalition of faith-based native, societal, ecological and climate groups have created the Climate Pledge of Resistance (CPR) to step beyond talk into action by arranging the biggest ever civil insurrection in their history.

In the 1980s, public sentiment decrying U.S. association with, and sustenance of Central American hostilities took concrete shape as the Pledge of Resistance. This Pledge materialized as a highly effectual national crusade that bolstered independent yet peaceful all-enveloping focused action that embedded itself in simple implicit democracy. Today, this very Pledge has motivated CPR for the Planet.

Propounding this topic, Sharon Lungo, a member of Ruckus Society averred that Climate Chaos was no chimera; it stared them in the face, motivating individuals to step forward to aid in reviving planet Earth from the ill effects of nonstop depredation. Regarding the Pledge, she agreed that all social justice campaigns on record had failed when premeditated employment of peaceful direct action had not been resorted to. Every movement had a focal point for the display of proletariat power, where the crusading community realized that success could only be achieved by forging ahead at full steam. She opined that that focal point had finally dawned.

She firmly believed that peaceful direct action delivered the goods, citing an example in the recent past. A peaceful but large scale civil crusade had been mounted against Mountain Top Removal, which had forced the Environmental Protection Agency to back off and emplace a moratorium thereon. She then emphasized the fact that the Call for CPR for the Planet was launched immediately thereafter.

Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, expressed grave concern that extracting and burning fossil fuels amounted to destruction of our planet, affecting every living organism surviving thereon. He felt that growth of fossil fuels had now become a human rights issue, as also ecological justice. Taken together, they affected natives and civilization, not only in the Northern half of America, but also across the universe. He added that it redounded on mankind per se, specifically the ruling hierarchy, to react in real time and move away from an economy dependent on fossil fuels and insist on a practical answer that would defuse the climate change conundrum.

The timing of the Call is also significant:
  • A simultaneous meeting has been scheduled in the city of Pittsburgh, PA for the G-20 as well as the International Coal Conference.
  • The Call precedes this pair of meetings by a week.
  • Officials are planning a major clampdown in Pittsburgh.
  • Two thousand soldiers from the National Guard, fully prepared for any contingency, supplemented by equally large numbers of personnel tasked with law enforcement, will be policing Pittsburgh throughout that period.
  • Three Rivers Climate Convergence has not been granted permission to gather and camp there either.

Their intention seems to be to force CPR to resort to civil disobedience in pursuance of their stated objective. It is unlikely that CPR will deviate from a winning strategy, aiming to compel U.S. Senators to consider passing a law that will focus on alleviating the climate change problem.

The strategy is to progressively ensure that the CPR is accepted and fully implemented on November 30, 2009, seven days in advance of the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, when skilled mediators will bend their brains and thrash out a treaty on climate that can replace the Kyoto Protocol that would have run its course by then.

The Pledge expresses regret that everything is behind schedule. It believes that even if representatives of participating countries reach a consensus now, it would be too weak to be of much use.

True, civil disobedience is nothing new in the U.S. and overseas. Utilized by millions, it was responsible for burying segregation in the U.S., apartheid in its bastion of South Africa, and Independence in India.

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