Today, and this week, will prove historic not simply for the records of climate negotiations, civil disobedience, or even of global politics.
It will prove noteworthy in an unprecedented fashion: it demonstrates unequivocally that climate change is an issue of social justice and human rights, and not merely a “scientific” or “environmental” concern.
The attempted disruption of the talks at the Bella Centre in Copenhagen today by thousands of protestors demanding “climate justice,” the indisputable brutality of the police, and the resignation of the Danish environment minister (presumed due to fury of developing nations over leaked drafts perceived to hand power to rich countries) demonstrated three key points:
1. Civil disobedience and grassroots uprisings can have an impact, even if only symbolic rather than constitutional. It is incredibly easy to believe that public demonstrations are utterly ineffective – especially after seeing the Iraq war marches come to nothing. But days like today remind us that they can be an effective tool to change public perception and to push issues onto the political agenda.
2. The UN climate negotiations are not going to work. They are stagnant in a political stalemate and absolutely nobody with a solid understanding of climate change science – such as James Hansen – believes the political process is capable of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to an effective degree.
3. Perhaps most importantly, that climate change – and all “environmental” matters – is an issue of human rights.
Ten years ago climate change was barely a concern for subversive activists, who from Seattle to Quebec City to Genoa campaigned primarily on issues of trade, finance, and social inequality. Certainly they were not unaware of climate change, but it was not perceived as a pressing concern nor as central to their humanistic agenda.
Now, when Copenhagen saw one of the largest gatherings of public demonstrators in recent history, climate change has become not just an issue, but the issue.
It encapsulates everything. It concerns not just topics that can be perceived as distant, abstract, or personally irrelevant, such as melting polar caps, changing weather patterns, and biodiversity loss. Ideas issues that can be misconstrued as “external” to our own lives or unimportant in practical terms.
Climate change – how we have caused it and how we propose to deal with it – is ultimately about resources, rights, and health.
It is about water. It is about food. It is about energy. It is about minerals, timber, and other natural goods and services.
It is ultimately about who has access to those things, who doesn’t, and why.
In other words: climate change is about humanity. It is about human rights, social egalitarianism, and – simply put – people.
This shift in psychology for the entire world will prove historic: for decades “environmental” issues have been perceived as secondary to “human” issues. Forests and whales and polar bears and bees are pretty, interesting and sometimes moving, but not as important as people, society, or “the economy.”
Now our collective thinking is finally shifting in a sense that cannot be underestimated in its importance: environmental and economic issues are one and the same.