In 2004, the Durban Group for Climate Justice convened
in Durban, South Africa to question the central role of
carbon trading and carbon offsets in governments’
responses to the climate crisis. Members of the Durban
Group are traveling in various cities throughout the US
and Canada in January, February, and March 2008 to
share experiences of the failures of carbon trading in
Europe, India, Brazil, Uganda and elsewhere, and to
learn more about U.S. carbon trading plans and climate
politics.

Five internationally recognized experts, fresh from the
UN climate meetings in Bali, Indonesia, will be
visiting the US and Canada. With over fifty groups in
over forty cities, they’ll speak on carbon trading,
carbon offsets, the effects of climate change and
current international campaigns to keep the fossil
fuels in the ground and affect meaningful change.

The visiting activists are:

- Patrick Bond, a research professor at the University
of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban South Africa and director of
the Centre for Civil Society. His is the author or
editor of numerous books, including “Climate Change,
Carbon Trading and Civil Society”, “Looting Africa: The
Economics of Exploitation”, and “Against Global
Apartheid: South Africa meets the World Bank”.

- Tamra Gilbertson, the Coordinator of the
Environmental Justice Project at the Transnational
Institute and a researcher with Carbon Trade Watch.
Gilbertson edited the recent report “Agrofuels - Toward
a Reality Check in Nine Areas“. This report documents
the use and abuse of biofuels in the Global South,
often under the guise of “offsetting” tradeable carbon
credits.

- Jutta Kill, the Coordinator of Sinkswatch. In “Forest
Fraud - say no to fake carbon credits,” Kill exposes
the funding of monoculture tree plantations and the
enormous market offering incentives to seize
communally-held forests in developing countries.
“Indigenous peoples and rural communities already
struggling against the encroachment of these ‘green
deserts’ onto their lands will be hit twice by climate
change.”

- Larry Lohmann, the editor of Carbon Trading: A
Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation
and Power, an exhaustively-documented new book
critiquing carbon trading. Carbon trading “dispossesses
ordinary people in the South of their lands and futures
without resulting in appreciable progress toward
alternative energy systems,” says Lohmann. “Tradable
rights to pollute are handed out to Northern industry,
allowing them to continue to profit from business as
usual. At the same time, Northern polluters are
encouraged to invest in supposedly carbon-saving
projects in the South, very few of which promote clean
energy at all.”

- Kevin Smith, a researcher with Carbon Trade Watch.
Smith’s report “The Carbon Neutral Myth” documents and
exposes the booming industry dedicated to avoiding the
core of the climate issue, and offers expert advice on
constructive ways forward.

The authors and activists will describe their
campaigning at the recent the UN Climate Summit in
Bali, Indonesia last December, as well as describe the
failed strategies the global financial community is
still trying to force on negotiators from developing
countries.

For a complete list of tour dates, and to contact local
host organizers, please visit
www.risingtidenorthamerica.org or contact Jay Purcell —
j.purcell AT ucla DOT edu

Want the speaking tour to come to your town? We’re
still booking the east coast, New England, and the
midwest for late February and early March! Contact
falsesolutions AT risingtidenorthamerica DOT org to
host a talk.

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Rising Tide North America

False Solutions Campaign

www.risingtidenorthamerica.org