Mobilization for Climate Justice 2009‏

Mobilization for Climate Justice Open Letter to the
Grassroots

Help Organize for Urgent Action on Climate Change

The Mobilization for Climate Justice is a North America-based
network of organizations and activists who have joined together to build a
North American climate justice movement that emphasizes non-violent direct
action and public education to mobilize for effective and just solutions to the
climate crisis.

The Mobilization for Climate Justice invites communities,
organizations and activists across North America
to join us in organizing mass action on climate change on November 30, 2009
(N30).  N30 is
significant because it both immediately precedes the upcoming UN Climate
Conference in Copenhagen (COP-15) and is the ten-year anniversary of the successful
shut down of the WTO in Seattle, when activists worldwide came together to
demonstrate the power of collective action. 

The Copenhagen climate meetings will be a major
focus for international mass actions this November and December, and the MCJ is
linked to these efforts as well.

Urgent action is needed around
the Copenhagen
climate talks because this is where governments around the world plan to
finalize the international climate regime that will take effect when the Kyoto
Protocol climate agreement expires in 2012. 
So far it appears that the new climate agreement will be nothing more
than business as usual—sacrificing real action on climate change in favor of
market-based approaches that enhance corporate profits, while delaying urgent
measures to forestall catastrophic global heating.

A Radical Change in Direction is Urgently Needed

The MCJ invites you to inspire and organize a radical change in
direction to put climate justice, ecological integrity and people's rights at
the center of international climate negotiations.

Market-based approaches to climate change dominate the UN
climate talks.  Carbon-trading and carbon
offset projects have allowed polluters to avoid cutting emissions and
accelerated the corporate take-over of the natural world at the expense of
local and Indigenous communities. Those most immediately threatened by climate
change and its false solutions –
Indigenous Peoples, women, peasant and family farmers, fisherfolk, forest
dependent communities, youth, and marginalized communities have been
systematically excluded from the negotiations. 

The climate crisis
is directly linked to the financial crisis, the food crisis and the extinction
crisis, as well as to militarism and war. 
They are rooted in an economic system dedicated to economic growth at
any cost.  We are uniting to challenge
this system that puts profits over people or the earth.  Urgent action to solve the climate crisis
must include a complete transformation away from the dominant economic model of
incessant and unsustainable growth, oppression and injustice.

We must highlight real, effective and just solutions to climate
change

Join
us in promoting solutions to climate change that are locally controlled,
decentralized, bioregionally appropriate and socially just.  Thousands of these solutions already exist
and need to be promoted and supported with public funds.

Help
ensure that large-scale, destructive corporate-controlled false solutions to
climate change are eliminated. This includes so-called “clean coal,” agrofuels
(industrial scale biofuels), nuclear power, and large-scale hydropower.  It also includes REDD (Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and Forest Degradation)—the UN and World Bank initiative
that offers incentives for countries to sell off their forests, expel
Indigenous and peasant communities, and transform biodiverse and carbon-rich
forests into industrial timber plantations.

Some key solutions to climate change include:

·         
Drastically reducing emissions without resorting
to carbon trading and offsetting or other false solutions such as nuclear
energy, agrofuels, or “clean coal”, while protecting the rights of those
affected by the transition; 

·         
Keeping fossil fuels in the ground;

·         
Re-localization of production and consumption,
prioritizing local markets and cooperative economies;

·         
Decentralized utility systems and community
controlled clean renewable energy;

·         
Rights based resource conservation that enforces
indigenous land rights and ends corporate control over energy, forests, seeds,
land and water;

·         
Ending deforestation and its underlying causes,
imposing international sanctions and wood tariffs, coupled with a massive
forest restoration effort, managed primarily by indigenous forest-dwelling
peoples;

·         
Ending excessive consumption in the North and by
elites in the South;

·         
Repayment of ecological debts owed by northern
governments and resource extracting corporations to peoples in the Global South

The goals of the Mobilization for Climate Justice are:

1) To build a global movement
for climate justice that encourages urgent action to avoid catastrophic climate
change, and which addresses the root social, ecological, political and economic
causes of the climate crisis toward a total systemic transformation of our
society.

2) To promote and strengthen
the rights and voices of Indigenous and other affected peoples, (including
workers in energy-intensive industries) in climate mitigation and adaptation
strategies.

3) To expose the consequences
of false and market-based climate "solutions" as well as corporate
domination of climate negotiations, while advancing alternatives that can
provide real and just solutions and which protect biodiversity.

Join Us in Taking Action!

Please join us in our national
effort to organize educational events and non-violent direct actions at key
locations in the U.S.
on November 30, 2009.  We welcome the
active involvement of organizations that are united with us in our goals above,
in our opposition to market-based false solutions to climate change, and in
support of real, effective and just solutions to climate change. 

We encourage local groups to create proposals for action on
N30.  We hope to have direct actions on
climate change in locations across the U.S.

We also endorse and support a
global call for action on October 12, 2009 the International Day of Action in
Defense of Mother Earth and in Support of Indigenous Rights.

For more information on
getting actively involved with the MCJ, please contact:

infoclimate09-NA@riseup.net or
go to www.actforclimatejustice.org