San Francisco Solidarity w/Copenhagen: Protest @ Danish Consulate

San Francisco, CA – Local residents and Mobilization for Climate Justice West responded today to the failed United Nations Copenhagen climate talks. Community members gathered outside the Royal Danish Consulate for a candle light vigil and rally with prominent speakers. “We are appalled there is no international treaty to save us from catastrophic climate change, that the developing world's demands are being ignored, and because Danish police have attacked, with tear-gas and batons, and arrested over 1,500 climate activists,” said Amanda Starbuck, Rainforest Action Network, a speaker at the event.

Today’s event followed a Thursday meeting with Ms. Helle Van Brunt of the Royal Danish Consulate. At the meeting, concerned citizens delivered a letter demanding the Danish Parliament and Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen to release imprisoned climate activists, halt criminalization of protesting in Copenhagen, and to lift bans on non-governmental organizations at the negotiations.

“I am outraged and shocked by the lack of leadership in Copenhagen,” said Konrad Fisher at Friday’s event. “Critics of corporate-friendly climate policy have suffered from undemocractic repression, and the world needs to know about it.”

Rally attendees sand, held aloft a giant parachute banner, lit candles and listened to speakers, including Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California; Patrick Bond, co-editor of the book Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society; and Michelle Chan, Friends of the Earth, one of several non-governmental organizations barred from Copenhagen negotiations. Speakers discussed human rights issues and the refusal of the United States and other developed nations to commit to realistic emission reduction targets or adequately pay for the impacts from past climate pollution.

Mobilization for Climate Justice joined international networks Climate Justice Action and Climate Justice Now!, and thousands of other protesters around the world Friday, in declaring that the negotiations did not address vital issue of our unsustainable reliance on fossil fuels. Event organizers feel that developed nations have not acknowledged the ecological debt owed to developing nations, but instead put corporate profits before public welfare. These sentiments reflect the outcry from many organizations that criticized the negotiations for being undemocratic, marginalizing people most affected by climate change, and failing to address the climate crisis.
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The Mobilization for Climate Justice West is a part of a North America-based network of organizations and activists who have joined together to build a movement that emphasizes non-violent direct action and public education to promote effective and just solutions to the climate crisis.