Tuesday, December 04, 2012
Baffle
confuse
mix up
mistake
confound
befuddle
distract
baffle
puzzle
bewilder
perplex
flummox
dumbfound
gravel
nonplus
muddle
obscure
befog
obfuscate
overwhelm
embarrass
dazzle
daze
confute
muddy
embroil
intermingle
disarray
rattle
mull
dizzy
disconcert
flurry
stagger
addle
put out
fluster
flabbergast
astonish
astound
fog
ravel
maze
embrangle
interfuse
floor
moider
Portuguese
confundir
misturar
erro
confundir
befuddle
distrair
confundir
intrigar
confundir
desorientar
desorientar
emudecer
cascalho
atrapalhação
atrapalhar
obscurecer
obscurecer
ofuscar
submergir
embaraçar
deslumbrar
torpor
refutar
lamacento
enredar
misturar
desordem
chocalho
ponderar
tonto
desconcertar
agitação
cambalear
gorar
pôr para fora
agitação
pasmar
surpreender
surpreender
nevoeiro
desfiar
labirinto
emaranhar
impregnar
piso
desnortear
Friday, June 22, 2012
"The crisis on the planet is a crisis of governance."
Call to action – Reclaiming our future: Rio +20 and Beyond
Via Campesina
On 20-22 June 2012, governments from around the world will gather in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to commemorate 20 years of the “Earth Summit”, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) that first established a global agenda for “sustainable development”. During the 1992 summit, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and the Convention to Combat Desertification, were all adopted. The Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was also established to ensure effective follow-up of the UNCED “Earth Summit.”
Twenty years later, governments should have reconvened to review their commitments and progress, but in reality the issue to debate will be the “green economy” led development, propagating the same capitalist model that caused climate chaos and other deep social and environmental crises. La Vía Campesina will mobilize for this historical moment, representing the voice of the millions of peasants and indigenous globally who are defending the well-being of all by implementing food sovereignty and the protection of natural resources.
20 Years later: a planet in crisis
20 years after the Earth Summit, life has become more difficult for the majority of the planet’s inhabitants. The number of hungry people has increased to almost one billion, which means that one out of six human beings is going hungry, women and small farmers being the most affected. Meanwhile, the environment is depleting fast, biodiversity is being destroyed, water resources are getting scarce and contaminated and the climate is in crisis. This is jeopardizing our very future on Earth while poverty and inequalities are increasing.
The idea of “Sustainable Development” put forward in 1992, which merged “development” and “environment” concerns, did not solve the problem because it did not stop the capitalist system in its race towards profit at the expense of all human and natural resources:
The food system is increasingly in the grips of large corporations seeking profit, not aimed at feeding the people.
The Convention on Biodiversiy has created benefit sharing mechanisms but at the end of the day, they legitimize the capitalization of genetic resources by the private sector.
The UN Convention on Climate Change, instead of forcing countries and corporations to reduce pollution, invented a new profitable and speculative commodity with the carbon trading mechanisms, allowing the polluter to continue polluting and profit from it.
The framework of “sustainable development” continues to see peasant agriculture as backwards and responsible for the deterioration of natural resources and the environment. The same paradigm of development is perpetuated, which is nothing less than the development of capitalism by means of a “green industrialization.”
The “Green Economy” – Final Enclosure?
Today the “greening of the economy” pushed forward in the run-up to Rio+20 is based on the same logic and mechanisms that are destroying the planet and keeping people hungry. For instance, it seeks to incorporate aspects of the failed “green revolution” in a broader manner in order to ensure the needs of the industrial sectors of production, such as promoting the uniformity of seeds, patented seeds by corporation, genetically modified seeds, etc.
The capitalist economy, based on the over-exploitation of natural resources and human beings, will never become “green.” It is based on limitless growth in a planet that has reached its limits and on the commoditization of the remaining natural resources that have until now remained un-priced or in control of the public sector.
In this period of financial crisis, global capitalism seeks new forms of accumulation. It is during these periods of crisis in which capitalism can most accumulate. Today, it is the territories and the commons which are the main target of capital. As such, the green economy is nothing more than a green mask for capitalism. It is also a new mechanism to appropriate our forests, rivers, land… of our territories!
Since last year’s preparatory meetings towards Rio+20, agriculture has been cited as one of the causes of climate change. Yet no distinction is made in the official negotiations between industrial and peasant agriculture, and no explicit difference between their effects on poverty, climate and other social issues we face.
The “green economy” is marketed as a way to implement sustainable development for those countries which continue to experience high and disproportionate levels of poverty, hunger and misery. In reality, what is proposed is another phase of what we identify as “green structural adjustment programs” which seek to align and re-order the national markets and regulations to submit to the fast incoming “green capitalism”.
Investment capital now seeks new markets through the “green economy”; securing the natural resources of the world as primary inputs and commodities for industrial production, as carbon sinks or even for speculation. This is being demonstrated by increasing land grabs globally, for crop production for both export and agrofuels. New proposals such as “climate smart” agriculture, which calls for the “sustainable intensification” of agriculture, also embody the goal of corporations and agri-business to over exploit the earth while labeling it “green”, and making peasants dependent on high-cost seeds and inputs. New generations of polluting permits are issued for the industrial sector, especially those found in developed countries, such as what is expected from programs such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD++) and other environmental services schemes.
The green economy seeks to ensure that the ecological and biological systems of our planet remain at the service of capitalism, by the intense use of various forms of biotechnologies, synthetic technologies and geo-engineering. GMO’s and biotechnology are key parts of the industrial agriculture promoted within the framework of “green economy”. The promotion of the green economy includes calls for the full implementation of the WTO Doha Round, the elimination of all trade barriers to incoming “green solutions,” the financing and support of financial institutions such as the World Bank and projects such as US-AID programs, and the continued legitimization of the international institutions that serve to perpetuate and promote global capitalism.
Why peasant farmers mobilize
Small-scale farmers, family farmers, landless people, indigenous people, migrants - women and men - are now determined to mobilize to oppose any commodification of life and to propose another way to organize our relationship with nature on earth based on agrarian reform, food sovereignty and peasant based agroecology.
We reject the “Green Economy” as it is pushed now in the Rio+20 process. It is a new mask to hide an ever-present, growing greed of corporations and food imperialism in the world.
• We oppose carbon trading and all market solutions to the environmental crisis including the proposed liberalization of environmental services under the WTO.
• We reject REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) which allows rich countries to avoid cutting their carbon emissions by financing often damaging projects in developing countries.
• We expose and reject the corporate capture of the rio+20 process and all multilateral processes within the United Nations.
• We oppose land grabs, water grabs, seeds grabs, forest grabs - all resources’ grabs!
• We defend the natural resources in our countries as a matter of national and popular sovereignty, to face the offensive and private appropriation of capital;
• We demand public policies from governments for the protection of the interests of the majority of the population, especially the poorest, and landless workers;
• We demand a complete ban on geoengineering projects and experiments; under the guise of ‘green’ or ‘clean’ technology to the benefit of agribusiness. This includes new technologies being proposed for adaptation and mitigation to climate change under the banners of “geo-engineering” and “climate smart agriculture”, including false solutions like transgenic plants supposed to adapt to climate change, and “biochar” purported to replenish the soil with carbon.
• We resolve to protect our native seeds and our right to exchange seeds. We demand genuine agrarian reform that distributes and redistributes the land - the main factor in production - especially taking into account women and youth. Land must be a means of production to secure the livelihood of the people and must not be a commodity subject to speculation on international markets. We reject “market assisted land reform”, which is another word for land privatization.
• We struggle for small scale sustainable food production for community and local consumption as opposed to agribusiness, monoculture plantations for export.
• We continue to organize and practice agroecology based production, ensuring food sovereignty for all and implementing collective management of our resources
Call to action
We call for a major world mobilization to be held between 18-26 June in Rio de Janeiro, with a permanent camp, for the Peoples Summit, to counter the summit of governments and capital.
We will be in Rio at the People’s Summit where anti-capitalist struggles of the world will meet and together we will propose real solutions. The People’s Permanent Assembly, between the 18 and 22, will present the daily struggles against the promoters of capitalism y the attacks against our lands. Today, Rio de Janeiro is one of the cities which receive the most contributions from global capital and will host the Soccer World Cup and Olympics. We will unite our symbolic struggles from the urban to the landless movements and fishers.
We also declare the week of June 5th, as a major world week in defense of the environment and against transnational corporations and invite everyone across the world to mobilize:
Defend sustainable peasant agriculture
Occupy land for the production of agroecological and non-market dominated food
Reclaim and exchange native seeds
Protest against Exchange and Marketing Board offices and call for an end to speculative markets on commodities and land
Hold local assemblies of People Affected by Capitalism
Dream of a different world and create it!!
The future that we want is based on Agrarian Reform, Peasant’s based sustainable agriculture and Food Sovereignty!
GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE!!
GLOBALIZE HOPE!!!
An international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers.
Via Campesina
On 20-22 June 2012, governments from around the world will gather in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to commemorate 20 years of the “Earth Summit”, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) that first established a global agenda for “sustainable development”. During the 1992 summit, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and the Convention to Combat Desertification, were all adopted. The Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was also established to ensure effective follow-up of the UNCED “Earth Summit.”
Twenty years later, governments should have reconvened to review their commitments and progress, but in reality the issue to debate will be the “green economy” led development, propagating the same capitalist model that caused climate chaos and other deep social and environmental crises. La Vía Campesina will mobilize for this historical moment, representing the voice of the millions of peasants and indigenous globally who are defending the well-being of all by implementing food sovereignty and the protection of natural resources.
20 Years later: a planet in crisis
20 years after the Earth Summit, life has become more difficult for the majority of the planet’s inhabitants. The number of hungry people has increased to almost one billion, which means that one out of six human beings is going hungry, women and small farmers being the most affected. Meanwhile, the environment is depleting fast, biodiversity is being destroyed, water resources are getting scarce and contaminated and the climate is in crisis. This is jeopardizing our very future on Earth while poverty and inequalities are increasing.
The idea of “Sustainable Development” put forward in 1992, which merged “development” and “environment” concerns, did not solve the problem because it did not stop the capitalist system in its race towards profit at the expense of all human and natural resources:
The food system is increasingly in the grips of large corporations seeking profit, not aimed at feeding the people.
The Convention on Biodiversiy has created benefit sharing mechanisms but at the end of the day, they legitimize the capitalization of genetic resources by the private sector.
The UN Convention on Climate Change, instead of forcing countries and corporations to reduce pollution, invented a new profitable and speculative commodity with the carbon trading mechanisms, allowing the polluter to continue polluting and profit from it.
The framework of “sustainable development” continues to see peasant agriculture as backwards and responsible for the deterioration of natural resources and the environment. The same paradigm of development is perpetuated, which is nothing less than the development of capitalism by means of a “green industrialization.”
The “Green Economy” – Final Enclosure?
Today the “greening of the economy” pushed forward in the run-up to Rio+20 is based on the same logic and mechanisms that are destroying the planet and keeping people hungry. For instance, it seeks to incorporate aspects of the failed “green revolution” in a broader manner in order to ensure the needs of the industrial sectors of production, such as promoting the uniformity of seeds, patented seeds by corporation, genetically modified seeds, etc.
The capitalist economy, based on the over-exploitation of natural resources and human beings, will never become “green.” It is based on limitless growth in a planet that has reached its limits and on the commoditization of the remaining natural resources that have until now remained un-priced or in control of the public sector.
In this period of financial crisis, global capitalism seeks new forms of accumulation. It is during these periods of crisis in which capitalism can most accumulate. Today, it is the territories and the commons which are the main target of capital. As such, the green economy is nothing more than a green mask for capitalism. It is also a new mechanism to appropriate our forests, rivers, land… of our territories!
Since last year’s preparatory meetings towards Rio+20, agriculture has been cited as one of the causes of climate change. Yet no distinction is made in the official negotiations between industrial and peasant agriculture, and no explicit difference between their effects on poverty, climate and other social issues we face.
The “green economy” is marketed as a way to implement sustainable development for those countries which continue to experience high and disproportionate levels of poverty, hunger and misery. In reality, what is proposed is another phase of what we identify as “green structural adjustment programs” which seek to align and re-order the national markets and regulations to submit to the fast incoming “green capitalism”.
Investment capital now seeks new markets through the “green economy”; securing the natural resources of the world as primary inputs and commodities for industrial production, as carbon sinks or even for speculation. This is being demonstrated by increasing land grabs globally, for crop production for both export and agrofuels. New proposals such as “climate smart” agriculture, which calls for the “sustainable intensification” of agriculture, also embody the goal of corporations and agri-business to over exploit the earth while labeling it “green”, and making peasants dependent on high-cost seeds and inputs. New generations of polluting permits are issued for the industrial sector, especially those found in developed countries, such as what is expected from programs such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD++) and other environmental services schemes.
The green economy seeks to ensure that the ecological and biological systems of our planet remain at the service of capitalism, by the intense use of various forms of biotechnologies, synthetic technologies and geo-engineering. GMO’s and biotechnology are key parts of the industrial agriculture promoted within the framework of “green economy”. The promotion of the green economy includes calls for the full implementation of the WTO Doha Round, the elimination of all trade barriers to incoming “green solutions,” the financing and support of financial institutions such as the World Bank and projects such as US-AID programs, and the continued legitimization of the international institutions that serve to perpetuate and promote global capitalism.
Why peasant farmers mobilize
Small-scale farmers, family farmers, landless people, indigenous people, migrants - women and men - are now determined to mobilize to oppose any commodification of life and to propose another way to organize our relationship with nature on earth based on agrarian reform, food sovereignty and peasant based agroecology.
We reject the “Green Economy” as it is pushed now in the Rio+20 process. It is a new mask to hide an ever-present, growing greed of corporations and food imperialism in the world.
• We oppose carbon trading and all market solutions to the environmental crisis including the proposed liberalization of environmental services under the WTO.
• We reject REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) which allows rich countries to avoid cutting their carbon emissions by financing often damaging projects in developing countries.
• We expose and reject the corporate capture of the rio+20 process and all multilateral processes within the United Nations.
• We oppose land grabs, water grabs, seeds grabs, forest grabs - all resources’ grabs!
• We defend the natural resources in our countries as a matter of national and popular sovereignty, to face the offensive and private appropriation of capital;
• We demand public policies from governments for the protection of the interests of the majority of the population, especially the poorest, and landless workers;
• We demand a complete ban on geoengineering projects and experiments; under the guise of ‘green’ or ‘clean’ technology to the benefit of agribusiness. This includes new technologies being proposed for adaptation and mitigation to climate change under the banners of “geo-engineering” and “climate smart agriculture”, including false solutions like transgenic plants supposed to adapt to climate change, and “biochar” purported to replenish the soil with carbon.
• We resolve to protect our native seeds and our right to exchange seeds. We demand genuine agrarian reform that distributes and redistributes the land - the main factor in production - especially taking into account women and youth. Land must be a means of production to secure the livelihood of the people and must not be a commodity subject to speculation on international markets. We reject “market assisted land reform”, which is another word for land privatization.
• We struggle for small scale sustainable food production for community and local consumption as opposed to agribusiness, monoculture plantations for export.
• We continue to organize and practice agroecology based production, ensuring food sovereignty for all and implementing collective management of our resources
Call to action
We call for a major world mobilization to be held between 18-26 June in Rio de Janeiro, with a permanent camp, for the Peoples Summit, to counter the summit of governments and capital.
We will be in Rio at the People’s Summit where anti-capitalist struggles of the world will meet and together we will propose real solutions. The People’s Permanent Assembly, between the 18 and 22, will present the daily struggles against the promoters of capitalism y the attacks against our lands. Today, Rio de Janeiro is one of the cities which receive the most contributions from global capital and will host the Soccer World Cup and Olympics. We will unite our symbolic struggles from the urban to the landless movements and fishers.
We also declare the week of June 5th, as a major world week in defense of the environment and against transnational corporations and invite everyone across the world to mobilize:
Defend sustainable peasant agriculture
Occupy land for the production of agroecological and non-market dominated food
Reclaim and exchange native seeds
Protest against Exchange and Marketing Board offices and call for an end to speculative markets on commodities and land
Hold local assemblies of People Affected by Capitalism
Dream of a different world and create it!!
The future that we want is based on Agrarian Reform, Peasant’s based sustainable agriculture and Food Sovereignty!
GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE!!
GLOBALIZE HOPE!!!
An international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers.
At Rio 20, Severn Cullis-Suzuki Revisits Historic '92 Speech, Fights for Next Generation's Survival
At Rio 20, Severn Cullis-Suzuki Revisits Historic '92 Speech, Fights for Next Generation's Survival
AMY GOODMAN: We continue with the largest U.N. summit ever. Juan?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We continue our coverage of Rio+20 Earth Summit by turning now to an amazing speech given 20 years ago at the 1992 U.N. Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Twelve-year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki became known as "the girl who silenced the world for six minutes" after she addressed the delegates in Rio during the summit’s plenary session.
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: Hello. I’m Severn Suzuki, speaking for ECO, the Environmental Children’s Organization. We’re a group of 12- and 13-year-olds trying to make a difference—Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and me. We’ve raised all the money to come here ourselves, to come 5,000 miles to tell you adults you must change your ways.
Coming up here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future. Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market. I am here to speak for all generations to come. I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go.
I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in our ozone. I am afraid to breathe the air, because I don’t know what chemicals are in it. I used to go in—I used to go fishing in Vancouver, my home, with my dad, until just a few years ago we found the fish full of cancers. And now we hear of animals and plants going extinct every day, vanishing forever. In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles and rainforests full of birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see. Did you have to worry of these things when you were my age?
All this is happening before our eyes, and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I’m only a child, and I don’t have all the solutions, but I want you to realize, neither do you. You don’t know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don’t know how to bring the salmon back up a dead stream. You don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can’t bring back the forests that once grew where there is now a desert. If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!
Here, you may be delegates of your governments, business people, organizers, reporters or politicians. But really, you’re mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles. And all of you are someone’s child.
I’m only a child, yet I know we are all part of a family, five billion strong—in fact, 30 million species strong. And borders and governments will never change that. I’m only a child, yet I know we are all in this together and should act as one single world towards one single goal.
In my anger, I am not blind, and in my fear, I am not afraid of telling the world how I feel.
In my country, we make so much waste, we buy and throw away, buy and throw away, buy and throw and away. And yet, northern countries will not share with the needy. Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to share, we are afraid to let go of some of our wealth. In Canada, we live the privileged life, with plenty of food, water and shelter. We have watches, bicycles, computers and television sets. The list could go on for two days.
Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent some time with some children living on the streets. This is what one child told us: "I wish I was rich. And if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicines, shelter, and love and affection." If a child on the streets who has nothing is willing to share, why are we who have everything still so greedy?
I can’t stop thinking that these are children my own age, that it makes a tremendous difference where you are born, that I could be one of those children living in the favelas of Rio, I could be a child starving in Somalia, or a victim of war in the Middle East or a beggar in India. I am only a child, yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on finding environmental answers, ending poverty, and finding treaties, what a wonderful place this earth would be.
At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us to not fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do?
Do not forget why you’re attending these conferences, who you’re doing this for: we are your own children. You are deciding what kind of a world we are growing up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying, "Everything’s going to be all right," "It’s not the end of the world," and "We’re doing the best we can." But I don’t think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities? My dad always says, "You are what you do, not what you say." Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown-ups say you love us. But I challenge you, please, make your actions reflect your words. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Severn Cullis-Suzuki, then at the age of 12 delivering her famous address at the 1992 first U.N. Earth Summit that took place in Rio de Janeiro. The video of her address has more than 21 million views on YouTube.
Well, now Severn is back in Rio, this time as a veteran international environmental campaigner and mother of two.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! That was 1992. Can you talk about what has happened in the intervening 20 years? Do you feel that there has been real progress now at this summit, Severn?
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: Good afternoon. It’s an honor to be on the show.
Twenty years have passed, and everybody wants to know what have we done, how have we progressed. Well, last week, scientists released a report in the academic journal Nature that suggested that we are pushing for a tipping point in the earth’s biosphere, that we are attacking our ecosystems that sustain us and all life on this earth, in so many ways, on so many levels, that we are pushing for a state shift like what was seen 12,000 years ago with the end of the last ice age. But this time it will be human-caused, and it will be orders of magnitude faster than the thousand-year transition that happened last time. I mean, that report, released on the eve of this world summit, is clear that we have not achieved the sustainable world we knew we needed 20 years ago.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Severn, yet the draft agreement that is being proposed at this summit, somebody did an analysis of the verbs in that agreement and found that the word "encourage" appeared 50 times, and the word "support" appeared 99 times, but "must" only three times and "we will" only five times. So, in the face of this looming crisis, does it give you much hope at all that the world leaders are couching this agreement in such weak terms?
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: They called Rio+10 in Johannesburg "Rio-Minus-10" because already the world leaders were starting to backtrack on an agreement from Rio 1992 that now looks like this amazing, visionary success. And, I mean, I am ashamed to hear that the Canadian negotiating team was trying their best to omit the word "commit." So I wonder how many times that actually made it through in the draft that we have today.
I think that this is indicative of what is happening in our world at large. There is so much shift right now. We have economic meltdown around the world. We have social unrest. We have revolution just boiling up all over the planet. And now we have our national leaders that are hunkering down more and more, defending their national interests, and less and less looking for the good of humanity. I believe we have a crisis in governance. This is showing that the world’s leaders are not able to come together and lead for the sake of humanity. What does it mean when the world’s elected leaders do not represent the good of the people that they’re supposed to care for?
AMY GOODMAN: Severn Cullis-Suzuki, especially for young people who are listening and watching right now all over the world — we have a room full of interns that we are celebrating today, the summer interns who have begun at Democracy Now! — talk about how it was you who ended up giving this speech 20 years ago at the age of 12. How did you end up addressing world leaders?
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: Well, it was an incredibly grassroots initiatives. I had started a club, and this was really a group of girls who really wanted to do something for the planet in the broadest terms. And how we started was, well, we needed to educate ourselves. When I was nine, we started this club, called ourselves ECO, the Environmental Children’s Organization. We built on very small projects like beach cleanups, basic support for other environmental groups. And finally, we heard about the Earth Summit, after a few years of this, and decided we wanted to go. It’s a very long story. We galvanized support from our community, our parents, our teachers, our friends, fundraised the money, got here, and then, in a sea of 30,000 people here, we started getting our message out because we were young. And this is the key.
Twenty years later, the world is still talking about a speech, a six-minute speech that a 12-year-old gave to world leaders. Why? It is because the world is hungry to hear the truth, and it is nowhere articulated as well as from the mouths of those with everything at stake, which is youth. Today’s youth will spend their entire—the rest of their entire lives, their entire adult lives—my children will grow up in a time characterized by climate change, characterized by social unrest and refugees and all kinds of problems that that brings, because of the ecological crisis that we now find ourselves in. The economic crisis, that’s what everybody’s talking about, but really it is a subsystem within the ecological crisis of this planet earth that is our home.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I want to ask you about the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL pipeline. Just two months after President rejected the project after large protests by environmental groups, he announced his support for TransCanada to build a southern leg of the pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas. In his remarks, President Obama said his administration has authorized enough gas pipelines to encircle the earth.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. Over—that’s important to know. Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the earth, and then some.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was President Obama, who is not attending the summit, nor is David Cameron, the prime minister of England, or Angela Merkel. Now TransCanada has reapplied for a permit—
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: Or Harper.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —to build a 1,200-mile segment from Alberta, Canada, to Steel City, Nebraska. Just this past Friday, the United States State Department said it would conduct a new environmental impact statement on the Keystone XL pipeline. Talk about the significance of this project and the role of activists in stopping it.
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: The British journalist George Monbiot said yesterday that it’s just—it’s quite staggering to see the president, Democrat leader, Obama, backtracking on commitments that George Bush Sr. made in 1992. It really points to the shift politically that we’ve come to in 20 years. The realm of what is politically possible is totally on the side of the right, and it’s on the side of exploiting the natural resources of the planet as fast as it possibly can, and on a budget and on a scale that dwarfs its opposition.
You know, I’m here in Rio, and there’s so many people, so many young people, who are going through the tracks that have been presented to them to have their voices heard. And they’ve been lobbying, and they’ve been following all the negotiations, and they’ve been staying up ’til 2:00 a.m., and they put their heart and soul into the document and the declaration, because they have good faith that this process works and it matters. And we are seeing, from the lack of interest in this global summit from our world leaders, and in the inability to decide—to decide on anything, on saying anything, that this system is broken, it does not work. And I think the Keystone XL, as well as the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, which is proposed from Alberta to the coast—I think we can see, by all of the opposition to this, that our governments just want to ram it through at all cost, even at the cost of democracy. And that is what I am interested in talking about, is this crisis in democracy that we have in promoting what the people actually want and what actually will carry us forward into the future with dignity.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the fact that your prime minister, that Harper, is not there, that the U.S. president, which—President Obama is not there? And I think it’s particularly significant, since he weighs every day what he’s going to do in this election year, what kind of message he wants to send. Instead, he sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Yet, more than 130 world leaders are there.
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: This message is loud and clear. This is a message from Prime Minister Harper, President Obama. The message to the rest of the world is: We don’t care about you; we do not care that your countries may be inundated, and huge social strife may be imminent—and is imminent. I was on a panel the other day with a minister from New Caledonia, a small island nation. I mean, for him, climate change is an issue of survival of his people, in—I mean, in direct terms. And what my country, what the American nation is saying is, "We do not care."
AMY GOODMAN: It’s very interesting, the Pentagon has reports on seeing climate change as one of the most serious threats to national security, because of vast migrations of people when their areas are desertified or flooded and they must move to other places. As we wrap up, Severn, can you talk about the effects of climate change? In the United States, it is not a common discussion in any way.
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: It is just—it is staggering how we’re not making the connection between climate change and what is already happening in the ground, not only in the Horn of Africa, not only in the Arctic north, but in the country of America. I mean, I remember in March seeing on the news reports about the hurricanes, the crazy storms that were hitting a huge portion of the continental U.S., and, you know, not to make the connection with what the world’s leading experts are saying is exactly what happened in a situation where climate change was unfolding. You know, actually, we have to really ask, who’s driving the ship here? I mean, really, when we—when the world’s leaders do not listen to science, when they do not listen to the experts who study this, the ones that, you know, really can tell us what’s going on, using facts and data and information, and when we actually have campaigns like in the Canadian current government—
AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: —that are actually trying to shut down science, you know, this really points to a huge question of governance and where are we going.
AMY GOODMAN: Severn Cullis-Suzuki, we thank you for being with us, and for being there 20 years ago in Rio de Janeiro. It’s the largest U.N. summit ever.
AMY GOODMAN: We continue with the largest U.N. summit ever. Juan?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We continue our coverage of Rio+20 Earth Summit by turning now to an amazing speech given 20 years ago at the 1992 U.N. Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Twelve-year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki became known as "the girl who silenced the world for six minutes" after she addressed the delegates in Rio during the summit’s plenary session.
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: Hello. I’m Severn Suzuki, speaking for ECO, the Environmental Children’s Organization. We’re a group of 12- and 13-year-olds trying to make a difference—Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and me. We’ve raised all the money to come here ourselves, to come 5,000 miles to tell you adults you must change your ways.
Coming up here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future. Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market. I am here to speak for all generations to come. I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go.
I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in our ozone. I am afraid to breathe the air, because I don’t know what chemicals are in it. I used to go in—I used to go fishing in Vancouver, my home, with my dad, until just a few years ago we found the fish full of cancers. And now we hear of animals and plants going extinct every day, vanishing forever. In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles and rainforests full of birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see. Did you have to worry of these things when you were my age?
All this is happening before our eyes, and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I’m only a child, and I don’t have all the solutions, but I want you to realize, neither do you. You don’t know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don’t know how to bring the salmon back up a dead stream. You don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can’t bring back the forests that once grew where there is now a desert. If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!
Here, you may be delegates of your governments, business people, organizers, reporters or politicians. But really, you’re mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles. And all of you are someone’s child.
I’m only a child, yet I know we are all part of a family, five billion strong—in fact, 30 million species strong. And borders and governments will never change that. I’m only a child, yet I know we are all in this together and should act as one single world towards one single goal.
In my anger, I am not blind, and in my fear, I am not afraid of telling the world how I feel.
In my country, we make so much waste, we buy and throw away, buy and throw away, buy and throw and away. And yet, northern countries will not share with the needy. Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to share, we are afraid to let go of some of our wealth. In Canada, we live the privileged life, with plenty of food, water and shelter. We have watches, bicycles, computers and television sets. The list could go on for two days.
Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent some time with some children living on the streets. This is what one child told us: "I wish I was rich. And if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicines, shelter, and love and affection." If a child on the streets who has nothing is willing to share, why are we who have everything still so greedy?
I can’t stop thinking that these are children my own age, that it makes a tremendous difference where you are born, that I could be one of those children living in the favelas of Rio, I could be a child starving in Somalia, or a victim of war in the Middle East or a beggar in India. I am only a child, yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on finding environmental answers, ending poverty, and finding treaties, what a wonderful place this earth would be.
At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us to not fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do?
Do not forget why you’re attending these conferences, who you’re doing this for: we are your own children. You are deciding what kind of a world we are growing up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying, "Everything’s going to be all right," "It’s not the end of the world," and "We’re doing the best we can." But I don’t think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities? My dad always says, "You are what you do, not what you say." Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown-ups say you love us. But I challenge you, please, make your actions reflect your words. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Severn Cullis-Suzuki, then at the age of 12 delivering her famous address at the 1992 first U.N. Earth Summit that took place in Rio de Janeiro. The video of her address has more than 21 million views on YouTube.
Well, now Severn is back in Rio, this time as a veteran international environmental campaigner and mother of two.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! That was 1992. Can you talk about what has happened in the intervening 20 years? Do you feel that there has been real progress now at this summit, Severn?
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: Good afternoon. It’s an honor to be on the show.
Twenty years have passed, and everybody wants to know what have we done, how have we progressed. Well, last week, scientists released a report in the academic journal Nature that suggested that we are pushing for a tipping point in the earth’s biosphere, that we are attacking our ecosystems that sustain us and all life on this earth, in so many ways, on so many levels, that we are pushing for a state shift like what was seen 12,000 years ago with the end of the last ice age. But this time it will be human-caused, and it will be orders of magnitude faster than the thousand-year transition that happened last time. I mean, that report, released on the eve of this world summit, is clear that we have not achieved the sustainable world we knew we needed 20 years ago.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Severn, yet the draft agreement that is being proposed at this summit, somebody did an analysis of the verbs in that agreement and found that the word "encourage" appeared 50 times, and the word "support" appeared 99 times, but "must" only three times and "we will" only five times. So, in the face of this looming crisis, does it give you much hope at all that the world leaders are couching this agreement in such weak terms?
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: They called Rio+10 in Johannesburg "Rio-Minus-10" because already the world leaders were starting to backtrack on an agreement from Rio 1992 that now looks like this amazing, visionary success. And, I mean, I am ashamed to hear that the Canadian negotiating team was trying their best to omit the word "commit." So I wonder how many times that actually made it through in the draft that we have today.
I think that this is indicative of what is happening in our world at large. There is so much shift right now. We have economic meltdown around the world. We have social unrest. We have revolution just boiling up all over the planet. And now we have our national leaders that are hunkering down more and more, defending their national interests, and less and less looking for the good of humanity. I believe we have a crisis in governance. This is showing that the world’s leaders are not able to come together and lead for the sake of humanity. What does it mean when the world’s elected leaders do not represent the good of the people that they’re supposed to care for?
AMY GOODMAN: Severn Cullis-Suzuki, especially for young people who are listening and watching right now all over the world — we have a room full of interns that we are celebrating today, the summer interns who have begun at Democracy Now! — talk about how it was you who ended up giving this speech 20 years ago at the age of 12. How did you end up addressing world leaders?
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: Well, it was an incredibly grassroots initiatives. I had started a club, and this was really a group of girls who really wanted to do something for the planet in the broadest terms. And how we started was, well, we needed to educate ourselves. When I was nine, we started this club, called ourselves ECO, the Environmental Children’s Organization. We built on very small projects like beach cleanups, basic support for other environmental groups. And finally, we heard about the Earth Summit, after a few years of this, and decided we wanted to go. It’s a very long story. We galvanized support from our community, our parents, our teachers, our friends, fundraised the money, got here, and then, in a sea of 30,000 people here, we started getting our message out because we were young. And this is the key.
Twenty years later, the world is still talking about a speech, a six-minute speech that a 12-year-old gave to world leaders. Why? It is because the world is hungry to hear the truth, and it is nowhere articulated as well as from the mouths of those with everything at stake, which is youth. Today’s youth will spend their entire—the rest of their entire lives, their entire adult lives—my children will grow up in a time characterized by climate change, characterized by social unrest and refugees and all kinds of problems that that brings, because of the ecological crisis that we now find ourselves in. The economic crisis, that’s what everybody’s talking about, but really it is a subsystem within the ecological crisis of this planet earth that is our home.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I want to ask you about the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL pipeline. Just two months after President rejected the project after large protests by environmental groups, he announced his support for TransCanada to build a southern leg of the pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas. In his remarks, President Obama said his administration has authorized enough gas pipelines to encircle the earth.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. Over—that’s important to know. Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the earth, and then some.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was President Obama, who is not attending the summit, nor is David Cameron, the prime minister of England, or Angela Merkel. Now TransCanada has reapplied for a permit—
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: Or Harper.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —to build a 1,200-mile segment from Alberta, Canada, to Steel City, Nebraska. Just this past Friday, the United States State Department said it would conduct a new environmental impact statement on the Keystone XL pipeline. Talk about the significance of this project and the role of activists in stopping it.
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: The British journalist George Monbiot said yesterday that it’s just—it’s quite staggering to see the president, Democrat leader, Obama, backtracking on commitments that George Bush Sr. made in 1992. It really points to the shift politically that we’ve come to in 20 years. The realm of what is politically possible is totally on the side of the right, and it’s on the side of exploiting the natural resources of the planet as fast as it possibly can, and on a budget and on a scale that dwarfs its opposition.
You know, I’m here in Rio, and there’s so many people, so many young people, who are going through the tracks that have been presented to them to have their voices heard. And they’ve been lobbying, and they’ve been following all the negotiations, and they’ve been staying up ’til 2:00 a.m., and they put their heart and soul into the document and the declaration, because they have good faith that this process works and it matters. And we are seeing, from the lack of interest in this global summit from our world leaders, and in the inability to decide—to decide on anything, on saying anything, that this system is broken, it does not work. And I think the Keystone XL, as well as the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, which is proposed from Alberta to the coast—I think we can see, by all of the opposition to this, that our governments just want to ram it through at all cost, even at the cost of democracy. And that is what I am interested in talking about, is this crisis in democracy that we have in promoting what the people actually want and what actually will carry us forward into the future with dignity.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the fact that your prime minister, that Harper, is not there, that the U.S. president, which—President Obama is not there? And I think it’s particularly significant, since he weighs every day what he’s going to do in this election year, what kind of message he wants to send. Instead, he sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Yet, more than 130 world leaders are there.
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: This message is loud and clear. This is a message from Prime Minister Harper, President Obama. The message to the rest of the world is: We don’t care about you; we do not care that your countries may be inundated, and huge social strife may be imminent—and is imminent. I was on a panel the other day with a minister from New Caledonia, a small island nation. I mean, for him, climate change is an issue of survival of his people, in—I mean, in direct terms. And what my country, what the American nation is saying is, "We do not care."
AMY GOODMAN: It’s very interesting, the Pentagon has reports on seeing climate change as one of the most serious threats to national security, because of vast migrations of people when their areas are desertified or flooded and they must move to other places. As we wrap up, Severn, can you talk about the effects of climate change? In the United States, it is not a common discussion in any way.
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: It is just—it is staggering how we’re not making the connection between climate change and what is already happening in the ground, not only in the Horn of Africa, not only in the Arctic north, but in the country of America. I mean, I remember in March seeing on the news reports about the hurricanes, the crazy storms that were hitting a huge portion of the continental U.S., and, you know, not to make the connection with what the world’s leading experts are saying is exactly what happened in a situation where climate change was unfolding. You know, actually, we have to really ask, who’s driving the ship here? I mean, really, when we—when the world’s leaders do not listen to science, when they do not listen to the experts who study this, the ones that, you know, really can tell us what’s going on, using facts and data and information, and when we actually have campaigns like in the Canadian current government—
AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.
SEVERN CULLIS-SUZUKI: —that are actually trying to shut down science, you know, this really points to a huge question of governance and where are we going.
AMY GOODMAN: Severn Cullis-Suzuki, we thank you for being with us, and for being there 20 years ago in Rio de Janeiro. It’s the largest U.N. summit ever.
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