During his speech to the 15th United Nations Climate Change Summit
in Copenhagen, Denmark, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez slammed the
“lack of political will” of the most powerful nations to take serious
action to avert climate change, and called for systemic change to save
the planet.
Chavez, who received a standing ovation for his speech, said the
process in Copenhagen is “not democratic; it is not inclusive.” In
particular, he criticised an attempt by rich countries to overturn the
Kyoto Protocol. Doing so would eliminate differentiation between the
obligations of rich and poor countries, treating countries from the
Global North and South as equally responsible for climate change.
“There is a group of countries that believe they are superior to
those of us from the South, to those of us from the Third Word… this
does not surprise us… we are again faced with powerful evidence of
global imperial dictatorship,” Chavez said.
The Venezuelan president also applauded the initiative of the
protesters outside the summit who were calling for serious measures to
stop catastrophic climate change.
“There are many people outside... I've read in the news that there
were some arrests, some intense protests there in the streets of
Copenhagen, and I salute all those people out there, the majority of
them youth… They are young people concerned for the world’s future,” he
said.
“I have been reading some of the slogans painted in the streets… One
said, ‘Don’t Change the Climate, Change the System!’ – And I bring that
on board for us. Let’s not change the climate. Let’s change the system!
And as a consequence, we will begin to save the planet. Capitalism is a
destructive development model that is putting an end to life, that
threatens to put a definitive end to the human species.”
Another notable slogan is, “If the climate were a bank, they would
have bailed it out already,” Chavez said during his speech. “It’s true;
the rich governments have saved the capitalist banks,” he said, but
they lack “the political will” to make the necessary reductions to
greenhouse emissions.
“One could say there is a spectre at Copenhagen, to paraphrase Karl
Marx… almost no-one wants to mention it: the spectre of capitalism,” he
declared.
History requires all people to struggle against capitalism, and if
we don’t, life on the planet “will disappear,” the Venezuelan president
argued.
“Do the rich think they can go to another planet when they’ve
destroyed this one?” he asked as he recommended a copy of a book by
Hervé Kampf, “How the Rich are Destroying the Planet.”
“Climate change is undoubtedly the most devastating environmental
problem of this century. Floods, droughts, severe storms, hurricanes,
melting ice caps, rise in average sea levels, ocean acidification, and
heat waves, all of that sharpens the impact of global crisis besetting
us,” he continued.
Human activity is exceeding the limits of sustainability and
endangering life on the planet, but the impacts of climate change are
also being felt disproportionately by the world’s poor, Chavez
explained.
He also pointed to the relationship between economic inequality and
levels of greenhouse gas emissions. He said the richest 500 million
people, or 7% of the world’s population, are responsible for 50% of
global greenhouse emissions, while the poorest 50% of the worlds
population are responsible for only 7% of total emissions.
Using this analysis, he argued that it was not feasible to call
countries such as the U.S. and China to sit at the summit on an equal
footing, insisting that the same obligations can not be imposed on both
nations.
The U.S., with a population of 300 million, consumes more than 20
million barrels of oil a day, while China, whose population is almost
five times greater than that of the U.S., consumes around 5-6 million
barrels a day, he pointed out.
The behind-the-scenes negotiations at the summit have been marked by
sharp disputes between the U.S. and China, and between rich and poor
nations. Poor countries have criticised rich countries for attempting
to set inadequate emissions targets for industrialised countries and
for pledging insufficient funding for poor countries to alleviate the
impacts of climate change.
According to various reports, poor nations argue that rich countries
should reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent below 1990
levels by 2020. The European Union has pledged a 20 percent reduction.
The U.S. however, has only offered only a 3-4 percent cut.
Outside in the streets of Copenhagen mass demonstrations calling for
“climate justice” have been repressed by police using pepper spray and
batons. More than 1000 people have been arrested.
“We ask from Venezuela: How much longer are we going to allow such
injustices and inequalities? How much longer are we going to tolerate
the current international economic order and prevailing market
mechanisms?” Chavez questioned.
Chavez called for the summit to change direction. “We cannot
continue like this. Let’s change course, but without cynicism, without
lies, without double agendas, no documents out of the blue, with the
truth out in the open,” he said.
Venezuelan Analysis