Dispatch from the Copenhagen Climate Summit

Entering the second week of the Copenhagen climate negotiations, several things are clear. Firstly, the negotiations are very confusing and close to deadlocked. At a time when all countries need to stand together to face the global threat of the climate crisis, many nations are still using every tactic they can to avoid and delay reducing their own greenhouse gas pollution, while asking everyone else to take the burden. Worse still, our leaders are tossing blame back and forth in an endless cycle – rather than focusing on what is required for the world as a whole.

An additional complication has been that this week, civil society’s access to the conference center will be dramatically limited (only 90 of the 20,000 accredited civil society delegates, people like me, will be allowed to enter the Bella Center on Friday). This is bringing up hard questions about citizen access to decision-making on climate change and is helping build momentum behind a counter-UN “People’s Assembly” that will take place on Wednesday.

Secondly, it is clear that the time for intellectual argument regarding climate change is over. The climate crisis is a moral issue. Slavery didn’t end because of compelling economic arguments. Women didn’t claim the right to vote with scientific data. These moral struggles were won because people, like us, finally listened to the still, small voice that perks up when something is amiss, and then took action to right the wrong.

When one person breaks something and a different person gets in trouble for it, it is wrong. It’s unfair. This is a cross-cultural principle and this is precisely what is happening with climate change. The communities least responsible for greenhouse gas pollution are the communities that are at the highest risk from the effects of climate change. As it stands, we are being warned by scientists, economists, even the U.S. military, that millions will lose their lives due to preventable and involuntary hunger, disease and conflict resulting from greenhouse gas pollution. If we don’t act to remedy this state of affairs, we are complicit in this crime against humanity.

On Thursday, Dec. 17, a global action called Hunger for Survival, will lead the way in cutting through the endless back-and-forth to sound a moral call to action. Inspired by the members of Climate Justice Fast!, now on their 41^st day without food, thousands of people from around the world, including President Mohommed Nasheed of the Maldives, world-renowned physicist and environmental justice advocate Vandana Shiva, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mary Robinson, will unite in a day of fasting and reflection on climate justice.

While fasters will be calling for moral action from our different governments, the fast is also an expression of collective commitment to examining our own lifestyles and priorities. It is an expression of our desire to challenge the idea that excess is virtuous, and use our daily economic and political choices to reward those who promote nourishing and life-sustaining policies, rather than those who abuse the planet and its people.

Gandhi used fasting as a tool to unseat the British Empire's powerful grip over India. The American, English and Irish women suffragists used it to gain the right to vote. When people unite behind an intention, and seal it with fasting, history shows that powerful things happen. If you would like to join the fast, please visit www.climatejusticefast.com.

Struggles for justice are often aided by government intervention. To those who decry such intervention, I say, if we don’t want the expansion of government mandate, then let’s not wait on the government to mandate us doing the right thing.

Regarding this point, here is some good news: the third thing that is clear here in Copenhagen is that the best solutions to climate change are coming from regular people who are not waiting around on government to mandate doing the right thing. All around the world, people are realizing that economic failure, environmental and health crises, and spiritual confusion and dissatisfaction are all connected. People from Lexington to Hong Kong are taking action to put control of food and energy production back into the capable hands of local communities, to strengthen local businesses, and to forward the process of healing the divisions within our communities and between humanity and our home. These people are the real climate champions. My deep and abiding gratitude to you all.