SUMMARY

There are solutions to the climate crisis. What people and the planet need is a just and sustainable transition of our societies to a form that will ensure the rights of life and dignity of all peoples and deliver a more fertile planet and more fulfilling lives to future generations.

We, participating peoples, communities, and all organizations at the Klimaforum09 in Copenhagen, call upon every person, organization, government, and institution, including the United Nations (UN), to contribute to this necessary transition. It will be a challenging task. The crisis of today has economic, social, environmental, geopolitical, and ideological aspects interacting with and reinforcing each other as well as the climate crisis. For this reason, we call for urgent climate action:

. A complete abandonment of fossil fuels within the next 30 years, which must include specific milestones for every 5-year period. We demand an immediate cut in GHG of industrialized countries of at least 40% compared to 1990 levels by 2020.

. Recognition, payment and compensation of climate debt for the overconsumption of

After two stolen elections by Bush-Cheney, an election of Grandpa John "Bomb Bomb Iran" McCain and his sorority president sidekick -- whether honest or blatantly stolen and tolerated -- would have said something hugely depressing and debilitating about the American people. But arguably it could have saved a great many lives around the world. Here's how.

Premise number 1: Presidents will fight as many and as large wars as they possibly can. Presidents have always loved wars, which they have used to seize greater powers and strip away civil liberties. As the military industrial presidential complex has grown, so has the financial and institutional pressure for wars. President Obama is expanding the U.S. empire of bases, escalating wars, and toying with possible new wars to the extent that he has the weapons, troops, and mercenaries available to do it with. No more, no less. McCain-Palin, left to their own devices, would have done very nearly the same thing. Therefore, any major change in war policy effected by the 2008 presidential election would have had to be indirect.

Contradictions on the Horizon

You see them as you fly in. 'Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, Lovely Ol' Girl of the Sea,' as Danny Kaye's Hans Christian Anderson character once sang in the '50's movie, embodies in its skyline the contrasts and contradictions facing us all in the inevitable transition to a post-carbon future. A scan across the harbor's horizon reveals a phalanx of giant wind-generators spinning ponderously in the ocean breeze, flanked by an array of coal- and gas-fired power plants discharging plumes of carbon into the lowering overcast. Just visible to the east across the narrow strip of ocean that separates Denmark from Sweden you can make out the inactive cooling tower of Barsebek nuclear power plant, shut down as a result of public pressure generated by anti-nuclear NGO's in both countries.