Press release No. 8. POLITICAL PLATFORM OF KLIMAFORUM 10

México D. F., July 9, 2010

After several meetings, we have adopted the following Political Platform of KlimaForum10:

1. THERE IS A CLIMATE CATASTROPHE, NOT CLIMATE CHANGE

The weather patterns of the world are undergoing a rapid and disturbing disruption, which is increasing in both force and catastrophic impact. This change could end up being life-threatening for many human communities in coming years, for the large majority of people in this century. Describing this process as “climate change”, amounts to distorting reality.

2. THERE IS NO TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CATASTROPHE

There will be no technological solution to climate disaster as long as certain economic values continue to predominate in the world, including mercantilism, utilitarianism, “development-ism,” and militarism. In this framework, “productivity,” competition, and manipulation reign supreme. As long as the system which generates these values (and therefore also shapes the dominant social imagination) remains in force, there will be no real solution. Neither nuclear energy, nor geoengineering, nanotechnology, GMOs, or biofuels (among other technologies) will offer us real solutions to the climatic disaster; they are false solutions. The only appropriate solutions to this predicament will come from a world-wide expansion of solidarity, cooperation, and friendship, valuing the pleasure of free time and playfulness, social life, autonomy, wisdom, the techniques and beauty produced by craftsmen and artists, practical and adaptive approaches, approaches based on relationships and co-existence, a spiritual approach, and mainly, respect for the sacredness of mountains, rivers, the seas, forests, the forests, the animals: Mother Earth, whose gifts have no price. This change in values must be systematic – meaning, we must change the system, not the climate - beginning with a different personal ethics, like voluntary simplicity. We must learn to live better with fewer objects, and to act in defense of the global commons.

3. THERE IS NO GOVERNMENT SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CATASTROPHE

Because of its violent nature and concentration of power, which removes it from local and cultural diversity, and because of its pyramidal, authoritarian character, governments are incapable of providing authentic solutions to climate catastrophe; they are capable only of false solutions. False solutions are costing us precious time as we face this threat, experiencing greater calamities such as long heat waves, stronger hurricanes, droughts, forest fires, a drop in global food production, the rise and spread of diseases, the melting of glaciers, ocean acidification and sea-level rise, changes in ocean currents, the death of coral reefs, and species extinction, among others. State-sponsored false solutions include “market-based” solutions (such as carbon markets), offsets, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), REDD, and perverse finance schemes. Only a great diversity of small-scale, locally-appropriate solutions, involving a great social mobilization, can mitigate the catastrophic effects of this modern disaster.

4. RADICAL REDUCTION IN CONSUMPTION AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION BY THE POWERFUL IS REQUIRED

In order to face the climatic disaster, we must urgently reduce consumption in the powerful countries, especially the United States, England, Germany, France, Italy and Japan, due to their historical responsibility in the generation of the climatic disaster. Further, we must reduce consumption by the rising middle-classes of the emerging economies, including China, India, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico and South Africa. As soon as possible, the present “American way of life,” which has grown into a cancer on the world, and which is the main cause of this catastrophe, must disappear. In particular, it is indispensable to vastly reduce the consumption of bottled water, red meat, paper, and mobile phones, among other things. Of course, this means vastly and rapidly reducing the global industrial over-production which gives rise to this untenable wastefulness. Centrally, industrial agriculture and factory farming must be rapidly abandoned in favor of a return to local, small-scale food production.

5. WE MUST LEAVE OIL, GAS, COAL AND OTHER GIFTS OF NATURE UNDERGROUND

The consumption of fossil fuels is not only the main cause of climatic disaster. Their extraction also generates enormous ecological damage; Peak Oil (which is already creating world-wide tensions and causing great misery) forces industry to riskier extractions every day, creating spills like the Gulf of Mexico gusher, and disasters like those in Maracaibo, Nigeria, and the Alberta tar sands. Mining, whose environmental damage is excessive, is in the same category. Without a rapid and radical reduction of energy consumption in the United States, the European Union, Japan, China, and India, it will not be possible to achieve real solutions to the climatic disaster which is causing the destruction of the modern world. It is urgent to establish severe restrictions to the use of the automobile, airplanes and high speed trains; to discourage “free markets;” to eliminate privatization; and to prohibit mega-projects. We must re-conceptualize and reconstruct governments with the purpose of substantially increasing civic collaboration, relocalize both production and consumption, and intensively reuse materials. It is essential to abandon the era of oil now, to move beyond the economy of “growth without limit” and to enter a stable era of low energy consumption and shared frugality.

6. WE MUST DE-NUCLEARIZE THE WORLD

Nuclear energy is a fundamental pillar of the dominant system – an unjust system responsible for creating climatic disaster, growing global injustice, and the predominance of values that reign today. We live under the tyranny of nuclear-armed states which initiate the wars and extreme violence that destroys modern societies. These states impose dominant modes of consumption and production, which foment the construction and operation of very dangerous nuclear plants in support of nuclear weapons, and which are leading to the world towards its rapid destruction. In order to face the climatic disaster, it is essential that the United States, Russia, France, England, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan eliminate their nuclear weapons. In addition, all the existing nuclear plants in the world must be dismantled, because their risks are excessive and their waste products leave an unacceptable burden to future generations. Only social awareness of the nature of nuclear energy and the continuous opposition of movements along with independent organizations can curb this insane activity by ministers, industrialists and the scientists loyal to them. There is no nuclear solution to climate change.

7. WE SUPPORT THE BLOSSOMING OF SMALL SOLUTIONS TO CLIMATIC CATASROPHE WHICH:

A. Give top priority to very low energy consumption.

B. Contain high percentages of reused materials and support traditional production methods and craftsmanship.

C. Guarantee food, clothing, housing, education, happiness and the spiritual needs of the most vulnerable.

D. Strengthen the local and regional communities where they take place.

E. Remain critical of industry and modern-day consumption.

MEXICAN PROMOTION COMMITTEE FOR KLIMAFORUM 2010:

Adriana Matalonga; Eugenio Cabrera; Gabriela de la Vega; Jorge López; Mauricio Villegas; Miguel Valencia; Miguel Ángel Rosas; Raquel Rodríguez.