Crackdown in Copenhagen

AS WORLD leaders gather in Copenhagen for the international climate summit, they've made it clear what they don't want--to hear the voices of ordinary people protesting their criminal inaction in confronting global warming.

So Copenhagen is being turned into a fortress--and authorities are warning that protesters may face swift and severe penalties.

According to the New York Times, a host of measures have been put in place to ensure that protesters can be swiftly rounded up. These include new laws rushed through parliament that stiffen penalties for protest-related offenses, including large fines and extended jail stays. The government has also acquired new "anti-riot equipment."

Law enforcement officials proudly showed the media three dozen cages built in an abandoned Carlsberg beer depot--they will serve as temporary jails for as many as 350 protesters at a time. Some 1,000 people can be arrested and processed at the facility during a 24-hour period, authorities boasted to the media.

Such plans are--according to Per Larsen, the chief coordinating officer for the Copenhagen police force--part of the "biggest police action we have ever had in Danish history." In all, Larson told the New York Times, some $122 million has been spent to "secure the city and to fortify the Bella Center," where leaders are scheduled to meet. As the Times described:

High steel fences atop concrete barricades surround the center, and vehicles can enter only through well-armed police checkpoints. The southern reaches of the Inderhavnen Canal, which runs just west of the center, are embroidered with concertina wire to prevent access by water.

Germany and Sweden have contributed vehicles and bomb-sniffing dogs, and Denmark has received permission from the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, to reintroduce border checkpoints, should it be necessary. On Thursday, the police set a car on fire as part of a demonstration of a newly acquired water cannon, which is also capable of dispersing crowds.

Although police say they will allow several permitted actions, including a demonstration this Saturday from the city's center to the location of the UN meeting, officials have issued an order banning open-air meetings that "may constitute a danger to the public order"--a definition so vaguely worded that it gives police leeway to preemptively crack down on protesters.

DESPITE THESE threats, many activists and organizations are vowing not to be silenced.

As author Naomi Klein told a crowd of 1,000 gathered for "Klimaforum09"--the "people's climate summit"--on December 7, protest and civil disobedience in Copenhagen can be part of rebuilding the global justice movement that captured worldwide attention "all those years ago in Seattle, fighting against the privatization of life itself," she said, referring to the 1999 "Battle in Seattle" against a summit of the World Trade Organization.

Copenhagen is an opportunity to "continue the conversation that was so rudely interrupted by 9/11," Klein said. She continued:

Down the road at the Bella Center, there is the worst case of disaster capitalism that we have ever witnessed. We know that what is being proposed in the Bella Center doesn't even come close to the deal that is needed. We know the paltry emissions cuts that Obama has proposed; they're insulting.

Even the logo for the summit has been given over to corporate interests, Klein noted: "The globe has Siemens logo on the bottom and the whole event is sponsored by Coke. That is a capitalization of hope, but Klimaforum09 is where the real hope lies."

Other activists agreed. "At Klimaforum09, we find the real people taking real action," said Nnimmo Bassey, head of Friends of Earth International. "Polluters must be held accountable, and policy makers must start listening to the people," he said.

As Klein continued, "We have to be the lie detectors here. Let's not restrict ourselves to polite marches and formulaic panel discussions. If Seattle was the coming out party, this should be the coming of age party...[W]e have to build a global mass movement that will not allow leaders to get away with what they are trying to get away with."

Such calls are echoing beyond Copenhagen. In the U.S., a protest at Chevron headquarters, timed to coincide with Copenhagen, brought out more than 100 people on December 7. Twenty-nine activists were arrested. Organized by the Mobilization for Climate Justice West, members of several Bay Area environmental and global justice groups gathered to demand that Chevron "end its practices of community destruction, climate pollution and interfering with climate policy solutions."

"Why Chevron? It's the biggest polluter, and it's in our backyard," Gopal Dayaneni, a member of Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project, told the Contra Costa Times.

Protests like these will be important in ensuring that real action is taken to control global carbon emissions that are causing climate change. A leaked draft of an agreement referred to as the "Danish text" shows how resistant the main global polluters are to real change.

According to a report in Britain's Guardian, the text details a secret deal between a group of countries known as "the circle of commitment"--the U.S. UK and Denmark are apparently among them.

Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which places the burden, at least on paper, of the responsibility for carbon reduction on the most-polluting countries (including the U.S.), the Danish text "hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol--the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions," the Guardian reported.

Furthermore, the Guardian reported, the draft would reportedly force "developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement and not allow "poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tons of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tons."

This is a slap in the face to the world--and shows more than ever why we can't rely on corporations and governments to police themselves when it comes to saving the planet.