Jutta Schmitt // It's now or never: Hands Off Mother Earth!

http://tankerenemy.blogspot.com/2010/04/jutta-schmitt-its-now-or-never-hands.html

Jutta Schmitt // It's now or never: Hands Off Mother Earth!

In Defense of our living planet and planetary life.

University of Los Andes (ULA) senior lecturer in political sciences, Jutta Schmitt writes: The Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth recently held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, by the World's People -- as opposed to the world's transnational corporations and their executive branches or 'Governments of, by and for the Elites' -- has concluded with The People's Agreement on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (1). This final document makes it very clear that if the so called "Copenhagen Understanding" had its way, the damages already inflicted on Mother Earth would become totally irreversible, with a 20 to 30 percent of species condemned to extinction, our forests and glaciers at risk of disappearing for good, with deserts expanding and droughts and floods affecting different regions of the planet, jeopardizing world food production and dramatically increasing the number of the hungry on the planet, which already exceeds 1 billion people.

The document goes straight to the essence of the problem our world is facing today, when pointing towards the fact, that the governments of the so called 'developed' countries, in complicity with part of the scientific community, are trying to reduce the debate and urgent action needed to avert the huge danger environmental contamination and climate change pose for life on planet Earth, to its perceivable effects -- rising temperatures -- rather than addressing the underlying root cause, the capitalist system. The People's Agreement direly warns that we are witnessing the agony of a patriarchal model of civilization based on the oppression and destruction of human beings and nature, which had been sharply accelerated by the industrial revolution and which today encompasses the entire globe. It states that this model of civilization -- capitalism -- has ruthlessly imposed on us its logics of competition and its notion of 'progress,' which equals wellbeing with unlimited economic growth, no matter the consequences. The document states that capitalism is a mode of production and consumption which has the sole purpose of seeking unlimited profits, alienating humans from nature and converting everything into a commodity: water, land, the human genome, our ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, people's rights, death and life itself.

The People's Agreement bluntly shows that humanity today faces the final disjunctive: Either continue the devastating path of capitalism towards depredation and death, or start paving the way to a model of society that learns to live in harmony with nature and respects and cherishes life. The knowledge, wisdom and the ancestral way of life of our indigenous peoples, anchored in the concept of Earth as a living being, that is, as the totality of all the living, moving processes of which human beings only form a part, is being considered as the only method to help Mother Earth with all her living relations -- humans included -- survive and recover. The document goes on to categorically state that an alternative society must either live in harmony and equilibrium with itself and with nature, foster the collective wellbeing based on complementarity, solidarity and equity, respect Mother Earth's rights, value humans by virtue of what they are and not by what they possess, eliminate all forms of colonialism, imperialism and interventionism and foster peace between the peoples and with Mother Earth, or otherwise perish.

Thus and according to the People's Agreement, the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth must be adopted immediately and must comprise her right to life and to existence, her right to be respected, her right to continue her natural cycles and processes without alteration by humans, her right to maintain her identity and integrity as a totality of different, self-regulated and interrelated beings, her right to water as the spring of life, her right to clean air, her right to integral health, her right to be free from contamination, pollution, toxic and radioactive waste, her right not to be modified genetically, her right to be free from threats to a vital and healthy functioning, and finally, her right to a full and fast recovery from the violations of these rights by human activities.

In addition, the People's Agreement demands the creation of an International Court for Climate and Environmental Justice, and demands that the so-called 'developed' countries take their full responsibility as the major polluters and thus restore the environment including the atmospheric space above the so-called 'underdeveloped' countries, which has been contaminated by the pollutants of the 'developed' countries. Furthermore, the agreement demands that the 'developed countries' provide shelter to the hundreds of millions that will be displaced as a consequence of climate change provoked by THEIR greenhouse gas emissions and also provide the means to minimize and deal with the damage caused by these same emissions. This, of course, sets the stage for an inevitable confrontation between two radically antagonistic conception: The World People's Conception which places life over profit and which seeks an integral solution to climate change by identifying and tackling the root cause, and the World Elites' 'conception' or rather shortsightedness, which places profits over life and which seeks to make profit even from the demise of Mother Earth and life.

In this sense and consequentially, the People's Agreement categorically rejects the false solutions to climate change, offered by the Elites in complicity with the established scientific community and profit-hungry, transnational corporations, which range from 'bio-fuels,' nanotechnology, genetically modified organisms to geo-engineering. As for the latter, the necessity to protect our already contaminated skies and seas from being totally deprived of the little that is left of their vital functions by injecting toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and by dumping iron into the oceans, has led to the creation of the HANDS OFF MOTHER EARTH CAMPAIGN by a coalition of international civil society groups, indigenous peoples organizations and social movements, who participated at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. The HOME campaign is aimed at raising public awareness with regard to large-scale manipulation of planetary sub-systems and provides a platform for individuals and organizations to voice their opposition to such geo-engineering experiments.

Most importantly, the massive, already ongoing 'covert' -- and at the same time openly visible experiments -- of "Solar Radiation Management" MUST BE EXPOSED AND STOPPED.

The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth has concluded its session on April 22 with the People's Agreement and the call for immediate coordination of international action so as to see for the dissemination of its findings and the implementation of its demands. The Conference calls for the construction of a World Movement of the People for the Defense of Mother Earth, because Mother Earth is the only HOME we have.

It's now or never: We have to defend our living planet and planetary life. Thus, join the Hands Off Mother Earth Campaign! Welcome HOME!

Jutta Schmitt
jutta@franzlee.org.ve

JUTTA SCHMITT, M.A., Political Science, Philosophy & Sociology is an Assistant Lecturer (ad honorem) in Political Science at the University de Los Andes (ULA) in Merida.

Notes

(1) http://cmpcc.org/2010/04/23/acuerdo-de-los-pueblos/

http://www.vheadline.com/Jutta_schmitt

Source: http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=91027

Pubblished by Strakerosario