Avaaz 15million PETITION & Liveblogging youth sit-in NOW for Real Deal at COP15:

[Ghost Dog]

>>> LIVE BLOG: Youth activists sit-in, refuse to leave until negotiators listen to 11 million voices calling for a fair, ambitious, and binding deal (see photos below)):>>> http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/12/16/live-blog-youth-activists-refuse-to-leave-before-everyones-voices-are-heard/

DU the Petition:

>>> Avaaz "Real Deal Now!" Petition (aiming for 15 million signatures in 72 hours; 11,202,841-strong at posting, and rising at rate of > 10,000 per hour):>>> http://www.avaaz.org/en/copenhagencrisis /

Petition to the 110 Presidents and Prime Ministers negotiating in Copenhagen:

We call on each one of you to make the concessions necessary to meet your historic responsibility in this crisis. Rich countries must offer fair funding, and all countries must set ambitious targets on emissions. Do not leave Copenhagen without a fair, ambitious and binding deal that keeps the world safe from catastrophic global warming of 2 degrees.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/copenhagencrisis /

[tazkcmo]

1. Done

And recced.

[Ghost Dog]

2. Thanks. They've just cleared the hall

as seen on the new live video stream: http://powershift09.org/live

Hope they can get back in tomorrow morning, Copenhagen time.

[G_j]

3. K&R!

let's add some names!

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Never mind all fixed and done

[amborin]

5. done! their link was slow, however; k&r

[Luciferous]

6. Done

[Ghost Dog]

7. 13,458,864 people from around the world have now signed the petition

as of this posting.

(And I see this OP is being unrecced, of course, on DU. Thanks to those who see this and act according to your conscience).

I also see that the Copenhagen Conference opens late in the mornings (it's 10:55 there at time of posting), but continues until late at night. There's no fresh action yet at the LiveBlog: http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/ - but I'm sure there will be.

Copenhagen Civil Society action can also be glimpsed via Indymedia Danmark: http://indymedia.dk/ from where I'd like to copy the following (Creative Commons) elegant summary of the current situation we find ourselves in:

Copenhagen sham: the Empire reveals its nakedness

published: Wednesday 16 December 2009 23:20 af / by Alex W.

Political tensions are rising both within and outside the walls of Copenhagen's Bella Centre, the venue for what many commentators have described as the most important international conference ever held. Following a weekend of massive police repression in which over a thousand people were taken into police custody under pre-emptive detention powers passed into legislation by the Danish parliament earlier this month, the bureaucratic mandarins of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) displayed their true political colours by barring entry to thousands of previously accredited NGO observers to the conference centre as of Tuesday morning.

This exclusion of NGO's from participation in the summit - one ostensibly convened to reach a global consensus on the reduction of greenhouse gases - dramatically illustrates the undemocratic nature of the United Nations and reveals who its true masters are. Now that the leaders of the most powerful nations on Earth are due to arrive, and faced with the intolerable threat of democracy coming from outside the Bella Centre in the form of massive popular protest, the faceless, unaccountable officials behind COP15 (the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC) have shown the whole world what this summit is really all about: a tawdry exercise in grubby deal-making carried out by and for the global elite.

When the COP15 farce ends this Saturday, at best we can expect glib talk of a political framework for a legally binding treaty to be signed at some distant point in the future, and a great deal of sound and fury signifying nothing about the need to reduce the industrialised world's carbon emissions.

Which is not to say there won't be important agreements made at Copenhagen. Far from it. In fact, much progress has already been made in the advancing the real agenda at COP15 - the massive expansion of the carbon trading market on a global scale.

According to the UNFCCC's own figures, there are already some 5500 projects operational or in the pipeline under the Convention's so-called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a pseudo-environmental market -driven scam that would make even Bernie Madoff blush. Under the CDM, capitalists hell bent on further fossil-fuel driven expansion can continue to pollute to their heart's content by either purchasing or financing 'carbon offset' projects. Under the scheme, everything from zero-biodiversity, genetically modified, monoculture tree plantations to water-guzzling, land-clearing hydroelectric dams can be eligible for official accreditation as a carbon offsetting project.

The carbon credits generated by the CDM projects can then be bought and sold on the open market. Trading floors in London, New York and Chicago are already open for carbon credit related business with no doubt more bourses to follow. Thus it is that the United Nations now works hand in glove with the very same giant Wall St investment firms who so recently brought us to the very brink of financial catastrophe. For Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, carbon credits may well prove to be the next big thing in derivatives trading. The debt and property markets have collapsed, why not speculate on carbon instead?

Numerous studies, including reports drafted by Carbon Trade Watch, the Corner House research group and Friends of the Earth, have demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt these carbon trading and offset mechanisms have proved completely ineffective in actually reducing pollution. On the other hand, billions of dollars has changed hands and a ripe new market for hyper-speculation is taking shape. It's nice to know there really is a silver lining to even the darkest of clouds...at least for some of us.

The madness of carbon trading; the contempt shown by the UN mandarins and rich nations towards NGOs and delegates from the global South; the summit host's deployment of extraordinary police powers to silence the expression of popular discontent at the undemocratic nature of the whole process; everything that has transpired at Copenhagen illustrates clearly 'our' bureaucratic institutions, governments and corporations will continue by their very nature to act in their own interests. Thankfully, we have begun to do likewise.

As Vandana Shiva said to the gathering of 100 000 people outside the Danish parliament last Saturday, "This is what Earth democracy looks like." The time is long overdue for a truly global climate justice movement. Copenhagen might spell the end of any official pretence by the world's ruling classes that they intend to combat the climate crisis (how appropriate the Empire reveals its nakedness in the land of Hans Christian Andersen himself!). It might also prove to be the birthplace of a movement that will one day deal with not just the problem of climate injustice, but all the other injustices and crises currently plaguing the planet. Only time will tell.

http://indymedia.dk/articles/1899

Thanks. Peace. GD :hi:

Nb. Do see also Friends Of The Earth Delegation Get Expelled From COP15 During An Interview With Amy Goodman (Video and Transcript) posted by Turborama here on DU yesterday: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x413635

Truly unbelievable.