By Amy Goodman for Democracy Now!
This week Democracy Now! is broadcasting from the UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, where the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait have blocked language “welcoming” October’s landmark IPCC climate report that warned of the catastrophic effects of a global temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, beyond which global crises could unfold at a rapid pace. The four countries rejected using the word “welcome,” insisting that members instead “note” the findings of the widely cited UN report. We begin our coverage with voices of some of the thousands of climate activists from around the world who marched in Katowice on Saturday, calling for world leaders to do more to keep rising greenhouse gas emissions in check. We also speak with a member of the European Parliament who confronted undercover Polish officials who were monitoring the protest.
Sriram Madhusoodanan is interviewed by Democracy Now! at the Katowice climate march.
Excerpt of transcript:
SRIRAM MADHUSOODANAN: I’m Sriram Madhusoodanan from Corporate Accountability, based in Boston. And we’re here in solidarity with people’s movements around the world demanding climate justice, the people’s demands for climate justice at COP24. It’s absolutely extremely concerning that those organizations representing the voices of people are shut out when, in the same voice, just yesterday, an executive of Shell was practically boasting about their influence in the Paris Agreement and shaping parts of it, like Article 6 on markets. This is unacceptable. We have a corporation that still is not being held accountable for a long track record of human rights and environmental crimes, including in the Niger Delta. And for it to be boasting about how it is shaping the global agreement about how the world responds to climate change, that’s shameful, and that’s unacceptable.
