FREEDOM TO THE NATURAL CYCLES OF LIFE

I met Polly Higgins at Klima-forum in DGI-byen.

Polly Higgins is a lawyer and she runs the project "Trees Have Rights Too". She is in and out of seminars, meetings and workshops all the time. She emits engagement. This is activism on a realistic level. Negotiations, discussions and networking with people of actual influence. How to get acces to the right people. How to be inside the real negotiations. As Polly says: ”I have a extremely important message to communicate”.

Her project TreesHaveRightsToo is an engaging mix of hard juridical proposals, utopian holism and a sophisticated critique of capitalism. It is permeated by positive energy and it leaves you with a crucial optimism: Changing the system IS possible!

Go directly to her COP15 comments here: http://www.treeshaverightstoo.com/cop-15

Or think about this:

QUESTIONS FOR THE REFERENDUM ON CLIMATE CHANGE

1) Do you agree with reestablishing harmony with nature while recognizing the rights of mother earth? YES or NO

2) Do you agree with changing this model of over-consumption and waste that represents the capitalist system? YES or NO

3) Do you agree that developed countries reduce and reabsorb their domestic greenhouse gas emissions for temperature not to rise more than 1 degree Celsius? YES or NO

4) Do you agree with transferring all that is spent in wars and for allocating a budget bigger than that used for defense to climate change? YES or NO

5) Do you agree with a Climate Justice Tribunal to judge those who destroy Mother Earth? YES or NO

Another version of these questions were launched by the Bolivian delegation as an official proposal to the COP15. Bolivian president Evo Morales also presented these question as his proposal for a global referendum at his speech at the ALBA meeting Thursday in Copenhagen. I am strangely enlightened by the transfer of these ideas from one level of influence to another. From Polly to Evo. If this is possible, even Obama might listen some day. But then again: Question 2 suggest change on such a radical scale that’s its hard to believe that the west/north will go for it by free will.

I will get back to my interview with Polly Higgins, but for now I’ll end by introducing the conceptual map of TreesHaveRightsToo: