Activist Reaches 99th Day of Climate Emergency Fast

AMY GOODMAN: As the IPCC and Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, negotiators entered the final week of talks at the UN climate conference in Bali. The meeting hit a roadblock Monday from the United States. The US announced it won't approve a draft agreement setting firm targets for cuts to carbon pollution. The Bush administration says a proposal for developed nations to reduce emissions by between 25 percent and 40 percent by 2020 is "totally unrealistic" and "unhelpful." The 25-40 figure is based on the work of the UN's IPCC. Harlan Watson, the senior climate negotiator for the United States, said the panel's calculation was based on "many uncertainties".

Efforts to reform US environmental policy are also stalling on Capitol Hill. On Friday, Republicans blocked a Senate vote on the House-approved energy bill. The Bush administration and leading Republicans oppose the measure. They've singled out provisions that would impose $21 billion in taxes on the oil and gas industry and require utility companies to draw 15 percent of their power from renewable sources by the year 2020.

Ted Glick is the coordinator of the US Climate Emergency Council. He is heading to Capitol Hill today to protest Republican opposition to the energy bill. Ted Glick is now on the ninety-ninth day of his fast to protest the failure of Congress to address climate change.

Joining us from Washington, D.C., Ted Glick, welcome. Your thoughts on these speeches of the Nobel Peace laureates?

TED GLICK: Yes, thanks, first of all, Amy, for having me on the program.

A couple of things about Pachauri's speech. He talked about conflicts over water. We have conflicts right now over oil. We have wars for oil. We have to be clear that right now there are conflicts over continuing the same path that we have to get off of. We have to end wars for oil. But he was very good in terms of the equity issue. We have to understand that this is an issue of climate justice. Those who are most affected already and will be most affected as this crisis unfolds are people in Africa, people in Asia, low-income people, people in the Caribbean hit by more destructive hurricanes, people in the United States hit by hurricanes. The most impact, as we saw in New Orleans, low-income people, particularly people of color.

As far as Al Gore, I was interested in his solutions, what he put forward in terms of solutions. It was important that he called for a moratorium on coal plants. We can't build any more coal plants absolutely anywhere in the United States, and really it shouldn't be happening anywhere in the world. He talked about tax shifting, the need to shift taxes from being on payroll or on sales taxes, for example, to taxes on carbon. That absolutely is the way to go. That's the way we have to go in this country.

My concern, he talked about the cap-and-trade system. What we need is a cap-and-reduce system. Maybe some trading is involved of emissions, carbon emissions permits, but the emphasis has to be on reduction. We can't let major corporate interests, utilities, coal companies, oil companies game a cap-and-trade system, which we've had experience with actually internationally and in Europe.

As far as Congress, there was the beginnings of a turn in the direction that we need to go that took place on Thursday, when the House of Representatives voted a pretty good energy bill. To the credit of Nancy Pelosi and others who worked with her, it's a good beginning. That was smashed down the next morning, on Friday, by the Senate, with the Republican Party voting overwhelmingly to reject this House bill. There's now negotiations going on to try to come up with a revised version in the Senate.

Today, about an hour from now, as I'm talking here in D.C, at 10:00, a number of us are going to the office of Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, and we're going to be sitting in in his office at 10:00 a.m. It's in the Russell Building, Constitution Avenue, room 361-A. Anybody in the D.C. area who can join us, we'd love to have you there in support. We need to stand up for the future, stand up for justice and our climate. We cannot accept people like Mitch McConnell and George Bush and Dick Cheney and the rest of them, who are, I would say advisedly, climate criminals. I think that's an accurate phrase, to describe what has been the reality under the Republican administration for the last seven years. What's happening is really criminal, facing what we are facing in this world.