US Bullying and Backroom Deals Condemned

US Undermines Climate Talks with Bullying Tactics and Backroom Deals

Civil Society Denounces U.S. Plan for Fast-Tracking Warming, Worsening Humanitarian Crisis, and Fueling Ecological Collapse

Copenhagen, Denmark --- Despite President Obama's assurances of progress today at the UN Climate Talks, the negotiations continue into the early morning as civil society leaders are left out of the sessions at the Bella Center and protesters gather outside.

"For the U.S., which is the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, to come to Copenhagen and try to strong arm the world into accepting a phony accord that will do nothing to prevent climate catastrophe is beyond irresponsible; it is criminal." said John Peck, Executive Director of Family Farm Defenders and member of Via Campesina.

"At the present, before the end of the final plenary, the draft Copenhagen Accord sets dangerously low emissions targets and provides too few resources to stop the unfolding climate catastrophe gripping the planet," said Professor Michael Dorsey with the Climate Justice Now! Network. "The Accord is little more than rhetoric hiding a failure to actually address the climate crisis. This destructive Accord represents a death sentence for Africa, the Amazon, Indigenous Peoples, and small island nations."

"An accord secretly crafted without the participation of developing countries is another example of the U.S. using its power to manipulate the outcome with no binding commitments," said Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network. "We are highly suspicious of the tactics of the US obstructing a Kyoto Protocol agreement, while at the same time aggressively trying to push through a forest carbon offset agreement called REDD+ with weak safeguards that could violate the land and forest rights of Indigenous peoples and forest dependent communities. Indigenous peoples here in Copenhagen have been demanding action -- not false hopes and empty promises -- and these delays and bullying tactics amount to continued carbon colonialism."

"The COP 15 has seen an obscene amount of lobbying by the emerging corporate carbon dealers who are peddling false solutions, while the oil and coal lobbies are still the elephant in the room," said Camila Moreno, of the Global Justice Ecology Project from Porto Alegre, Brazil. "The common sense solutions that have been demanded by social movements and civil society around the world are to leave fossil fuels in the ground and make a deal that is legally binding. Today's developments do nothing to move those real solutions forward and could wipe entire nations off the map."

"This is an emergency and we need climate justice now! We must acknowledge that we from the south are the real creditors and the governments of the North are the real debtors. They owe the world economic debt, ecological debt and climate debt and they must pay now," said Wahu Kaara from the Kenya Debt Relief Network