For the real story of whats happening inside and outside the Bella centre in Copenhagen go here…

Inside

Outside

Turbulence 5

And Now for Something Completely Different?

Click here to download Turbulence 5

Until recently, anyone who suggested nationalising the banks would have been derided as a ‘quack’ and a ‘crank’, as lacking the most basic understanding of the functioning of a ‘complex, globalised world’. The grip of ‘orthodoxy’ disqualified the idea, and many more, without the need even to offer a counter-argument.

And yet, in this time of intersecting crises, when it seems like everything could, and should, have changed, it paradoxically feels as though very little has. Individuals and companies have hunkered down to try and ride out the crisis. Nationalisations and government spending have been used to prevent change, not initiate it. Anger and protest have erupted around different aspects of the crises, but no common or consistent reaction has seemed able to cohere. We appear unable to move on.

For many years, social movements could meet and recognise one another on the common ground of rejecting neoliberalism, society’s old middle ground – those discources and practices that defined the centre of the political field. The crisis of the middle has meant a crumbling of the common.

And what now? Will neoliberalism continue to stumble on without direction, zombie-like? Or, is it time for something completely different?

A PDF of the entire issue can be downloaded here.

CONTENTS

Turbulence, ‘Life in limbo?’

Gifford Hartman, ‘California in Crisis: Everything touched by capital turns toxic’

Bini Adamczak and Anna Dost, ‘What would it mean to lose? On the history of actually-existing failure’

Frieder Otto Wolf and Tadzio Mueller, ‘Green New Deal: Dead end or pathway beyond capitalism?’

p.m., ‘It’s all about potatoes and computers: Recipes for the cook-shops of the future’

Colectivo Situaciones, ‘Disquiet in the impasse’

George Caffentzis, ‘‘Everything must change so that everything can stay the same’: Notes on Obama’s Energy Plan’

Walter Mignolo, ‘The communal and the decolonial’

Massimo De Angelis, ‘The tragedy of the capitalist commons’

Rebecca Solnit, ‘Falling Together’

Rodrigo Nunes, ‘What were you wrong about ten years ago?’

ALSO FEATURING…

…a collection of texts, ten years after the protests against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle, asking people from across the global movement, ‘What were you wrong about ten years ago?’, at t-10. The complete collection of these texts can be found here.

Contributors to the feature are: David Solnit | Gustavo Esteva | Emir Sader | Phil McLeish | Rubia Salgado | João Pedro Stédile | A CrimethInc ex-Worker | Precarias a la Deriva | Trevor Ngwane | Marcela and Oscar Olivera | Heloisa Primavera | Chris Carlsson | The Free Association | David Bleakney | Olivier de Marcellus | Go Hirasawa and Sabu Kohso | John Clarke | Guy Taylor | Thomas Seibert | Dr Simon Lewis | Amador Fernández-Savater.

The Issue is illustrated by the photo series ‘Flat Horizon’ by Marcos Vilas Boas.

If you would like to order a copy, or can help us get rid of a few, email editors[@]turbulence.org.uk The magazine is free, but we’ll need to ask for donations to cover shipping costs.

In the new economy created by global warming, forests are turning into a valuable commodity. Promising not to cut them down is one of the most popular ways companies would like to offset their emissions. Correspondent Mark Shapiro follows the trail of one of those offset projects deep into Brazil’s Atlantic forest.

Click here to view 'Brazil - the money tree'

This story is a joint project of FRONTLINE/World and the Center for Investigative Reporting, in association with Mother Jones magazine.

“Brazil: The Money Tree” was produced by Andrés Cediel and co-produced by Daniela Broitman

NASA’s James Hansen: Copenhagen should fail

The scientist who convinced the world to take notice of the looming danger of global warming says it would be better for the planet and for future generations if next week’s Copenhagen climate change summit ended in collapse.

In an interview with the Guardian, James Hansen, the world’s pre-eminent climate scientist, said any agreement likely to emerge from the negotiations would be so deeply flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.

“I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it’s a disaster track,” said Hansen, who heads the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

“The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation. If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means.” He was speaking as progress towards a deal in Copenhagen received a boost today, with India revealing a target to curb its carbon emissions. All four of the major emitters – the US, China, EU and India – have now tabled offers on emissions, although the equally vexed issue of funding for developing nations to deal with global warming remains deadlocked.

Hansen, in repeated appearances before Congress beginning in 1989, has done more than any other scientist to educate politicians about the causes of global warming and to prod them into action to avoid its most catastrophic consequences. But he is vehemently opposed to the carbon market schemes – in which permits to pollute are bought and sold – which are seen by the EU and other governments as the most efficient way to cut emissions and move to a new clean energy economy.

Read the full article here

Interview with James Hansen – Rejecting Cap and Trade [emissions trading]

By Walden Bello – Foreign Policy in Focus, Dec. 1, 2009

The negotiators in Copenhagen are likely to address only half the story, argues columnist Walden Bello.

Beginning in the second week of December, representatives to the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen will wrestle with the challenge of climate change. This week, influential actors in the World Trade Organization Seventh Ministerial Conference taking place in Geneva are trying to push for a conclusion to the nine-year-old Doha Round of trade negotiations.

The two meetings are at cross-purposes and their juxtaposition highlights a profound reality: The world has to choose between free trade and effective climate management.

Read On…