Archive - Dec 11, 2009

• Island nations demand stronger action on climate change in Copenhagen
• Saleemul Huq: two decades of climate change action for developing nations
  (click here for extended version)
• Chile’s center-left coalition faces tough election this weekend
• Uruguay passes bill to allow citizens to choose gender identity
• Mumia Abu Jamal on 28 years of incarceration

• Financial reforms pass the House
• Europe ponders tax on executive pay and speculative financial transactions
• Palestinian mosque vandalized in West Bank; Israeli settler anger remains
• Yemeni refugee camp numbers ballooning amid fighting in north
• Protesting UC Berkley students arrested in early-morning police raid

To take a deeper look at the proposal from the island nations and other developments at the conference we’re joined from Copenhagen by Dr. Saleemul Huq. He’s a senior fellow with the International Institute for Environment and Development’s climate change group. He’s also a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

View Saleemul Huq’s regular video updates from the climate conference.

Read an interview in The Nation with Saleemul Huq.

At the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen today, a coalition of island states - many of whom are expected to be hit worst by climate change - released a proposal which demands vastly stronger action than what has so far been considered in the official talks. The Alliance of Small Island States calls for limiting the maximum global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and the carbon content of the atmosphere to 350 parts per million -- about 10 percent less than it is today. Antonio Lima of Cape Verde is vice-chair of the alliance:

"Some of our countries, if we go past 1.5 are going to disappear, are going to disappear. And we are experiencing now the impact and effects of climate change."

Lima was addressing a crowd of organizers planning tomorrow's mass demonstrations. The plan is part of Klimaforum, the parallel conference taking place in Copenhagen which also issued a declaration -- they'll deliver it to visiting leaders next week. Among other things, it calls for industrialized countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by the year 2020, and for a complete phase out of fossil fuels within 30 years.

To take a deeper look at the proposal from the island nations and other developments at the conference we’re joined from Copenhagen by Dr. Saleemul Huq. He’s a senior fellow with the International Institute for Environment and Development’s climate change group. He’s also a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

View Saleemul Huq’s regular video updates from the climate conference.

Read an interview in The Nation with Saleemul Huq.

This Sunday Chileans go to the polls to elect a successor to Chile's first female President Michelle Bachelet. This election campaign may end the Concertacion coalition of center-left parties that has governed Chile since the return to democracy in 1990. From Santiago FSRN's Jorge Garretón has more.

In Uruguay, the Parliament has approved a bill that allows citizens to choose their gender identity. This means any citizen can decide which gender should appear on their IDs as long as they prove with a witness that they have lived under such sexual identity for the past four years. FSRN'S Marcos Federman has more.