At the conclusion of the International Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009, Bolivian President Evo Morales called for the People’s Conference. The Copenhagen summit, the 15th major forum sponsored by the United Nations, was widely regarded as a disaster for its failure to adopt an agreement that would have the power of enforcement to effectively reduce the causes of global warming.

The major producers of greenhouse gases over an extended period are the United States, the countries of the European Union, Japan and other imperialist countries. It is the corporations from these countries that have engaged in a ceaseless race of capitalist production for maximization of profit and contributed the lion’s share of the polluting gases accumulating in the atmosphere. It is estimated that with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States in 2006 emitted more than 20 percent of carbon dioxide and other gases. Therefore, a reduction in gases would mean the imposition of controls on U.S. capitalist production.

In Copenhagen, U.S. government delegates actively worked to prevent any agreement that would legally obligate the United States and other industrialized countries to reduce global warming.

Using China as a red herring, the United States has tried to place equal responsibility on that country of 1.3 billion people for its greenhouse gas emissions. But even with a population four times that of the United States, China’s fossil fuel use is far less in relative terms.

As Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez said in December, “…from the Kyoto Protocol [of 1997] until today the developed countries’ emissions rose by 12.8% ... and 55% of that volume corresponds to the United States.”

“The average annual oil consumption is 25 barrels for an American, 11 barrels for a European, less than 2 barrels for a Chinese and less than 1 barrel for a Latin American or Caribbean citizen. … Thirty countries, including those of the European Union, are consuming 80% of the fuel produced.”

In the concluding hours of the Copenhagen summit, the U.S. delegates, led by President Barack Obama, presented a document called the “Copenhagen Accord” which requires only voluntary reduction in greenhouse emissions.

Included in that document is a carrot-and-stick promise of $30 billion from the United States, the European Union and Japan to countries that sign onto the Copenhagen Accord. To agree to the Copenhagen Accord would mean letting the world’s primary polluters off the hook.

The Copenhagen summit is supposed to proceed in November and December 2010 to a culminating summit in Cancún, Mexico, whereby the 190 countries that participated in Copenhagen should agree to an international plan for reducing gas emissions. However, in April at an interim meeting held in Bonn of the Copenhagen participants to plan for the Cancún summit the United States continued to block any progress toward a global plan.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, declared that the proposals by the industrialized countries, “are not even close to adequate” to stop global warming.

Therefore, the People’s Conference in Cochabamba assumes even greater importance.

'Death to capitalism!'

Bolivia was an apt site, as it faces a growing shortage of water, due to the melting of glaciers from the high mountains of Illimani and other summits, caused by climate change. The thousands who came for the conference—including indigenous people, environmental activists, and leaders of the ALBA countries—gathered for the opening assembly to hear Bolivia’s President Evo Morales.

Morales told the crowd, “We have two paths: either Pachamama or death. We have two paths: either capitalism dies or Mother Earth dies. Either capitalism lives or Mother Earth lives. Of course, brothers and sisters, we are here for life, for humanity and for the rights of Mother Earth. Long live the rights of Mother Earth! Death to capitalism!”

Over the three days of meetings, participants discussed and drew up a powerful declaration. Among the issues included are the demands that the developed capitalist countries assume responsibility for their long history of excess greenhouse gas production, adopt measures that will “permit a return to the concentrations of greenhouse gases of 300 parts per million and in so doing, limit the increase of the global average temperature to a maximum of 1°C,” assume responsibility for the hundreds of millions of people forced to migrate from their lands because of global warming, ease up on immigration restrictions and offer opportunities for a humane existence to the migrants.

Another fundamental demand of the Cochabamba conference is that the Cancún summit adopt an amendment to the 1997 Kyoto Declaration in which the industrialized countries would be bound to reduce their greenhouse gases by 50 percent from 1990 base levelsby 2013-2017.

The Cochabamba declaration reads in part: “The capitalist system has imposed on us a logic of competition, progress and limitless growth. This regime of production and consumption seeks profits without limits, separating the human beings from nature and imposing a logic of domination upon nature, transforming everything into commodities: water, land, the human genome, ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, the rights of the peoples, and life itself.

“Under capitalism, Mother Earth is converted into a source of raw materials, and human beings into consumers and a means of production, into people that are seen as valuable only for what they own, and not what they are.”

In the closing rally of the People’s Conference, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called on the participants to fight for the Cochabamba declaration to be taken up at the Cancún summit. “We cannot allow the imperialist proposal of Copenhagen to be imposed; we will not permit an agreement that does not accept the will of the peoples.”

Around the world, the struggle for environmental justice is becoming more urgent. As leaders Evo Morales and Hugo Chávez made clear, the capitalist system is the principal cause, and its defeat is essential for the survival of humanity and the environment.

U.S. imperialism and its allies will undoubtedly try to sabotage the upcoming international summit in Cancún, but the growing popular movement embodied in Cochabamba is bound to deepen and grow in influence.