Terrorists attack France: cuts to climate talks, attack democracy

F

France PM, Manuel
Valls: cut climate
talks to the core.

rance will limit a U.N. climate summit in Paris starting in two weeks' time to core negotiations and cancel planned marches and concerts after the attacks that killed 129 people, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Monday.

He said no foreign leaders had asked France to postpone the Nov 30-Dec 11 summit, which aims to map out a global accord to limit greenhouse gas emissions, a move which would amount to "abdicating to the terrorists".

But he told RTL radio that "a series of demonstrations planned will not take place and it will be reduced to the negotiations ... a lot of concerts and festivities will be cancelled."

Read the Thomson Reuters story - “France to limit U.N. climate summit to core talks, ban rallies: PM.”

(France’s decision to reduce the climate summit to “core negotiations”, cancelling planned marches and concerts, is understandable but robs this world event that is critical to the “human experiment”, of its democratic dimension and officially removes the sense of the people power that is, and will be, an essential ingredient if anything truly worthwhile is to emerge from the talks.

This, in the words of Professor Trevor Hancock, from Canada’s Victoria University, is an “up-river problem” and until we are prepared to lift our gaze and look beyond the immediate difficulty and understand that we are here because of the rampant inequality of corporate-capitalism it will be difficult, if not impossible, to escape from the unfolding dilemma that is climate change and events similar to what recently troubled Paris – Robert McLean.)