Silver Bullet at the Climate Wave March

A small gang of us pushed “Silver Bullet,” the Simpol mobile music street stall alongside others calling for tough action on climate change at the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen next week. .

We were marching in unison with other campaigners but as always we were campaigning to other campaigners and marchers to join forces and work together as one via Simpol, which is a new way of doing democracy in a co-operative and global way. Heaps of people asked for flyers from us, some joined up as Simpol Adopters, a few gave donations and loads of people said they liked our style and our message “Simpol is global grassroots co-operation in action. Join Simpol for free and become part of the solution to war poverty and environmental destruction.”

The march was definitely the most beautiful one I have been on with 50,000 people all in friendly shades of sky and marine blue. The Simpol flag and earth glitter ball looked like they were made especially.

We had a lot of fun getting our message out, playing music on bass, harmonica and loop pedal singing “Let’s Work Together” by Canned Heat. We learned to play “Galvanize” by Chemical Brothers on route. We coordinated Galvanize with other sound systems which belted it out every half hour. The Climate Wave made its crescendo in a tsunami sized Mexican Wave of hands all along the ranks of 50,000 nature loving human beings who surrounded the houses of parliament.

From what I have read so far, my overall understanding is that the UN Climate Talks will be deeply flawed i.e. it will not stop runaway climate change. It seems that in the build up to the talks it would be better if an agreement were not made as it would go no where near far enough to avoid runaway climate change. Why?

• Governments will not be able to bring in sufficient cuts in emissions as all nations, especially leading economies, are all, despite these talks, locked into competition with each other. Each will therefore try to give away as little of their competitive advantage as possible. “We must retain competitiveness of our markets” is the global truism spoken like a mantra. They know it to be true but no one offers a real solution. Leadership could help, but deep down we all know big business owns the leaders.

• What’s more global problems are not being interlinked at the climate talks. We need new banking institutions and methods like the Tobin Tax (now known as the Financial Transaction Tax) to be implemented globally so that nations who may lose out by investing in green technology and for making tough cuts in green house gasses can regain those losses by a fair system of sharing costs. Some countries have agreed to the Tobin Tax but many have not.

• There will be literally hundreds of representatives there from Non Governmental Organisations fronts for big business pushing for their deal.

Strangely enough, agreements at the talks are being pushed for by the same oil organisations that have previously tried to stymie any such agreements in the past. Amongst them are many of the same business leaders that brought about the financial collapse with their dubious ways of banking. Why? Because they are the ones who have drawn up the plans and will be set to make huge profits from the new carbon trading schemes. It is broadly agreed by leading columnists that the carbon trading schemes will allow for more of the same behaviour and will certainly not stop us from going over the 2 degrees point of no return climate change.

So why is Simpol the obvious solution to these 3 problems?

• Under Simpol we will be using our votes to bring about the necessary co-operation between nations to enable them to solve global problems in a way that no one looses out by moving first. Along with this could come the necessary international sharing of CO2 neutral recourses.

• Interlinked policy solutions that tackle the economy and environmental problems at the same time could be implemented. Policies implemented simultaneously mean that nations can make sacrifices in one area can gain in another.

• Simpol’s policy will be suggested and decided by people everywhere. The necessary measures agreed upon will be chosen precisely because they will benefit everyone.

The Simpol process may sound unwieldy and may seem to lack immediacy but in reality this could become a huge movement that takes hold almost overnight? How quickly does it take the world to go to war? Well, Simpol could happen quicker if the intention is there. It really is down to us. The solutions must involve those the problems affect. Simpol could well be the quickest route to long term change.

Social change normally happens in flashes and I believe that there are just enough global minded individuals ready to make Simpol happen. I am convinced that people are beginning to accept their collective responsibility and nothing less that their collective humanity and in the face of global problems.

“The only thing that will redeem human kind is co-operation”. Bertrand Russell.