"The Most Obdurate Bully in the Room": U.S. Widely Criticized for Role at Climate Talks
From Democracy Now:
We speak with two representatives of civil society who have attended the U.N. climate talks for the past decade. "We strongly believe that we need a high level of ambition, we need urgent action, and we need action based on equitable sharing of the atmospheric space," says Sunita Narain, Indian environmentalist and director general of the Centre for Science and Environment. "So we said to the Indian government, we expect the Indian government to be hard on what the world needs and to walk out now, because I think the time for talking is gone. We need hard action." We are also joined by Tom Goldtooth, a member of the Indigenous Caucus and executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network. "There’s no guarantee we’re going to have a strong Doha deal coming out of here," Goldtooth says. "So we’re committing as Native indigenous peoples from the United States to go back and have highest-level government-to-government meetings with Obama and his administration to hold him accountable to some commitments he made on climate." [includes rush transcript]
Guests:
Sunita Narain, Indian environmentalist and director general of the Centre for Science and Environment.
Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network and a member of the Indigenous Caucus at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Doha. He is a member of the Dine’ and Dakota nations and lives in Minnesota.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now!
SUNITA NARAIN: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Sunita, you’ve called for the Indian delegation to pull out of these talks. Why?
SUNITA NARAIN: Well, I said we strongly believe that we need a high level of ambition, we need urgent action, and we need action based on equitable sharing of the atmospheric space. So we said to the Indian government, we expect the Indian government to be—to be hard on what the world needs and to walk out now, because I think the time for talking is gone. We need hard action.
AMY GOODMAN: Tom Goldtooth, you are a Native American leader in this country who has attended these U.N. climate summits for the past decade, and you met with the top of the COP. That’s the Conference of Parties, this summit. What was your message?
in full: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/7/the_most_obdurate_bully_in_the
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