Protest Against Commercializing the Sky Jan 13 2009

The "Cap and Trade" action, on the street opposite the front door of the Wall Street building where the big banks and Dows and Exxons were negotiating with the big conservative NGO's, came to us from people in a hurry from Copenhagen. We responded, partly because we feel that the privatizing of the air that we breathe is a final death of the commons and must be opposed. Also, we didn't get to go to Copenhagen because we didn't have the money.

Maybe at the peak there were a hundred of us, gathered at the Irish Hunger memorial down by the Hudson. The implacable anonymous modernist facade shadowed over that half acre of long grasses and hedges and ruined stone cottage. The British ships' sailing off with the food that might have saved many of them from the blight is one of the cruel sum-ups of the policies of empire. That was poignantly fitting for our little rally against the neo-liberal carving up of the sky in the board rooms above us.

"Cap and Trade" would reward polluters who would pay poor countries to grow trees, for instance. It hasn't worked and won't work. It's stalling. It's a scam. And it's different than lots of scams in that it could be the last scam, if we allow it to go forward. Canada's CO-2 output rose 27% after the Kyoto agreement, never mind the US. We have to assume that the corporations and their client governments will write these agreements to pay themselves. One of our chants: OUR CLIMATE IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!

Photos by Brother Michael O'Neil. Click here for a CommonDreams.org write-up of the action! UPDATE: more from Rhonda on the Ecolizer