Describing the climate debt owed by wealthy countries as 'reparations' makes it impossible for the US to take partLast Friday I was in the Fresh Air Centre for bloggers and new media at the COP15 summit in Copenhagen, organized by the TckTckTck campaign, and I got into an argument with Naomi Klein.I went up to Klein, thanked her for the Shock Doctrine and asked, with regard to her use of the term "reparations" in talking about climate aid to developing nations, if she knew what a damaging word that was to use in the US – because it specifically called up the idea of reparations for slavery. (The word has become popular in some circles to mean getting wealthy nations to pay a responsible share of adaptation and mitigation support and to cut emissions, also referred to more neutrally as climate debt.) In particular, I asked her if she knew that it made it impossible for Obama to agree to do anything referred to in that way.Really, it would be impossible for any US president. But for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who stopped to think about them at all, you can replace any instance of "reparations" in any speech or text with "Barack Obama can't say yes to this, nor can he ever once utter this word."Klein launched into a description of how the word made her feel, saying that it seemed appropriate because it connoted repair. I must have been looking at her really hard. She said maybe I should send a memo to the whole Global South telling them to stop using it, and wouldn't that be odd. She laughed. I said that they could say whatever they want to say, but if they want to ask the US for things, they can't use that word.Klein then said I was trying to give Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh the right to tell her what to say, tell everyone what to say, and she didn't like it. "You Americans," she said, "want to hold us all to what's possible in DC, which is apparently nothing.""You," Klein said, and I'm not sure if she meant "you Americans" agai ...

less than 88 day(s) - Thursday December,24 2009 @ 06:39 PM
More on Guardian.co.uk