 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. I'm Vijay Prasad, coming to you for People's Dispatch from Globetrotter. You've seen recently that the COP26 has closed in Glasgow. You might wonder why it's called COP26. It's the conference of parties. Well, conference of parties for what? It's for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It's the 26th COP. That means governments have been gathering for 26 times at least to try to figure out what to do with the climate change question. It wasn't really clear that anything was advanced at this COP, but we're going to find out about this from our guests. Very happy to be joined by Asad Rehman. Asad is the Executive Director of War on Want, which is a charity in the United Kingdom. Turned out that the COP was in the United Kingdom. At least for now, Glasgow is in the United Kingdom. It's in Scotland. At the COP, Asad organized the, well shall we call it the Fringe COP, the People's COP, the Alternative COP, which was not the official COP, but in the last day or the last days of the official COP, he went over there and he made a very strong statement. He said, it is immoral for the rich to talk about the future of their children and their grandchildren when the children of the global south are dying now. Asad, welcome to People's Dispatch. Thank you, Vijay. Well, you ended, you made a really strong speech in front of the President of COP26. What motivated you to make the speech you made? I'd like to say that it was a speech that I never made before. I think the reality is, we've been making this speech. In fact, our movements have been making this speech. Our movements have been saying this for decades. We've always said, any increasing temperature is deadly. But it's deadly for who? It's deadly for people of the global south. The reality is that the richest countries in the world are happy to be able to continue even as temperature rises increase as long as they protect their economic interests. That logic of sacrificing the global south, which permeates our political and economic systems and is a play in the climate negotiations, but is rooted through the history of Western nations from slavery, colonialism, imperialism to neoliberalism. And its ultimate expression, because the climate crisis is not an abstract aberration. It's a result of an economic model, which has said that the accumulation of profit and the exploitation of people and resources is the primary objective of our economy. And that's why there's been 26 cops. Because fundamentally, the richest countries in the world have tried to say, we can solve the climate crisis whilst business as usual. I mean, we can live within this system. And of course, the reality is that that system is already killing people. Half the world lives in poverty. Half the world doesn't have access to electricity or clean cooking. This is not an accident. This is a deliberate consequence of political and economic policies that have been paused by the global north on the global side. And so what moved me at that point was the sheer audacity and anger of rich countries standing there pretending that they care about climate change, talking tough on climate, whilst at the same time blocking any real action that is needed, refusing to listen to the voices of the global side. The 26 cops can be called a 26 conference of the polluters and 26 years of broken promises and the latest promises. And when we went into this climate negotiations at this time, the richest country said, okay, we hear you, we're in a climate emergency. Of course, how can they not say we're in a climate emergency? You don't need to be a scientist now. You just need to have your eyes open. You can see the killer fires, floods and famines. You can see them wreaking havoc around the or around every corner of the world. You can see that this emergency is right now. And they know that their citizens are increasingly saying act on this. And what they were trying to do at these climate negotiations is pretend that they're acting whilst continuing to basically impose not just inaction. I mean, it's on one thing to simply say, I'm not going to act. It's another thing to say, I'm going to pretend to act whilst I'm feeling the very destruction of people in the global south and for the UK president to cry crocodile tears on the podium whilst the UK government is signing licenses for a massive explosion, 40 more licenses in the North Sea for oil and gas, massive expansion of his domestic aviation. I mean, my God, Britain is a tiny country and we're expanding our aviation domestically when we should be investing in free public transport. I think they're drawing the line in the sun. This climate has never been an environmental issue. It is not an environmental issue. These climate negotiations are always being about political economy. They've always been about whose economy will be protected, who will be sacrificed, who will pay the price, both in the global south and in the global north. It was important for us as a movement and the movement that we have finally began to build in the global north because, of course, they've existed in the global south and the core from the global south has always been to where are you movement in the north? Not talking about polar bears, not talking about empty words of action. Where are you that is going to be anti-clonial and anti-imperialist? Where are you that will stand in solidarity with? Where are you that recognises that we are on the front lines of dying right now and taking our voices and not talking about what will happen in 50 years time but talking about what's happening right now? And that, I suppose, my voice was the voice of all of the people on the outside of the climate negotiations. The people who, because of COVID vaccine apartheid, couldn't even get to Glasgow and the tens of thousands of people who were outside of the summit and it's barbed wire in its fences. Well, you know, you said earlier that it's and I think this is an important point that it wasn't inaction. You said they blocked solutions. Can you give us or share just a few of the things that were blocked by the negotiators of the, well, let's put it this way, of the richest and most powerful countries in the world. What did they block? Well, first of all, let's just take the temperature level of 1.5 degrees, right? Climate scientists have told us that's the critical guardrail. After that, we begin to move into what is called runaway catastrophic climate change that no matter what we do will have altered the earth system so much that everything, the impacts that we're seeing will become more severe, more regular and they will impact more and more people's livelihoods and that guardrail of 1.5 and we're at one point just over one degree warming, 1.1 at the moment. So look at the scale of this devastation of 1.1. These are things that they told us would not happen for another degree and now happening at 1.1. The carbon budget that remains for 1.5 at current emission rates is a maximum 10 years, maximum. And even then it's only a two in a three chance of it. So imagine, like you would not get on a bus or a train if somebody told you there's a one in three chance this bus or train is going to crash. But that's what they're telling the global side. There's a one in three chance of this budget, even of the 10 years of meaning that we breach it. Rich countries were told, do your fair share. Well, this is a problem of the global commons. Of course, so everybody needs to do what they are responsible for. And there's a fundamental legal duty within the climate convention. It's called the common but differentiated responsibilities and capacity and it says basically the polluter pays those who have polluted the most. So 18% of the world's population that lives in the global north are responsible for over 60% of the emissions that are in our atmosphere that are fueling this climate crisis. So you lot do what you have to do. So that means cut your emissions by 2030 to allow the global south who have done the least amount of damage some space to be able to grow because of course they are dealing with poverty and inequality. They need carbon space to grow. Instead, what we saw was the richest countries doing carbon colonialism, even sucking up more of the existing carbon and saying, we're going to take that from the poorest countries. Forget our wealth. Forget that our wealth has been built on your exploitation. Forget that our wealth has been built on the very industries that are now killing you. That doesn't matter. Let's start history from now. Their argument is there's no past, there's only the present. So you India, you China, you South Africa, you other developing countries, you're equally to blame as we are. Yeah, we might have got fat and rich off this but ignore that. So they've refused to do their fair share of effort. Secondly, you know, 12 years ago, the then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in Copenhagen at the climate summit then, you know, put this number out of thin air. She said, we will commit to you developing countries $100 billion in new and additional finance because we recognize you not only have to cut your emissions and you need support, and you also now have to adapt your societies and your economies. You're already seeing the impact on your food production, you need money into it. We will give you $100 billion by 2020 each and every year you'll get $100 billion. Today, when we're in 2021, that $100 billion has not been met. In fact, only $20 billion has ever been put on the table. 80% of the money that has been put on the table is debt creating loans. Imagine I burn down your house and then I tell you, take out a loan from me, right? I'm the arsonist but take out a loan from me to rebuild your house. That's exactly what they were saying. So they didn't meet the $100 billion goal. Instead, they deeply regretted not meeting that $100 billion goal, and we have to put this in perspective. When we talk about the financial crisis in 2008, within days, the richest countries of the world got together and they found $18 trillion to bail out the banks. When the COVID pandemic hit, the richest countries are poured close to $16 trillion into their COVID responses. There's no shortage of money when they need, but there is a shortage on the $100 billion. The third thing that developing countries were saying was, look, if you're not going to cut your emissions, we have to adapt. There's a limit to what we can do, but we do have to adapt. We have to adapt to protect our societies, our economies, our cities, and our nations. They wanted this to be a goal, so it sat strong. Instead, rich countries said, no, no, no. We don't want any conversation right now about what we'll do is we'll put it on as an agenda item in a subcommittee. So you keep talking about this. Even whilst you're dying, you keep talking. We'll have more dialogue. And on the critical issue, which people have come to know as loss and damage, we would call reparations, is the idea that, of course, now, no matter what we do, no matter how much we cut our emissions, no matter how much we adapt, the reality is now that damage is being done. And that damage is immense from people losing, of course, their homes and communities, to whole people potentially being wiped out and losing cultural, historical, and knowledge, and identity. And people said, look, developing countries said, we want a facility so that when these impacts happen on us, we can go there to support. And the rich countries, led by the United States, backed by the European Union in the UK, Australia, Japan, all the richest countries said, we will not accept this, because we do not want to accept liability for the damage that we've created. In fact, all we're willing to do is allow you to have a conversation about a helpline, but with no help. You can have that conversation, but will not give you the actual thing that you wanted. So when we say it was an utter betrayal of people, it was an utter betrayal of people this coming. The only people who are laughing are big business, the multinationals, the fossil fuel industry, particularly the oil and gas industry, who are saying, great, we are seeing no more decades of massive expansion of our oil and gas. And they will load themselves as climate leaders, President Biden, Prime Minister Trudeau, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Macron. They all will say, of course, with the climate leaders, the real problem is those people over there, those darkies over there, that's who are the real problem in this moment. And they are deliberately reframing climate away from the crisis that they've been responsible for and pushing the burden onto the poorest people of the world. I said that's, I think it's a very important point you made. And then in the middle of all this, you were one of the key people who helped organize the People's Summit outside the official COP. 150,000 people it seemed marched in a big march, to basically defend many of the ideas you were talking about. Why do we do these People's Summits and these big marches when we don't seem to make an impact on the thinking of these governments? Well, I would say we make a massive impact, right? Because a decade ago, those people who might have been marching would have been overwhelmingly white and middle class, and they would have been talking about polar bears. And now the 150,000 people are marching are workers, a trade unionist, migrant organizations, a Black Lives Matter or climate strikers, are people working around poverty. They are the movement of movements. And we're saying this climate crisis is a systemic crisis. It needs a structural answer. It needs a reordering of the global economy. And that is a really powerful beginning of a movement that really, you know, we have seen in moments in history in the global north, but in the last 20, 30 years has been largely wiped out. Internationalism has been forgotten in the global north. The idea of solidarity has been forgotten. And of course, people have retreated back into the nation state, nation state built on the backs of the global south. And this is a marked turning point in the movement of movement approach and the politicizing of a new generation of people to understand climate as part of the of the arc of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist rule. And the People's Summit was an important moment for our movements here in the global north to listen and learn from our movements in the global south, because this is not new for our movements in the global south. They've always been on resist, transform and mobilize. You know, they've understood the arc of how you build power and why you need to have vision and political demands and what movement building looks like and how you throw yourself against their power and build your power until, you know, these are ideas that we have to re-educate people again and show them what possibilities are. And of course, today, you know, we can say the victory of the Indian farmers against the BJP Modi government just demonstrates that change does happen. And it happens by us as ordinary people. We shouldn't be expecting our political leaders or looking for some scientists to answer this. This is ultimately the question. It will be how we have responded as individuals, not in our behavior, but in our political power. And that moving the dial from this is all about your individual behavior, to actually say, you need to be politically organized and we need to build our collective power with the overarching reason we both mobilize people, not just in Glasgow, 191 actions took place in the UK, right? On a radical climate justice message. And I remember even five years ago, with the big brands, the big NGO brands, refused to have the word justice written on a leaflet because they said it would be alienating to some sections of the British public. And it was better to have softer language because on climate, we needed everybody. No, on climate, you need our movement to understand who are the villains, who are the vested powers, who we need to be standing side by side with and what the transformation we're seeking. We're not looking just to cut carbon. We're actually looking to cut injustice. And to do that, you have to have a vision of the world that we want. And that's why it's war on wanton and so that we need a radical workers led global Green New Deal, not one in the global north on the back of the global sides. Yes, tackle climate crisis, but it's not the only crisis our people face, right? They're not just dying from climate, they're dying from poverty and inequality and they've been dying for decades. And you've turned your back on them. They're dying from COVID pandemic and you've turned your back on them. They're dying from unsustainable debt and you've turned your back on them. So now is the moment when you know it's coming to you to say we have to have a very, very different approach to solving this crisis because change is coming. There's no doubt about it. The only question, as you know, VJ is going to be change for who and who will be sacrificed and who will be the winners. And our job, of course, is to make sure it's we, ordinary people, working people, the people of the global south who aren't sacrificed in this great change that is about to involve the world. Well, I'm grateful for what you just said because at the March, I saw 200 Belgian students with the organization Comac with a sign that said, let's not change the climate, let's change the system. Asad Rehman, war on want. Thanks very much for joining us at People's Dispatch. My pleasure. My honor, VJ.