U.S. way more negotiable than life
A generation ago, when the heat was already on to stop runaway climate change, no one blew more cold than the United States.
Whether barked by the first President Bush, regurgitated under his son, or mangled from the rhetoric of Lincoln, these words became an axiom of policy: America’s way of life is non-negotiable.
From the Earth Summit in Rio to the final round of talks on binding emissions targets, American officials banged their fists, sowed obstruction and helped a gaggle of corporate front groups rubbish science. Then the second Revolution swept them aside.
Its mantra was stolen from above, but the impetus came from below.
So far below, in fact, that it started south of the border, deep in the jungle, and under the radar of neoliberal exploitation. Or so it was said in Chiapas, where the movement that wasn’t a movement first found voice.
“Everything for everyone and nothing for ourselves,” declared this oddball Zapatista Army. That might have been the end of it, had their No not been translated into so many Yeses. Yes to autonomy, yes to inclusion, yes to the needs of people over profits. As if all that weren’t confusing enough, an American got elected president disguised as an activist.
“Yes we can!” he preached. It sounded like a masterstroke of U.S. rebranding. But some people took Barack Obama literally. If he could talk in tapestries, then so would they. Hell, they’d even weave old Uncle Sam a new one.
Ten years after the Battle of Seattle, when protesters disrupted a trade summit, this disparate political network came of age, just as we needed it most.
In 2009, at the Colloquy of Copenhagen, its cadres took over the talks, dissolved the United States, and ushered in the end of addiction to oil.
