Kicking polluters out, youth take charge of their own future
Photo Credit: (Corporate Accountability / Google Images)
Written by: Samanah Ali
It is the 25th United Nations Climate Change conference in Madrid, Spain in December 2019. A pair of protests take place this same week where indigenous activists speak out in opposition to a massive oilsands mine proposed for northern Alberta, Canada. One of these protests take place outside the Canadian embassy in Spain’s capital, and the other inside the COP 25 UN Climate negotiations hall.
Around 500 people storm the area, outside the hall where the negotiations are taking place. These protests are demanding more action to address the climate emergency. Eventually, the UN security forces force them out and shut down the conference halls.
This is the first time the UN climate negotiations are rocked by large protests within the negotiating areas. Among these protests are some youth who would soon become the founders of a brand new international youth-led organization called Polluters Out.
“At COP there were peaceful protests that different youth attempted to facilitate and security shut them completely down, threatened to revoke all their badges and so they couldn't effectively make their voices heard while polluters had [seized them] an opportunity to speak,” said Kylen Glass, one of Canada’s representatives for Polluters Out. “ [the organization] started right after that.”
“[The founders] saw how much influence and power polluting industries had over all of the negotiations and conversations that were happening at COP, and they realized that you can't have a conversation on the policies when massive polluters have a controlling interest at the negotiation table.”
Polluters Out was officially founded in January 2020. It’s a coalition of hundreds of organizations around the world that are committed to “kicking polluters out of climate change negotiations and any kind of government policy-making.”
While companies can’t participate in the talks as independent entities, membership-based business and industry non-government associations (BINGOs) can.
According to Boston-based non-profit Corporate Accountability International (CAI), fossil fuel companies, such as FuelsEurope, the World Coal Association, are extensively represented in the associations that participate in UN climate talks.
According to CDP’s Carbon Majors report of 2017, the contribution of fossil fuels to global warming has doubled, and over half of global industrial emissions can be traced to 25 corporate and state producing entities like ExxonMobil, Shell, Saudi Armco, Coal India and others. At the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, climate change could displace one-fifth of the world’s population by 2100 due to the rising ocean levels.
Previously, Glass was an organizer with Climate Strike Canada. He was recruited by the founders of Polluters Out when they were reaching out to people in Canada as part of the effort to make this group an international initiative. Glass was recruited as one of North America’s regional representatives.
What’s different about this coalition?
Creating an international organization is no easy job, especially considering the language barrier. Once an international campaign is launched, the different regions figure out how to best campaign in their respective locations. Glass says that climate change is very North American or European centric, so Polluters Out tries to “center voices of those who are normally not centred.”
Polluters Out, however, is not the only international climate change organization. But it is unique in its nature. Glass says that many of the previous movements have been adult-run and used traditional methods like letter-writing and signing petitions.
“What's different now is that we have a massive group of youth, and more and more every day, that are really engaged and willing, they're not just doing letter-writing, they're not just signing petitions, they're out on the streets protesting, they're occupying offices,” he said.
“As the future inhabitants of our society of everything we have, like our adults have more a perceived responsibility to like preserve the world to pass on to us as we grow up, and [as youth] if we make a massive movement of how past generations are destroying the world for us, that gives us a lot of power to sway people.”
The youth, however, have been active before as well. The difference now is the widespread use of social media and different online tools that were not common before. “When so much activism and so much awareness is spread on these platforms, then we have unheard of numbers of people joining and learning and then taking action,” said Glass.
Canadian mining companies, the environment and human rights violations
Canada especially has a bad reputation for their mining corporations.
After the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Canada signed agreements with Latin American countries, including Peru (2009), Colombia (2011), Panama (2013) and Honduras (2014), to be able to easily extract resources from them.
According to A report titled The Impact of Canadian Mining in Latin America and Canada’s responsibility, which was submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Canadian cooperation assistance for development projects in other countries are conditioned on the “benefits” of the mining projects. This report examined 22 mining projects operated by Canadian companies and found them to have serious environmental and human rights violations.
Six of these cases show serious environmental harm. For example in Peru, serious pollution caused by mining activities impacted crop harvests and small-scale livestock farming, while Guatemala’s Marlin Mine operations led to major water contaminations. Various large-scale mining projects have also caused the displacement of local communities.
“Politicians work very closely with oil and gas executives and mining executives so because they have such a close relationship, the crimes of these organizations around the world are not going to go punished by the government at least,” said Glass.
“Climate policies or anything to address the environmental racism that exists is harmful to their profits. They're going to reach out to governments, they're going to reach out to politicians and lobby them to get to not have these rules affect them, because then they make more money, which drives their bottom line.”
According to Natural Resources Canada, Canadian mining assets abroad (CMAA) totaled $153.2 billion in 2013, a 4.6 per cent increase from the year before. This number only increased to $163.9 billion in 2017.
A 2008 study on Canadian mining companies states that “Canada is an advanced capitalist state within a hierarchy of nations operating within the global capitalist economy.” As a result, the study suggests that the activities of Canadian mining companies and the Canadian state, the latter typically defending the former, should be analysed within the broader dynamics of global capitalism.
Canadian mining assets, 2017 (Natural Resources Canada).
“Canada likes to keep its image as a very positive contributor to the global world. But it also lets all of these Canadian companies just go mine or extract for oil and gas and doesn't really care about the massive negative impacts that are happening there because they're bringing money home to Canada,” said Glass.
“There's not a ton of Canadians that are upset about it and not a lot of media attention around it, so they're fine to do it because it's not really gonna affect their global image.”
According to a 2019 Climate Transparency report, Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are - per capita - much higher than the G20 average. The G20 countries account for 85 per cent of global economic activity. In 2018, they produced 80 per cent of all GHG emissions. Canada’s total GHG emissions increased by 17 per cent between 1990 and 2016. Fossil fuels still make up around 76 per cent of Canada’s energy mix: including power, heat, transport fuels and more.
Universities and conflict of interest
Oil and gas companies have also been having a significant reach into schools, colleges and universities as well. This comes at a time when corporate money has become more important to universities due to governmental funding cuts.
Stating the obvious, no corporations spend money on a whim. Any donation or sponsorship decision is made carefully.
Enbridge, Canada’s largest pipeline company, recently pledged $2.25 million to the University of Calgary for a research centre. This sparked large protests as it threatened academic independence and great environmental harm.
“It's rare to find a university that isn't investing in oil and gas companies, or running like research labs or entire programs for training people to be in the oil and gas sector,” said Glass.
“We feel that universities who are meant to be like educating the future generation should not be pouring money into companies that are actively jeopardizing the future for us.”
Fossil fuel divestment campaigns have become a widespread movement, especially in college and university campuses.
Polluters Out aims to get polluters banned from the UNFCCC events, however that is not the end of their mission.
“We're not gonna stop until we've achieved everything that we think needs to happen for our world to recover,” said Glass. “We’ll first stop and then recover from the destructive tendencies that it's been on for so long.”
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