Today is the last day of the People's World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. For some reason, my body decided to wake me up early today, even before the dogs and the roosters. Perhaps it was so I would have enough time to do the usual (shower, eat, pack for the day, get a bus), but also to write you. I haven't written for three days, I think.

This is of course because the meat of the conference has been exactly these last three days, from final registration and a few events Monday, to "accreditation" (getting your security badge) in an indoor coliseum Tuesday, to events from dawn till way past dusk these last two days, and into today. Being on the tech team, as for so many other roles here, there is always much more to do, so you *could* stay all night and not finish your "to do" list (which will be entirely different tomorrow, anyway). Being over 40 and paying my own way, I just decided that I only work so late. Even if there is more to do, I know I won't be of much use to anyone if I don't get back to sleep at least 7 hours or so. So I leave around 9 pm. The last few nights we have had bus service (a most ancient bus which reminds me of taking my first bus at around six years old to the pond in my home town for swimming lessons), but a bus nonetheless. It leaves at 8:45 pm, so (unless I want to brave crowds and taxi drivers at least tripling the cost since the day we arrived), I get out int time to get the bus.

Last night I attended my first substantive session of the conference. It has been a bit challenging to know there is so much fantastic discussion going on amongst the peoples of the world about subjects I have studied and worked on, from the situation of women in the third world and political economy from "development" to revolution, and now climate from science to policy, everything from seeds, agricultural genetic diversity and water supply, to militarization, resource control, neocolonialism, and "security." I went to a workshop on the latter last night, as that was the subject of my thesis (thought that was good enough reason to leave the tech world early). Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! moderated, seeming tired and snacking quietly on stage (they're broadcasting daily from here, and are embedded live as one of our streams off our web page). Naomi Klein was the other English-speaking presenter; she did what she does and presented a framework for analysis. Then there were the Latin Americans. One was an (Argentinian?) woman from Fundacion Solon, who started her talk from the point of view of "memory" -- the memory of military dictatorships and repression, where thousands were tortured and disappeared, essentially in the name of capital -- corporate profit. For them, the militarization which is accompanying the "threat" of climate change is nothing new, only a new flavor.

A Brazilian from the landless people's movement (big and very -- no one says "progressive" here; it would sound weak and wimpy -- yet it's not revolutionary in a traditional 'take over the state' sense, nor radical in an anarchist sense -- our American framework does not work here but these people are facing the issues directly and do not hesitate, as we do, to name problems or call for direct action solutions -- so let's say 'radical' just to get through it) described the growing campaign to confront and close military bases around the world. He did not say "American" bases, but did name, as Chalmers Johnson has, that there are over 800 U.S. military bases all over the world. Others said clearly that these bases exist to control resources so that America, the north, can maintain its program of "economic growth," and that everyone else in the way, whether poisoned by pollution, driven out of their homes and livelihoods by drought-induced climate, or directly tortured to death on bases, in camps, or in wars, is clearly and explicitly accepted by nations of the global north, as acceptable collateral damage. One speaker from Spain talked about how many thousands die crossing the "border" from northern Africa (which is, like the Mediterranean -- remember the Greek fires? -- experiencing climate-induced drought and thus famine) into Spain. I found myself thinking about Mexicans crossing into southern California, and the deaths that continue by exposure and thirst as people flee their economy (and now the drug wars) in desperation, babies and jugs of water in hand, often not enough to fend off the hallucinations that drive them to think the mid-day mirage is water, so they are found dead with their mouths full of dirt.

So here in Latin America, people are very clear why the military is here. They know it is the only way you can enforce the extraction of resources from other people's lands; they know it is the only way you can enforce the economy of growth in the north, by occupying land, sucking out raw materials, and forcing people (by extracting the value of their own natural resources and thus keeping their economies and governments poor) to work for exploitative wages, in dangerous conditions (the Bolivian mines are famous for this), and live with limited and contaminated drinking water, garbage, and junk.

Naomi Klein always talks about "what if we fail." This time, her polemic was that we have two choices: climate justice (where the North de-carbonizes and pays back the climate debt owed to the poor countries, allowing them to grow and thrive), or climate war, the trajectory we're on, where now even "development" money, long problematic for forwarding North agendas and ultimately cultural and corporate infiltration, is now directly being used for and by the military (in the US the development-military alliance of State Dept. USAID, and the Pentagon is called "The Interagency;" more on this in my thesis but enough for now).

Yet another step is underway, which is the privatization of intelligence and security. This means not only that rich individuals can pay a "membership fee" to be helicoptered out of a hurricane zone when the warning arrives (and literally be taken to a Caribbean vacation; Klein said people do not believe her when she describes these new sorts of enterprises), but also the privatization of corporate security -- meaning to a point, corporations no longer need the state to send in the army or CIA to rough up the unions, depose the president, etc., because, as we've seen with Chevron in Nigeria, they just hire their own thugs to kill demonstrators. Of course, right now we still have both state and private militaries and intelligence agencies, but they are working together, just at different scales. Actually, in the US, on the one hand the CIA has set up an intel bureau on climate change (Klein's point was that for all the denial in popular discourse in the US, the military is the one place where they do not deny it and are planning thoroughly and rapidly for it), there is now a third level of the privatization of "intelligence" is increasingly being outsourced. So while the Congressional oversight panels on intel have long been lied to, by sins of omission and commission, if intel (which of course includes operations as well as "information-gathering") is privatized, there is really no accountability any more. Think Blackwater in Iraq.

So the Latin Americans are front-line communities in our war on the planet. They see it in front of their faces, and they are confronting it, as you'd have to confront a skinhead with a chain coming at you from ten feet, or a thief stealing your entire supply of baby formula. They are trying to stop the bases (some of us also recall base conversion from the 1980s and are talking about how we could re-purpose them if only we could take them over, take them back?). They are seeing this as the latest phase -- first the "green revolution" of the 1950s through the 1970s, where formerly rather organic and sustainable agriculture became "upgraded" with oil-dependent machines, oil-dependent fertilizers, oil-dependent pesticides, and corporate-dependent genetically-modified seeds; then the phase of corporate assault, infiltration, and control (the last 20 years, with military force if/as needed), and now the plan to save the rich and let the poor die (or to control or kill them, as climate impacts take hold). They did not say this but I have to. It is clear that the rich nations do not plan to try to reduce greenhouse gases fast enough to save small island states, or to stop the melting of glaciers in the Andes or Himalays which will spell mandatory, permanent evacuation for millions -- hundreds of millions? -- of people, so that we in the North can maintain our "economic growth." They plan to keep the poor behind walls, bars, or in camps, as climate impacts worsen. One speaker recalled how in the Kosovo war, refugees were kept in camps to prevent them from coming into the E.U.

The most inspiring speaker on the panel I attended was also from Brazil. He said surprising things -- we need to have fewer of these summits; we need to have less discourse. We have the analysis; we need concrete action. There was much applause. I myself said this the other night at dinner -- much of this is the same analysis we've been providing for decades. Naomi Klein did a service to feminists, pointing out (correctly) that many feminists have been providing an analysis connecting the exploitation of capital to that of nature and women's (and also men's) bodies, without much credit (but now this analysis is going mainstream, as we realize the climate and ecological crises are just manifestations of the same system -- called 'capitalism' -- that generates poverty and inequality).

Getting back to the Brazilian speaker (I think he was with MST - the landless peasants' movement, although he was light-skinned), he said we need to return to the ways "our" people have known before, to recover knowledge, of how to grow food without pesticides and fertilizers, of how to live without polluting our water, land and air, and most of all, to rediscover the spirit and reality of solidarity among peoples, so we help each other out, both fighting and building together. There was a "gran applause" to this, and actually personally I felt good because that is why I came. Maybe computers are a short-term form of solidarity; maybe soon I will be working on more direct forms, and we need to get to that, but it is really about recovering our humanity and not denying our connection to other people. One speaker, I think it was Klein, said her strongest impression at Copenhagen was how cold and calculated the presenters from the North were, as they presented their proposals, fully aware of the science that had informed them of the doom to come to other peoples and nations if their proposals are implemented. Can we rediscover our common humanity without flying around and meeting each other in person? It is much easier to feel connected when you actually meet someone, shake their hand, share the same food, sit under the same sun, dance to the same music, awaken to the same roosters.

Can we in the North recover our humanity without flying each of us down every few years to remember? Maybe only as impacts hit us will we get it. But we have to start doing things differently. The "more action, less discourse" guy also said, change is a process; it takes time. He meant not to wait or be patient, but rather to start taking steps so we can start actually changing ourselves. I felt good then, as I thought of David and me, growing our own veggies and quinoa, on land temporarily gifted to us by a working-class truck driver. I thought, "we're starting." And these things that are happening in the relocalization movements, in urban gardens, they may seem small, but they are concrete shared experiences. We only change by changing. We learn by doing and showing and sharing.

It is 6:45 am now, and loudspeakers have just started somewhere, announcing something about Evo Morales. It's time to do the daily routine. I hope you all are well and look forward to seeing you soon when I get back.

Karen Nyhus is a climate justice activist, writer and consultant with a background in environmental science, information technology, and international solidarity movements.

See Oakland Local's WPCCC coverage here.