What the Clouds Say

On 30 November, I spent part of my day lying on the ground in the middle of a busy intersection in the heart of Chicago's financial district with my arms locked into big plastic tubes that connected me to 11 other people. We formed a big circle of bodies and tubes around the outside of a banner reading “The air is not for sale!”.

We chose that particular spot, under the shadow of the Chicago Climate Exchange's offices, and caddy corner to the Chicago Board of Trade, to denounce the marketing of carbon as a fraud, an ineffective and unjust response to the crisis of climate change. Our act of nonviolent civil disobedience resulted in closing down the flow of traffic through the financial district for close to two hours. The police sirens wailed, while activists chanted “Carbon Trade is a Big Charade” and “Keep the Cap and Ditch the Trade”.

Our mission? The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is the nation’s first and largest carbon trading platform. This is where industries and individuals go to engage in the charade of trade if they want to pretend to be addressing global warming. The Exchange is a voluntary one: participants are not required by any law or governmental mandate to reduce their emissions. For some, like American Electric Power, DuPont and Ford Motor, most likely the motivation is to learn how to navigate these markets in preparation for what is seen by many as an inevitable future mandate. Other participants want to benefit from the greenwash that can be gained by claiming participation. A company that boldly claims to offset its emissions can project a green image, appealing to many potential clients who have at least a budding consciousness about environmental concerns. In short, greenwash is profitable.

So, while I was lying on the pavement, looking up at the sky, I contemplated the big picture of carbon trading, recalling some lines from the seminal Durban Declaration for Climate Justice (www.durbanclimatejustice.org) : “History has seen attempts to commodify land, food, labor, forests, water, genes and ideas. Carbon trade follows in the footsteps of this history and turns the earth's carbon cycling capacity into property to be bought and sold in a global market. Through this process of creating a new commodity, carbon, the earth's ability and capacity to support a climate conducive to life and human societies is now passing into the same corporate hands that are destroying the climate.”

It seems, the charade has robbed us of our own will and integrity, leaving us feeling entirely impotent, because, we are told, it is not our own personal force, our own strength, wisdom and common sense that will lead us forward, but rather, the blind, entirely amoral “market forces” we are to put our faith in. Surely the earth and her people will rebel! Surely we will not allow this to happen! Surely we will all stand up and declare that the air is not for sale, the earth is not for sale, the forests are not for sale, our farms are not for sale, nor our soils. Our forests and biodiversity are not for sale, not the polar bears, the ice caps, the orangutans - not even the spiders or fleas or even the mosquitoes. Our children's futures are not for sale. It is time for a new relationship with the earth and with each other, and the time to make it happen is now.

That is what the clouds told us while we were lying on the cold pavement with our arms locked in tubes, in the middle of LaSalle and Adams.

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Rachel Smolker is a researcher and campaigner with the Global Justice Ecology Project.  A longer version of this article can be found at commondreams.org