On Wednesday the 25th November 2015, Red Pepper and the Transnational Institute held a discussion on how states and corporations are reacting to climate change in ways which will have far-reaching consequences for our future.
About the debate:
What if government and corporate elites have given up on stopping climate change and prefer to try to manage its consequences instead? In the weeks running up to the UN’s major COP21 Climate Change Conference in Paris, this event looked to examine issues raised by a new book, The Secure and the Dispossesed: How the Military and Corporations are Shaping a Climate-Changed World. The book unveils a new climate security agenda in which the dystopian preparations of the powerful are already fuelling militarised security responses to the unfolding climate crisis. However, it also puts forward and tells the stories of the inspiring alternatives that promise a just transition to a climate-changed world.
“With our politicians refusing to confront the climate crisis, some are looking with hope to the increasingly influential role being played by military planners and corporate titans. If you want to understand why we can’t leave it to the Pentagon to shape our response to climate change, then you need to read this book”. Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (Simon and Schuster, 2014) and The Shock Doctrine (Knopf Canada, 2007).
Participants:
Speakers:
Nick Buxton – Communications Consultant, The Transnational Institute
Ben Hayes – Fellow, The Transnational Institute and Researcher, Statewatch
Jo Ram – Co-Founder, Community Reinvest
Asad Rehman – Senior Campaigner, Friends of the Earth
Moderator:
Ryvka Barnard is the senior campaigns officer for Militarism and Security at War on Want and will moderate this event
About the organisers and the event programme:
This event is a Coming of Age event, organised by the Red Pepper magazine and The Transnational Institute, all of which you can find out more information about below.
Coming of Age
Coming of Age is a hub of multiple organisations, which have created a national [UK] programme of creative interventions timed to take place around the COP21 conference in Paris. These events take part as one section of the bigger ArtCOP21 programme and look to bring climate change into focus on a local level, involving audiences and communities throughout the UK.
Red Pepper
Red Pepper is an independent, non-profit, bi-monthly magazine and a website of left politics and culture. It’s a socialist publication, which draws on feminist, green and libertarian politics and seeks to be a space for debate on the left; a resource for movements for social justice and a home for open-minded anti-capitalists.
Read more about Red Pepper on their own website.
The Transnational Institute
The Transnational Institute [TNI] is an international research and advocacy institute committed to building a just, democratic and sustainable planet. For more than 40 years, the TNI has served as a unique nexus between social movements and engaged both scholars and policy makers.
