It can no longer be seriously disputed that our way of life is destroying the planet: the number of animal and plant species disappearing each year is alarming; and the rate of their extinction is one hundred to one thousand times higher than before capitalism. It seems that we are destined to continue watching the sad parade of frogs, birds and corals from the "vulnerable" to the "endangered" box until we soon find ourselves marching right there alongside them. In a situation in which capitalist states can no longer seriously represent themselves to civil society as the guardians of our well-being, representatives are gathering in Montreal from December 7 to 19 for the 15th iteration of the Conference of Parties (COP) on Biodiversity, a UN forum to limit the human (read: capitalist, imperialist, male and colonial) plundering of our ecosystems, held annually, to adopt resolutions that are non-binding for participating states (insofar as one can "participate" in such inaction). These ineffective conferences are limited by the very problems that they claim to be able to resolve. Indeed, not only do COPs have no concrete power, but they would be incapable of even gesturing towards effective and sustainable solutions because their recommendations are the result of conciliation between the powers of money and state. In these discussions, scientists, NGOs and other communities play a largely cosmetic, non-decisional role and merely serve as a thin coat of green paint on the capitalist machinery that is destroying our planet.
The Anti-Capitalist and Ecologist Coalition against the COP15 is calling for participation in the December 10 demonstration, organized by the COP15 Collective. The coalition invites you to join forces to promote an anti-capitalist ecological discourse that does not compromise with the bourgeois imperatives that have for too long shaped state inaction on the protection of life. The "March for Life", which will start from the Georges-Étienne Cartier monument on Saturday at 1pm, aims to call on governments to make commitments such as the accession to the status of protected territory for 30% of the terrestrial territory, or the legal accountability of States for the preservation of life on their territory. Of course, one way that capitalist states preserve territory is by driving people out of it, since it is unthinkable for such powers to allow non-ecocidal lifestyles (i.e., motivated by anything other than the unregulated economic growth that capitalism requires for survival) to thrive there. As if Indigenous peoples, on whose lands a large part of the earth's biodiversity to be protected is preserved, had not lived in responsible relationships with their environment for millennia! As if it were impossible to transform our relationship with human activity so that it serves us without harming us!
We will participate, and invite you to join en masse, in the march on the 10th to express our critical support for its message and objectives. We believe that other worlds are possible, and that they are desirable; we also believe that the capitalist states will not assist us in bringing them into being, and that they will always do everything in their power to prevent us from building them, because these worlds are not compatible with the financial accounting of the bankers and industrialists that they serve-- plans that imply the seizure of our exploited bodies, and of the resources of the soil; inhuman plans that are hegemonic in this era that is ironically known as the "anthropocene".
Dare to fight, dare to win.
Rendezvous on December 10th at 1pm, under the big black flag, in front of Jeanne-Mance park (on Parc street)