While the UN climate talks were getting nowhere, distracted by negotiations of false solutions such as REDD and other carbon market schemes, social movements both in Durban and around the globe were calling for real solutions that actually and measurably cool the planet.

Responding to a call from the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and La Via Campesina, 20 actions took place within the US and abroad during the 1000 Durbans Week of Action.

Durban, South Africa, December 6, 2011

Being in South Africa for the COP 17 feels like home field advantage for those who fight for justice. I along with some of my colleagues from GGJ attended the 1 Million Climate Jobs Conference (1MCJ), one of the alternative activities to the COP17 (shorthand for the obscenely long title of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Seventeenth Conference of the Parties). On our side of Durban at the University Kwazulu Natal, COP17 is more appropriately known as the “Conference of Polluters”.