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Crashing Americans for Prosperity - An Insider Perspective

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Created on Thursday, 10 December 2009 12:53
Last Updated on Friday, 08 January 2010 04:30
Written by Ebony Payne
I was one of the US Youth that crashed the climate denier LIVE webcase hosted by Americans for Prosperity with Lord Monckton, an infamous British climate change denier. Here's my story. Share SustainUS on More Sites!
I was one of the US Youth that crashed the climate denier lecture last night hosted by Americans for Prosperity, featuring Lord Monckton, an infamous British climate change denier.  The event was a live broadcast as part of a Hot Air Tour claiming to "expose the ballooning costs of global warming hysteria" and was shown at over 40 climate denier parties in America.   The event was supposed to be on the same day Barack Obama had originally planned to come to Copenhagen, but as the AFP put it..."I guess he found out we were coming!" Right.

The audience at the Marriott hotel conference room was basically nothing but undercover youth posing as young fringe-conservatives. When I first walked in, there was only one row of five chairs each - they were expecting an audience of ten?! As the undercovers filled all of the chairs and talked up the speakers such as AFP president, Tim Phillips, making him think we were super supporters, you could hear one of the AFP organizers saying "Oh my god, we need so many more chairs!  I'm so bad at organizing!"


About 20 minutes into the program, we unveiled our first banner which read "Stop! Climate Disaster Ahead" - but it was quickly torn away by an AFP member. Suddenly, the room became an upheaval of US youth delegates (which was the whole room except for 5 actual attendees) as youth bum rushed the stage chanting "Americans for prosperity are Americans for clean energy!" and "We are sick of your pollution! This is an energy revolution!" Lord Monckton then jumped up on stage to announce to his live audience that "you are now listening to the shouts of Hitler's youth." We successfully made news on the AFP's website, Grist, the Huffington Post, Think Progress and Desmogblog (links posted below).

According to the AFP, the treaty that is being negotiated in Copenhagen is a conspiracy by the G-77 (developing countries) and China to take away American prosperity. The AFP climate deniers believe that  climate change is being used as an excuse to spread the(ir) wealth.  Not that it is of any importance to the AFP, but according to the IPCC, 75% of greenhouse gas emissions has been historically emitted by the Global North.  But, 75% of the major impacts will be felt in the Global South.  Climate change is not an excuse for taking away American prosperity, but a huge problem taking away people's lives and homes of those who have been historically always the most vulnerable.

Kenya youth and officials protested in the Bella Center chanting "2 degrees is suicide" and screaming that their homeland has become to hot to live in. I talked to one Kenyan youth delegate at the Art Space, a space donated to youth activist by artists in Copenhagen to make action materials, who said that in his home in central Kenya, the people have had to queue for food for the first time because of the drought and said "it was painful to see my grandmother and my mother standing in line hungry."

One SustainUS delegate put it simply as "It's not just this climate debt.  First it was slavery and colonization then it was stealing all of their natural resources." Jonathan Pershing, in his US briefing yesterday, was asked by another US youth, how could the US ignore its historical responsibilities for the climate crisis?  Pershing responded that, its not that the US doesn't take it's historical responsibility seriously, it's just that from what time period do we start counting our historical responsibility?  From 10 years ago? 20 years ago? A century ago?....Well Mr. Pershing, how bout you just start counting from day one, mmmkay?
Pictures will be coming soon from COP15 and the city of Copenhagen.  But for now, watch and see US youth rain on some climate denier's parade.

Links for articles below: There are two videos.  One that AFP edited for their website, and another that a SustainUS delegate took which can be seen on all the other sites.

ItsGettingHotInHere.org: http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/12/09/us-youth-crash-climate-denier-live-webcast-in-copenhagen/
Desmogblog: http://www.desmogblog.com/monckton-calls-young-us-climate-activists-“hitler-youth”-protesting-americans-prosperity-event