MEDIA ADVISORY
For Immediate Release
April 19, 2010
ETC Group attends Cochabamba Climate Change Conference: Presses for a Ban on Geoengineering.
Cochabamba, Bolivia - To advance meaningful international action on confronting the climate crisis, the Bolivian government is this week hosting a Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and The Rights of Mother Earth featuring close to 10,000 attendees. These include government representatives, social movements, non-governmental organizations and Indigenous Peoples from around the world.
WHAT: Civil society organizations are increasingly alarmed that the world's most powerful governments, corporations and individuals are moving to initiate real world experiments in geoengineering. These are large-scale proposals to deliberately alter the climate, for example by creating artificial volcanoes to pollute the atmosphere with sulphur particles. Proponents of geoengineering regard such schemes as a "Plan B" if global agreements on emissions reductions continue to fail. To press the case for a global ban on geoengineering schemes, ETC Group, an international civil society organisation with offices in Canada, Mexico, the Philippines and the USA, will be attending the Cochabamba conference. Along with partners they will be launching an international campaign against geoengineering experiments.
WHO: ETC Group Executive Director, Pat Mooney, is participating in the conference with colleagues Silvia Ribeiro (from Mexico City office), and Diana Bronson (from Montreal office). Pat Mooney and Silvia Ribeiro have both accepted formal invitations from the Bolivian government to present in the main plenary in panel discussions on technology and agriculture. ETC Group will host a side event on Geoengineering on April 20 at 6:30 pm, in the Universidad del Valle, Auditorio Soc 1 Norte. A press conference to reveal more details about the upcoming international campaign against geoengineering will be held on April 21. More details to follow.
WHEN: ETC Group staff will be on the ground in Cochabamba from April 18-24, 2010. They are available for comment and interviews regarding conference proceedings, geoengineering, technology transfer and agricultural issues.
COMMENT: The Cochabamba summit is a timely moment for governments and civil society to affirm that this planet is our common home and not a laboratory for risky technologies. The integrity of Mother Earth should never be violated by geoengineering experimentation or deployment.
For more background on geoengineering see ETC Group's recent report "Retooling the Planet? Climate chaos in the Geoengineering Age" - available online at http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/4966)
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For more information:
In Cochabamba:
Pat Mooney (English), - etc@etcgroup.org cell phone: + 1 613 240 0045
Silvia Ribeiro (English and Spanish) - silvia@etcgroup.org Local cell phone in Cochabamba: + 591 74315817 (also reachable on cell phone: + 52 1 55 26 53 33 30 )
Diana Bronson (English and French) - diana@etcgroup.org cell phone: +1 514 629 9236
In Montreal, Canada
Jim Thomas (English) - jim@etcgroup.org phone: +1 514 273 9994 cell phone: +1 514 516 5759
In Ottawa Canada
Molly Kane (English and French) - molly@etcgroup.org phone: +1 6132412267, ext 26
In Davao City, Philippines
Neth Dano (English, Filipino, Bisaya) neth@etcgroup.org phone: +63 917 5329369
