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http://www.santiagotimes.cl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18618:chilean-delegation-prepares-for-morales-global-climate-summit-&catid=44:environmental&Itemid=40

More than 7,500 expected in Bolivia for the ‘cool’ conference

A Chilean delegation of more than 200 people, including politicians, activists and NGO representatives, is headed to Bolivia for President Evo Morales’ Climate Change Summit “For the People.”
“The governments that came together in Copenhagen have failed. We must come together at a grassroots level and create a general consensus with which we can pressure our governments,” said Sara Larraín, former presidential candidate and head of Sustainable Chile, at a press conference in Santiago on Wednesday.
Next week, 7,500 delegates from over 100 countries will attend what has been called the “cool” climate change conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
The summit, initiated by Morales, aims at “giving a voice to the people” after Copenhagen’s failed climate change summit in December 2009.
In Morales’ point of view, the failure of Copenhagen and the stubbornness of “hegemonies” puts at risk “the survival of the human species.”
His conference will be attended by governments as well as NGOs, student groups, politicians and well-known activists including Canadian author Naomi Klein and American actors Robert Redford and Susan Sarandon.
Walker San Miguel, the Bolivian ambassador to Chile said “excessive consumerism in the world’s capitalist system” is one of the problems in the fight against global warming.
Representatives of several organizations were present at the Santiago send-off, including the Indigenous group Wilkunche and Amigos de la Tierra.
Larraín said that “The earth’s temperature has already increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. There are islands that will disappear if it warms up more than 1.5 degrees. To let that happen would be an unacceptable crime.”
Topics the Chilean delegation will bring to the table include climate migration — the fact that the effects of global warming will cause people to move—the idea of an International Climate Change Tribunal, the impact of agriculture on climate change and alternative ways of living that would reduce human CO2 production.
Members of the delegation also said they were looking forward to Morales’ proposed referendum. The referendum is expected to be the world’s largest to date, with up to two billion people asked to vote on possible solutions to climate change.
Unlike the Copenhagen summit, the conference will be a debate open to all.
“Climate change will greatly affect us as we need the earth to live,” added Patricia Huichulef, from Chile’s Indigenous Wilkunchen group.