Who Rules the World? Reframings

by Noam Chomsky

After the ignominious collapse of the Copenhagen global climate change summit in 2009, Bolivia organized a World People’s Conference on Climate Change with thirty-five thousand participants from 140 countries—not just representatives of governments but also members of civil society and activists. It produced a People’s Agreement, which called for very sharp reductions in emissions, and a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth.42 Establishing the rights of the planet is a key demand of indigenous communities all over the world. It is ridiculed by sophisticated Westerners, but unless we can acquire some of the indigenous sensibility, they are likely to have the last laugh—a laugh of grim despair.