Stepping aside from the official forecasts, “we have choices to make now, something about what the future will be” thinks Parenti. “And there has to be a program of adaptation that includes social elements, not just physical elements like building seawalls against raising seas as a physical adaptation. It has to be a social adjustment that involves assisting the population in the global South to adapt to a new and extreme climate, and that is going to require that they get capital and new clean technology”. Actually, the social adaptation must work both ways. People in industrialized countries, even if not suffering from the worst consequences of climate change need to be aware of the issue. They also need to be “politically involved and be realistic of the limits that one person can do on its own by buying greens product or not buying them” continues the reporter, currently living in New York. According to him, “people should do it but it is not a substitute for politics. Politics happens when people come together”. Via Campesina, an international movement of peasants based mainly Latin and South America, Southeast Asia and Africa gathers over 148 organizations from 69 countries. They advocate for food sovereignty and peasant and family farm based production. Together, they agree that since the failure of Cancún, UNFCCC processes obviously were stumped and that only direct action by the people and from below will bring changes, points Tina Gerhardt, an academic and journalist expert on climate issues who has covered the last COPs for The Nation and The Huffington Post. When Lee Kyung-Hae, a 56-year-old Korean farmer and former president of the Korean Advanced Farmers Federation, fatally stabbed himself at the WTO meeting in Cancun in 2003, while holding a banner saying “WTO Kills Farmers!” as Gerdhardt remembers, it became not simply a rhetorical rallying cry but a wakeup call to the world about the reality of free trade and the necessity of facing such problems. During last Cancun summit in 2010 ‘Via Campesina’ organized a march: “Life and Climate Justice”, bringing together peasants, indigenous communities and activists from all over the world and making a commemorative stop at the mile marker where Kyun Hae died. Looking up to the officials, every climate actor can see the simple assumption that all people have toget closer to each other reflected in their geopolitical
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