At some (but not all) public events in Australia there is a statement from the host to the effect that “we acknowledge we are on the land of [insert name of local Aboriginal tribe], that they never relinquished sovereignty of the land, and that their elders have knowledge that can help us all live sustainably.”
This can be a tokenistic ‘safety valve’ sort of thing. But nonetheless, I think that climate activists should initiate – and push others to make- a tokenistic statement along the lines of;
“We acknowledge that this meeting is taking place in a society whose economy has grown massively over the last two hundred years, in large part from the burning of coal, gas and oil. We acknowledge that the increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is causing the planet to warm, and that other species and the poorest humans are suffering first, but that we will all suffer in the future. We acknowledge that as people who have benefited from previous burning, and as people who continue to burn fossil fuels above and beyond the global average, we have a primary responsibility to work to minimise carbon dioxide emissions in fair and sustainable ways, and to help the poorest among us adapt to the inevitable changes that climate change will bring. We also acknowledge that efforts thus far to do this have been at best useless.”
Ok, it’s clunky, but you get my point?
manchester climate monthly 