Rationale

Climate COP Out has been running since 2023, to create a network of activists mobilising around the United Nations’ global climate talks – Conference of Parties (COP). Climate COP Out is readying for a pivotal moment in the Australia’s climate movement, as Adelaide is poised to host COP 31.

The political and economic system which created the climate crisis, also created the COP summits. COP grapples for fanciful technological and economic fixes that allow global capitalism to continue, but it cannot reign in the endless growth even as it breaks planetary limits.

To address our current climate destruction, we need to reorganise our societies. Climate COP Out works to create a space for bottom up climate solutions and resistance. We converge to explore resistance, alternative social and economic structures, climate science and ecological systems. The mobilisation invites people in to the climate reality, to look at it’s causes and join in a struggle for collective liberation and survival. To change course in the climate crisis, we need a mass movement. Climate COP Out aims to use the momentum of COP’s international attention on climate, to sew the seeds of an enduring push for social change.

Our goal is to call out the COP summits on what they truly are; a business conference masked as climate leadership. We will gather together and propose alternatives, create pressure for change and speak the truth on nation states and climate collapse. We are unified in seeking a future based on well-being and hold anti-capitalist, anti- state, anti- colonial perspectives as fundamental in achieving positive change.

In the current context, more than ever, we need to advance in collective spaces that defend democracy and international solidarity. We must organise to hold political spaces that confront the far right, fascism, wars, the financing of nature. We must plan, learn and prepare ourselves within community to collectively survive the climate crisis.

Australia is far from the worst off, yet we have witnessed increased climate disasters destroy communities and landscapes in the last 5 years. Extreme weather, major floods, metropolitan cyclones, runaway bushfires are all far too common. Dangerous weather patterns and unpredictable futures lead to social crises, food crises and housing crises. In our neighbouring island communities sea level rise is an imminent threat to food security and available land. Cruelly ironic, those that have contributed least to global warming bear the greatest consequences. As islands like Tuvalu and Vanuatu seek help, they are forced to trade out their autonomy, selling security pacts and maritime boundaries for funding and refuge from Australia.

The inability to adequately respond is alarming. Countries and decision-makers have been negligent or have presented ineffective solutions, shrugging off the 1.5º target of the Paris Agreement like an itch. Investments, subsidies and deals fuelling climate collapse have increased, alongside policies threatening indigenous peoples and climate defenders.

Each year COP has failed in it’s urgent responsibility to create life preserving solutions. We do not believe COP31 will be any different. We will not let them continue silently. We will bring people together to build community power and break through the facade of COP in whatever way possible. We will speak up against so-called leaders, and we will call them out on their Climate COP- out!