Gender Across Borders

Today global leaders reached a tentative deal on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (Cop15), after two weeks of negotiations and much anticipation around the world.

According to Grist, President Obama warned that the agreement, which was limited and not legally binding, was “not enough” to curb global warming:

The deal came at the end of a day in which several drafts agreements were knocked back… Obama, whose presence was intended to provide the momentum to propel the deal over the finishing line, had earlier pleaded for unity while acknowledging any agreement would be less than perfect. The haggling capped two years of deadlock over crafting a new UN treaty from 2013 that would reduce global warming from mortal threat to manageable peril.

Scientists say failure to curb the rise in Earth’s temperature will lead to worsening drought, floods, storms and rising sea levels. The commitment to limit the rise in Earth’s temperature to no more than 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) falls way short of the demands of threatened island nations who, with their very existence threatened by rising seas, have called for a cap of 1.5 C (2.7 Fahrenheit).

‘Whatever the outcome, it looks bad for us,’ said a member of the Maldives delegation, an archipelago which fears being swallowed up by the Indian Ocean in a matter of decades.

But one major question that our leaders neglected to ask: How does this affect women? Studies show that women are 14 times more likely to die in natural disasters, as Riane Eisler writes for American Forum: Read the rest of this entry →

Just a few months ago, next month’s Copenhagen Summit was being described as the last chance to save the Earth (which really means save humanity) from global warming. Today it looks like the odds of any binding agreement coming out of the summit are zero to none. Some national leaders will be sending lower-ranking figures rather than attending it themselves.  Canada is sending Environment Minister Jim Prentice rather than Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Ironically, US President Barack Obama, who recently spoke of the need for the US and China to cooperate with each other on environmental issues, will be going to Oslo to accept his Nobel Peace Prize but maybe not to Copenhagen. He intends to outline a plan for environmental protection in his Nobel speech. Rhetoric, however, isn’t what is needed now. Read the rest of this entry →

This past week has not been a pleasant one for the international LGBT community. Two separate attacks occurred during the 2009 World Outgames, held last week in Copenhagen — three men were beaten outside of Copenhagen’s town hall after the opening night ceremony, and bombs were thrown into Osterbro Stadium at the start of a track event on Tuesday. And on Saturday, an unidentified assailant killed two people and injured at least 15 more outside of a community center for LGBT youth in Tel Aviv. This most recent attack, in particular, has incited outrage across the globe — Towleroad has a list of vigils planned in the U.S. and abroad in memory of the shooting’s victims.

All three of these tragic events have received a fair amount of media attention, which is a step in the right direction — these hate crimes deserve all of the attention they’ve received, and then some. But little, if any, of the media coverage is addressing the larger issue at hand: these incidents are symptomatic of a recent rise in anti-LGBT violence around the world.

Read the rest of this entry →