Latin American Progressive Governments Still Bet on "Extractivismo‪"‬

Surely no Bolivian head of state has ever been as famous an international celebrity as Evo Morales. His pronouncements on environmental protection and against the capitalist system have earned him much fame. His participation in the United Nations summit on climate change in Copenhagen in December 2009 was key in exposing to the whole world the hypocrisy and inaction of major polluting countries regarding global warming. It was in response to the Copenhagen fiasco that Morales took the initiative of organizing and hosting an alternative civil society summit meeting in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba in April 2010. His opening speech at the summit, officially named the World Peoples' Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, was the most important and right-on-target statement ever made by a head of state on the subjects of ecology and climate change. His declarations and actions have earned him the esteem of environmentalists and progressives from all over the world.