On this week’s Earth Beat, we remember the victims of the world’s worst industrial accident. Strong words on Copenhagen from the first scientist to warn us about the greenhouse effect, and apparently only the rich will survive global warming.

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REMEMBERING BHOPAL
25 years ago today, December 3, 1984, the Union Carbide pesticide plant in the Indian city of Bhopal accidentally released toxic gas into the atmosphere. Thousands were killed in the first 72 hours of being exposed, and thousands more have died since. Earth Beat’s Bhopal correspondent, Pooja Prakash revisited the former site to hear the stories of those who lived through that winter night and what issues Bhopal locals are facing today as a result of the disaster.

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Bhopal's Toxic Water Supply
Many residents of Bhopal are drinking chemical cocktails. Their drinking water is filthy and unsafe, mostly because it has always been that way, but since the Bhopal disaster, things have only become worse. Cancer, deformities and other abnormalities are on the rise, while the Indian government has done nothing to improve the situation. Earth Beat’s Mumbai Correspondent Chavvi Sackdev reports.

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The Yes Men get to the Truth Through Lies
The Yes Men are a group of activists who practice what they call "identity correction”. On the 20th anniversary of Bhopal, they posed as Dow representatives and went on live television saying Dow would give $12 billion to the victims of Bhopal. But it was all a joke. They did raise awareness, but how did their hoax affect the victims of Bhopal who thought they were being compensated? Marnie meets Mike Bonanno from the Yes Men to talk about how their hoax went down with the people of Bhopal.

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Banging Heads Together
Yvo de Boer is the big chief at the UN Copenhagen Climate Conference. He’s the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and will be feeling the strain as a deal at the talks is looking remote. He tells Earth Beat that now’s the time for environmental organisations and other NGOs to bang their message loudly, out in the streets

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Time to get Vocal
With the start of the  Copenhagen climate summit less than a week away, Earth Beat catches up with one of the first climate scientists. James Hansen was warning about the effect of greenhouse gasses in the early 80s. He was in Amsterdam recently where RNW’s Willemien Groot asked him if speaking out at events like the Copenhagen climate conference actually accomplishes anything.

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Change is all in the Mind
If the planet’s future is looking so gloomy why aren’t more people running riot through the streets demanding change?  Why is society so slow to change its behavior? Mark van Vugt  is a psychologist at the Free University of Amsterdam and the Universities of Kent and Oxford. He explains what influences large-scale changes in social behavior.  

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Survivaballs

If  you do take to heart what most of the scientists are saying you may be envisaging a catastrophic future of floods and earthquakes - take heart, there IS a climate change solution even if the Copenhagen talks all come to nothing. It’s called the SURVIVABALL. Dr Northrop Goody, head of Halliburton's Emergency Products Development Unit, talked to Earth Beat about the company’s new climate change survival product. Dr Goody may or may not be associated with faux-corporate hoaxers The Yes Men. Listen and let us know what you think.  

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