Between April 19 and Earth Day, April 22, over 30,000 people from 140 countries gathered in a city called Cochabamba located in the Andes mountains of Bolivia, South America, to discuss global warming and climate issues. Environmental activists, indigenous groups, and officials from 48 countries attended the conference which was called the World's People's Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights.

In contrast to the Copenhagen Climate Conference held in December 2009 where wrangling among the leaders of the world's most powerful nations went on behind closed doors, the people in Cochabamba met in a football stadium. They didn't argue about whether climate change is real or not because they are convinced it is. Their focus was on its root causes and ways and means of getting developed countries to take responsibility for dealing with them.

Seventeen roundtables discussed issues such as the structural causes of climate change, living in harmony with nature, adapting to climate change, indigenous peoples and climate change, the dangers of the carbon market, climate justice, water, climate debt and financing.

Evo Morales, the outspoken left wing indigenous president of Bolivia, convened the conference. He openly criticized the December 2009 Copenhagen conference as nothing more than a photo opportunity for leaders of the developed world that ignored people from poor countries who have been heavily impacted by global warming.

Delegates identified the capitalist system as the underlying cause of climate change. They hope to convince delegates at the Cancun Conference in Mexico in December 2010 that action must be taken to eliminate unsustainable patterns of consumption and replace them with a system that recognizes that Earth's resources are finite.

Morales stands in open opposition to the government of the United States, and when he decided to invite delegates from the social movements of Latin America he has guaranteed that financial support from the United States for climate change initiatives will be cut off.

The people who support Morales want equilibrium in the world where the Earth and all its peoples get the respect they deserve. Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela and a strong ally of Morales, told the delegates, "Don't change the climate, change the system."

Before they left the conference, participants had agreed that a new economic system is the only way to restore harmony with nature and the human population.

People who live in poorer countries believe that they have every right to live and exist; be respected; maintain their identity and integrity; water and clean air; comprehensive health in a world free of contamination and pollution and toxic and radioactive wastes. The world’s growth economy has denied them of these things.

Until now, leaders from poorer countries have looked to the heads of state of industrialized countries for solutions to climate change problems and they have been disappointed. In Cancun they will take a radically different approach.

True solutions to the climate crisis won't come from back rooms and boardrooms around the world; they will come from real people making decisions about their future.

The people who attended Cochabamba left with renewed energy, a new direction, and an excitement that can only come from meeting with people who are determined to make a difference. They have changed the game because they now have a proposal on the table that leaders from developed countries will find hard to ignore.

Look for a different kind of conference in Cancun in December.