Take Me To Your Climate Leaders

14 December 2009

Anger, fear, frustration, sadness, tears, fury, helplessness, exhaustion, sorrow, depression…hope.

To survive this, science says we need at least 40% cuts in emissions by 2020 from a 1990 base level. Half way through Copenhagen and what’s on the table is at the very best 8-12%. Once all the loopholes and dodgy accounting taken into account, this would end up as a 4% increase in emissions since 1990.

A 4% increase. That not even a reduction.

That is a total failure.

Yes, we still have 1 week left and a lot of countries are still hiding their cards, but the progress so far from developed nations is a disgrace.

Sitting in on the main negotiating sessions is heart breaking. One after another developing nations stand up and plead for their lives. Ask for the chance for their people to still have a home in 20 years time. Asking for their people to still have fresh water, to still have food. Asking not to be wiped out of existence as sea level rises.

Asking for the right to carry on living. To survive.

And the reply: 4% increase in emissions and just about enough adaptation money to, as one African delegate put it, “buy all the coffins we will need.”

The proposal from the Alliance of Small Island Nations (AOSIS) is one among many on the table, but it is the only one that would hold on to the fact that survival should be non-negotiable. AOSIS has 42 members and the proposal is supported by a host of other countries but all it’s supporters so far are poor or very vulnerable to climate change.

Rich countries cannot sit this one out. With climate change we either all get through this together, or we all go down together. Developing nations will be hit first but no one is immune.

On Friday I heard the spokesperson for AOSIS, a delegate from Cape Verde. He is asking the global climate movement to stand with AOSIS.; to be their voice. He said that without that global support they will not be heard. Without us AOSIS will die quietly.

To everyone who joined an action on Saturday for the Global Day of Action, thank you. The pictures from the vigils are beautiful.

We need to carry on, to shout louder, to stand up and we need to do it now. All that is missing here is political will. Lets make sure world leaders know that inaction is indefensible.

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