Actions not words needed at Poznan

Posted by jossc — 1 December 2008 at 11:54am - Comments


EU leaders - 20 years of broken promises...

On 11 December at Poznan in Poland, our governments will decide Europe's response to climate change for the next 12 years. Unless they agree to at least 30 per cent cuts in European greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, we'll have no chance of keeping global warming below 2°C and avoiding climate catastrophe.

So far there is still an utter lack of any kind of visionary leadership in these talks. There are still governments that repeatedly fail to grasp the urgency of the crisis. That's why we need to make ourselves heard, because the impacts of climate change are racing ahead of the scientific projections.

Will we look into the eyes of our children and confess: That we had the opportunity, but lacked the courage? That we had the technology, but lacked the vision?

What needs to be done is clear: to avoid the overwhelming costs of runaway climate change, the world needs to quit its addiction to coal and stop destroying forests – or we will be engulfed by a tidal wave of global warming. That work has to start right here, right now.

Today Greenpeace is launching a video which puts pressure on EU decision-makers. It runs through 20 years of political speeches and broken promises in the fight for the environment and especially the problem of climate change: François Mitterand, Helmut Kohl, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, John Major and Silvio Berlosconi are all there - willingly addressing climate change in their speeches, but unfortunately not in their actions...

That's because they are far more influenced by business leaders than by ordinary people. We need to make sure that it's us our leaders are listening to - not industry.

What you can do

Challenge Europe's decision-makers to take the lead!
Take two minutes to tell them to keep global warming below 2°C

Join activists from around the world by uploading your photo to be projected at this year's UN meeting on Climate Change. Let the government leaders know that the World is Watching what happens at this year's meeting.

Tune in to our climate blog for regular updates from Poznan.

About Joss

Bass player and backing vox in the four piece beat combo that is the UK Greenpeace Web Experience. In my 6 years here I've worked on almost every campaign and been fascinated by them all to varying degrees. Just now I'm working on Peace and Oceans - which means getting rid of our Trident nuclear weapons system and creating large marine reserves so that marine life can get some protection from overfishing.

Follow Greenpeace UK