The Copenhagen climate change summit is less than a month away. For those of us calling for a fair, adequate and binding deal the newspapers are a depressing read. It seems that every day there is a new story either pressing home the difficulty of climate negotiations, or tempering our expectations of what Copenhagen can achieve. Bold claims from world leaders that Copenhagen will secure all our futures have become warnings that we should not hold our breath.
And yet Oxfam continues to call for the very best deal, with an optimism that can seem unwavering. Are we so naive? Are we sticking our heads in the sand and why don’t we start looking at plan B?
The truth is we recognise as well as anyone what we are up against. We have people monitoring the heart of these negotiations, scoping out the options and the feasibilities and the negotiating tactics. It’s just that we also have people living and working in parts of the world hardest hit by climate change. To talk about a deal being impossible seems rather odd when you have witnessed true hardship. Impossible is life in Gabura, Bangladesh after hurricane Aila; impossible is growing food to feed a family in a drought, but impossible is not sitting down in a Scandinavian capital and agreeing a fair way to cope with a commonly recognised threat.
The other reason that we don’t look at plan B is that the deal we are calling for is the deal we need. We are calling for a deal that keeps global temperature rises to below 2 degrees – because the science shows that any higher is catastrophic. We are calling for a deal that provides $150 billion per year for the developing world to adapt and mitigate, because this is what it will take to ensure our greenness isn’t on the back of their poverty. Any less than this - Plan B - means less lives are saved, and we won’t call for that.
Copenhagen is just a meeting, and of course it can succeed if the political will is there. I for one refuse to temper my expectations and to let our leaders off the hook before the show has even begun.
But we all have to do something to create that political will. Those politicians still “lukewarm” on the whole idea of climate change like nothing better than to use the perceived apathy of the general public as an argument against action.
Your actions may seem small but every single one builds up that store of political will, and that common will is the difference between the deal we need, and failure.
We’ve made it easy for you - do these now and tell friends and family to do it too:
Sign up to the wave and show our strength
Push the PM to deliver the deal we need
Write to your MP asking them to sign EDM 2052
Tags: activism, Bangladesh, Climate, COP 15, Copenhagen, politicians
