People, poets and politicians: UK Climate Hearings take place

November 30th, 2009 at 6:07 pm.

Origami boat made from map of the flooded areas from 2007. Credit: Mike Owen

There’s been a huge number and great variety of climate hearings all over the world. They’ve taken place on boats in Bangladesh, running races in Ethiopia and high in the Peruvian Andes.

Last week people from the UK joined with the 1.5 million people from 36 countries who have taken part. It was a chance for people to make themselves heard before our leaders head off to the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, in a few days time.

At the climate hearing at the Greater London Assembly there were speakers from a range of

Climate hearing in the Greater London Assembly. Credit: Oxfam

communities, both here in the UK and from overseas. They spoke about the impact of climate change on their own lives and why they are committed to take action locally. The hearing closed with a powerful reading from Ben Okri, the Nigerian Author and Poet.

A report from the London hearing will be presented to the a href=”http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/articles/boris-johnson-biography”>Mayor of London Boris Johnson to take to the Mayor’s summit in Copenhagen, along with an invite to attend the international climate hearing on the 15th December, that will be held inside the UN Climate Confrence.

UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband, attended the Doncaster hearing and he, and the rest of us, took part in a wide-ranging and passionate debate. We talked about solutions to the local issues that this worldwide threat creates.

After the severe floods in Doncaster in 2007 the people at the hearing knew first hand how life could be changed overnight. From the children who sang and performed a play, through to the people who got up to give testimony, you could hear that the emotions and the memories of that flood were still very much alive.

Emotions ran high as people questioned Ed Miliband and Oxfam’s own director of campaigns and policy, Phil Bloomer, about ideas ranging from the Earth Centre in Doncaster, food security in the UK and the need to support farmers in developing countries.

Of course, people wanted to know from Ed Milliband how the UK will play our role in first getting an agreement at Copenhagen and then delivering the slashing of carbon emissions that the world so desperately needs.

We hope that both the Mayor and the Secretary of State take some of these voices with them when they travel to the summit in Copenhagen.

And of course, both hearings were a chance to get more people to attend The Wave, the UK’s largest ever climate change demonstration, this weekend in London and Glasgow.

I hope to see you there.

Tags: Boris Johnston, climate change, climate hearing, Doncaster, Ed Miliband, Global Warming, london, The Wave