"The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport. Ed Miliband is among the very few that come out of this summit with any credit." John Sauven, Director of Greenpeace UK.
Over 6,400 of you joined our Food V Dust campaign and told Ed Miliband (UK climate change secretary) to “make Copenhagen count”. Ed listened and acted (in fact he gave all your photos messages “pride of place on my desk”!) But unfortunately this wasn’t enough.
On the 19th December the UN Climate Change summit in Copenhagen didn’t end in a fair, ambitious and legally binding deal to protect the climate. Instead we got a “deal” that isn’t legally binding, so it doesn’t commit countries to actually do anything. And although it states the need to keep global temperature rises below 2C° to prevent catastrophic climate change, it doesn’t set out any cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to achieve this.
Ultimately the US has to take a big chunk of the blame for the failure, but the EU, Australia and China also held the rest of the world back. The good news is that poor countries refused to be bullied into accepting a bad deal and their resistance sent a clear message that international agreements need to be just that.
What now?
Over the next few months ActionAid staff will work with others to increase the pressure on the United States and other climate polluters to come back to the table with a more serious offer.
But we need you to put pressure on the politicians to cut Britain’s emissions as quickly as the science demands.
World leaders missed a chance to take worldwide action on climate change. Now it’s up to you to demonstrate what the future can look like.
By reducing carbon emissions here at home, we’ll send a clear message to the rest of the world that it can be done. Join 10:10 and reduce your emissions by 10% in 2010.
Cutting 10% is achievable and in line with what scientists say we need to do over the next 18 months.
Politicians have so far failed to do what needs to be done, so it’s time for the public to step in and show that we’re ready to defend our futures.
Click here to see videos from the Copenhagen conference.
Click here to see a video of the flash dance.
Click here to see photos from The Wave demonstration and our meeting with the Prime Minister.
Click here to find out more about climate change
• The UK is the windiest country in Europe. We could power ourselves several times over using renewable energy.
• If we covered just three percent of the Sahara desert with solar panels we could generate all the electricity the world needs.
Fatou, 18, lives in Senegal. Click through to see her story.
“The garden is not only benefiting the women but the whole village. This is how we can fight hunger, and we should take this example to our government."
Joshua, 24, is from a village in Western Kenya, but moved to Nairobi city last year.Click through to see his story.
“I came to look for work, to help out my parents who have a farm. The soil there has become infertile. Everyone relies on their gardens for food, and people are now going to bed hungry."
