Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Streets!

Cartoon by Dana Summers

The United Nations Climate Change Conference is being held this year in Nairobi, from November 6 to 17th. Cutely called COP/MOP2 (last year's meeting in Montreal was COP/MOP1), which stands for Conference of the Parties/Meeting of the Parties of the Kyoto Protocol, it is actually the eleventh meeting of what began as the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. Because this country isn't a signer to the Kyoto Protocol, we don't hear a lot about these meetings in our press. But a simple, easy to follow timeline and history of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change can be found in Wikipedia here.

The Climate Crisis Coalition website is a multi-layered compendium of information and action links on global climate change at all times - but today I want to draw your attention to the Global Climate Campaign webpage, which has been set up to publicise and promote plans for synchronised international demonstrations on climate change - in as many places as possible - to coincide with the United Nations Climate Conference in Nairobi. The 'Call to Action' for the demonstrations is as follows:

These demonstrations demand that world leaders take the urgent and resolute action we need to prevent the catastrophic destabilisation of global climate, so that the entire world community can move as rapidly as possible to a stronger emissions reductions treaty that is equitable as well as effective in preventing dangerous climate change.

We feel that there is an overwhelming need to create a groundswell of global opinion to push for the urgent and radical action on climate change, without which we risk a global catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.

Check the webpage for demos in this country, get more information, see photos from last year's demos in Montreal and around the world. Most of all, let's make a showing of our concern for this issue on International Day of Climate Action (Nov. 4th) as voters prepare to vote on the 7th.

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