Environment ministers from around the world were arriving in Copenhagen yesterday to ramp up pressure on climate negotiators working on a pact to curb global warming, as protesters gathered to demand that the world’s leaders take strong action.
A mass rally was held in Copenhagen, cranking up the heat on problem-plagued talks.
The center of the Danish capital was in virtual lockdown, with thousands of police deployed or on standby ahead of a 6km march that would take green and anti-capitalist demonstrators to the UN conference venue.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“All week we have heard a string of excuses from northern countries to make adequate reparations for the ecological crisis that they have caused,” said activist Lidy Nacpil of the Philippines, from a group called the Jubilee South Coalition.
“We are taking to the streets to demand that the ecological debt is repaid to the people of the South,” Nacpil said.
Within the Bella Center congress hall, Nobel prizewinner Archbishop Desmond Tutu was to lead children in creating “a sea of candles” representing a call from generations imperiled by climate change.
From Australia to the Arctic circle, protesters readied banners and chants, urging the 12-day marathon to meet the threat posed by humans’ meddling with the climate system.
In Australia, organizers said about 50,000 people had taken to the streets nationwide, wearing sky-blue shoelaces in a call for a strong and binding agreement in Copenhagen.
In Hong Kong men, women and children marched, some dressed as pandas, while others held life rings bearing the slogan “Climate Change Kills. Act Now. Save Lives.”
Indonesians rallied in front of the US embassy in Jakarta calling for help for developing nations in reducing greenhouse gases.
A crowd chanted “US is the biggest emitter” and unfurled banners that read “US is the carbon mafia leader” and “Be a part of a legally binding agreement.”
The ministers will have nearly a week of intense public and private talks before more than 100 heads of state and government come to Copenhagen at the end of this week.
On the chilly streets outside the conference center, police assigned extra squads to watch thousands of protesters gathering for a march to demand that leaders act now to fight climate change.
Pledges made to cut heat-trapping greenhouse emissions are far below what scientists say is needed to keep global temperatures from rising to potentially catastrophic levels.
A draft agreement was sent around Friday to the 192-nation conference, although it set no firm figures on financing or on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
It said all countries together should reduce emissions by a range of between 50 percent and 95 percent by 2050, and rich countries should cut emissions by between 25 percent and 40 percent by 2020, in both cases using 1990 as the baseline year.
So far, industrial countries’ pledges to cut emissions have amounted to far less than the minimum.
The draft also left open the form of the agreement — whether it will be a legal document or a political declaration.
Ian Fry, the representative of the tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu, made an emotional appeal for the strongest format, one that would legally bind all nations to commitments to control carbon emissions.
Speaking for citizens of atolls and islands around the globe that could be swamped by rising sea levels, Fry called on US President Barack Obama to earn the Nobel Peace Prize he collected on Friday by taking up the fight against climate change, which he called “the greatest threat to humanity” and international security.
“I woke up this morning crying, and that’s not easy for a grown man to admit,” Fry said, choking as he spoke in the plenary crowded with hundreds of delegates. “The fate of my country rests in your hands.”
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