In the last three hours, over 100 people at the Bella Center in Copenhagen and more than 3,600 around Europe joined Avaaz to phone calls to European leaders urging them to be a deal maker. Angela Merkel of Germany, Lars Lokke Rasmussen of Denmark, and Gordon Brown of the UK are a few of the popular targets for today’s “Skype Call Center”.
I’m standing next to over 50 youth wrapped around the corner ready to make calls. It’s great, you can clearly hear people’s voices raise as their concerns are heard over the phone, even over the hustle and bustle of the COP (we did set up shop right out side the main meeting hall so all EU delegates could see the pressure we were laying down on their decision makers).
You can feel the excitement, but also the urgency in here. Yesterday there was a protest of the African Union as rumors spread around the conference center of new burdens on poor nations while creating more loopholes for the developed countries.
The aim of the phonebank is to get the EU to offer real money – specific contributions by 2020 of additional public finance rather than stealing aid money for climate or exploiting accounting tricks. In simple terms many EU countries want their climate financing to come from already committed funds, meaning everything from nutrition to AIDS funding could be stolen in a quick accounting trick! We must have the The EU identify NEW and ADDITIONAL funding sources like aviation and shipping revenues and increase global finance for developing countries to $200 billion by 2020 euros.
The Copenhagen talks are said to in jeopardy of collapse. However, industrialized countries mainly the US and EU have the ability to dramatically shift this sentiment and commit to a real deal that includes the the additional funding developing countries need.
They have the wherewithal now they need the will!
All very admirable, but there is something inside of me that is saying we should really be focusing on the primiary goal which is to ensure emissions reductions (on a scale which is barley being talked about http://stevehynd.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/copenhagen-and-the-2-degree-guard-rail-the-wrong-goal-missed/) and not on ensuring the funding for adaption is in place. I don’t know am I am being too sceptical, or can this be used to divert attention away from industralised nations not meeting (or setting) targets for GHG reductions?
Power for europe ……..freedom party….saluti from ROMA
That’s great so many people stepped in on that action. Well done everybody. Roll on the Flood for Justice, 12th December!!