Thank you to everyone who took action over the Convention of the Parties (COP) climate change talks in Copenhagen. There was a fantastic turn out of Cardiff Friends of the Earth supporters for The Wave rally in London the weekend before the talks started. Some members of the group also travelled to Copenhagen for the talks.
Some world leaders have said that the talks were a success. And that they moved the world forward in tackling climate change. But the reality is that it's neither a strong nor fair deal.
The United States plan, the so-called 'Copenhagen Accord', was not even officially adopted by the UN and it has no real standing.
In the Accord, there are:
- no hard targets
- no indication of when emissions need to peak
- a vague reference to staying below a 2 degree rise in average global temperatures.
There was a promise of money to support developing countries in tackling climate change - but just a tiny fraction of what's needed.
Worse still, wealthy countries want to steal from aid budgets and count offsetting purchases to fill this fund.
It's not surprising then that many countries rejected this deal.
The outcome of the talks undermines the progress that had been made over the past 2 years. For example, rich countries with legally binding targets under the Kyoto Protocol used the US plan to avoid strengthening their own targets as they had promised to do.
The UK Climate Change Minister, Ed Miliband, worked tirelessly to get a good outcome from the Copenhagen talks. However many countries refused to make the concessions needed to get an agreement. This resulted in a weak accord signed by a few countries that won't stop a climate catastrophe and threatens the lives of millions of the world's poorest people.
The world's industrialised nations must now recognise their failure and get back to the process of saving the climate.
Rich countries (including the UK) need to start pushing for a really strong, fair agreement. We need to keep the pressure on.
At Copenhagen Friends of the Earth achieved:
- Solidarity: 663 people signed an open letter to Ethiopian newspapers expressing support for Africa's strong stance in the negotiations, and nearly 250 signed a Twitter petition in solidarity with the G77 nations, which was presented to them by our campaigners at the Conference.
- Insider dealing: Nearly 1,000 people emailed the Danish COP presidency on day one of the talks, eight hours before the badly flawed Danish draft agreement text was leaked to the world's media.
- Putting pressure on the bad guys: 392 people wrote personal emails to US delegate Todd Stern after he said publicly that the United States shouldn't be taking historical emissions into account. And an activist from Warrington dialled the number given out in our text action to the Swedish delegation and was able to tell a delegate directly what their position should be.
- Supporting our Friends of the Earth International partners: Our most successful action of all was our email to the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC insisting that Friends of the Earth representatives be readmitted to the Conference Centre. More than 2,500 people from across the world sent the e-mail, which was a fantastic display of solidarity and helped us to get at least a few of our key campaigners back into the talks.
We didn't win, but we didn't lose either. We'll be taking further action in 2010, as soon as we know what's planned for the next stage of the negotiation process.
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