Locals support call for action on climate change
By Contributor
Synchronized demonstrations around the world on Saturday Dec. 12 called on world leaders to take urgent action on climate change at the Copenhagen climate talks. In Grand Forks, the Granby Wilderness Society sponsored a candlelight vigil rallying the community to join in. About 25 people attended the vigil.
The Copenhagen climate talks are the world’s chance to secure an emissions reductions agreement that will replace the Kyoto Protocol before it expires. There is a growing consensus among scientists that there is as little as ten years to stop and reverse the global growth in greenhouse gas emissions before ‘runaway’ climate change becomes uncontrollable. That means the international talks being held in Copenhagen in December 2009 could be the last chance to avert a global catastrophe of unimaginable proportions – perhaps the most important international meeting ever held.
The ‘Call to Action’ for the demonstrations was as follows:
“We demand that world leaders take the urgent and resolute action that is needed to prevent the catastrophic destabilization of global climate, so that the entire world can move as rapidly as possible to a stronger emissions reductions treaty which is both equitable and effective in minimizing dangerous climate change.
We demand that the long-industrialized countries that have emitted most greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere take responsibility for climate change mitigation by immediately reducing their own emissions as well as investing in a clean energy revolution in the developing world. Developed countries must take their fair share of the responsibility to pay for the adaptive measures that have to be taken, especially by low-emitting countries with limited economic resources.
Climate change will hit the poorest first and hardest. All who have the economic means to act, must therefore urgently and decisively do so.”
