Photo: Oxfam. Bangladesh: Shahanara (45) stood in flood water near the camp she has been staying at for five months since her house was destroyed in the floods in the village of Puteakhal.
It feels like we were in the global-political good books for all of one week. Didn't it feel great?! Our new Government came out of the stalls sprinting; signing the Kyoto protocol and our PM personally attending the Climate Change Conference in Bali. Things were really starting to happen.
I hope you enjoyed our brief time in the sun because we're back on the dark side again. Yep, together with the USA (no surprise there), Japan and Canada (!) we are refusing to sign up with the rest of the world for a global emissions cut of between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020 (at 1990 levels).
To recap this is perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis the world has ever seen and people are still protecting their environmentally unfriendly industries despite:
- The IPCC and other studies point to clear-cut ecological and social dangers above three degrees Fahrenheit of additional warming.
- The only way to avoid that threshold, the scientists said, is to cut global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 from their levels in 1990.
- And the only hope of doing that lay in starting now, they said.
Sometimes all the numbers are hard to take in but think about the humanitarian angle. According to Oxfam, poverty will deepen unless we tackle climate change – immediately. It’s already hitting millions of vulnerable people in developing countries – where drought, flooding, hunger and disease are becoming more common than ever.
Oxfam sees the impact extreme and unpredictable weather is having on people’s homes and livelihoods in poor communities all over the world. Poor people will simply get poorer unless something is done, fast.
What can you do?
- If Avaaz collects 100,000 electronic signatures it's going to publish a full-page ad in the Jakarta Post and deliver them directly to country delegates to stiffen their nerve against any bad compromise. Add your name to the campaign now!
- Join Oxfam's pledge to fight climate poverty.
- Stay informed and outraged about what we're doing to our planet! Tell your local MP!
Adam Valvasori - Values Manager
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