Climate change rallies enter third day
World leaders meet over environment pact
SYDNEY: Tens of thousands marched across Australia yesterday on a third day of worldwide rallies as pressure mounts on global leaders to strike a pact on cutting greenhouse gases at crucial talks in still-shaken Paris.
Some 150 leaders, including US President Barack Obama, China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, are attending the start today of the UN conference, hoping to reach the first truly universal climate pact.
The goal is to limit average global warming to 2C, perhaps less, over pre-Industrial Revolution levels by curbing fossil fuel emissions blamed for climate change.
Rallies demanding curbs to carbon pollution have been growing since Friday, with marches across Australia yesterday kickstarting a final day of protests.
Similar events were planned for Rio de Janeiro, New York and Mexico City, while 1,000 braved rain in Seoul, with scientists warning of superstorms, drought and rising sea levels swamping vast areas if concrete action is not taken.
“There is no Planet B,” said one placard in Sydney where 45,000 people converged, while another read: “Solidarity on a global scale”.
“There’s nothing more important that I can be doing at the moment than addressing climate change,” said Kate Charlesworth, a doctor and Sydney mother.
“In 10 years’ time our children are going to say, ‘Mum, did you know about this? What was everyone doing?”
A large protest in Melbourne on Friday kickstarted the global campaign, with rallies on Saturday from New Zealand to the Philippines, Bangladesh, Japan, South Africa and Britain.
A march of some 5,000 people in Adelaide yesterday focused on the global impact which climate change has on health, food security and development, particularly among the world’s poorest.
“Those who did the least to cause the problem are feeling the impacts first and hardest, like our sisters and brothers in the Pacific,” said Judee Adams, a community campaigner with Oxfam.
Many low-lying Pacific nations such as Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands fear they could disappear beneath the waves completely as sea levels rise.
The message to curb global warming and help poor countries deal with climate change was hammered home by religious leaders in Paris, who delivered petitions with almost 1.8 million signatures from people around the world.
In the past week the UN’s weather body said the average global temperature for the year 2015 is set to rise 1C above preindustrial levels, halfway towards the Paris conference’s attempted limit.
And analysts say carbon-curbing pledges submitted by nations to back the Paris pact, even if fully adhered to, put Earth on track for warming of 3C.
On the eve of Saturday’s protests, French President Francois Hollande, host of the Nov 30-Dec 11 talks, warned of snags facing the 195 nations seeking new limits on heat-trapping gas emissions from 2020.
“Man is the worst enemy of man. We can see it with terrorism,” said Mr Hollande, who spoke after leading ceremonies in Paris to mourn the victims of the Nov 13 bombing and shooting attacks that sowed terror in the French capital.
“But we can say the same when it comes to climate. Human beings are destroying nature, damaging the environment.”
Mr Hollande called for “a binding agreement, a universal agreement, one that is ambitious”.
But he also spoke of fears that a handful of countries, which he did not name, may stymie consensus if they felt the deal lacked guarantees.
Potential stumbling blocks in Paris abound, ranging from financing for climate-vulnerable countries to scrutiny of commitments to curb greenhouse gases and even the accord’s legal status.