Copenhagen Crisis

I decided not to go to Copenhagen and join the many protesters and press there. I don’t like travelling and have things I want to do in London, and enough of my photographer friends were going for me to feel my input on the spot wasn’t that vital.

I should really have gone, after all I’ve been an environmental campaigner – if not always a very active one – for more than 40 years, since the late 1960s, when frankly few people realised there was an environment and we had to take some responsibility for it. I think it was 1966 or 7 that I got rid of the only car I’ve ever owned,  and a couple of years later, much as I dislike speaking in public, was talking about cutting energy use,  shifting from private to public transport, cutting down on meat and moving towards a sustainable future.

In the last ten or fifteen years, as someone who I think has considerably more to offer behind a camera than in front of a microphone I’ve tried to tackle some issues related to cities and in particular to photograph and publicise environmental protest.

So really I should have gone to Copenhagen, but I couldn’t work up a great deal of enthusiasm about it, not least because I think it is almost certainly going to fail. For one very simple reason, which this Climate Rush banner brings up:

‘Equity’ on the Climate Rush procession to Heathrow

It isn’t easy to read the text on the small version on the blog, so here it is:

EQUITY: Emission quotas must be per capita; the rich have no more right to pollute than the poor.

[You can read what is on the other two Climate Rush banners, Truth and Justice here, as well as many more pictures from that Heathrow protest.]

It’s a tough message for those us in the rich world, but one that needs to be at the base of any just settlement.  But impossible to see it passing the US Senate – or for that matter some other governments.

You’ll know the UK government is taking the environment seriously if they announce an end to airport expansion, cancelling the third runway at Heathrow, banning domestic flights,  ending the road programme, lowering all speed limits, abandoning plans for coal-fired power stations and a huge investment in green jobs to make drastic cuts in energy use and a massive shift to renewables.  Until then, whatever government is in power is just indulging in greenwash.

But although Copenhagen was from the start doomed to fail to reach the radical agreement that is needed, there is still a possibility it could lead to some minor steps in the right direction. So I’ve just become number 11,103,301 to sign the ‘Save Copenhagen: Real Deal Now!’ petition being organised by global web organisation  Avaaz.org  and invite you to consider doing the same if you haven’t already.

They are hoping to make it the “largest petition in history in the next 72 hours!” Here’s some more from their site:

“An Avaaz team is meeting daily with negotiators inside the summit who will organize a spectacular petition delivery to world leaders as they arrive, building a giant wall of boxes of names and reading out the names of every person who signs. With the largest petition in history, leaders will have no doubt that the whole world is watching.

Millions watched the Avaaz vigil inside the summit on TV yesterday, where Archbishop Desmond Tutu told hundreds of delegates and assembled children:

“We marched in Berlin, and the wall fell.
“We marched for South Africa, and apartheid fell.
“We marched at Copenhagen — and we WILL get a Real Deal.”

Copenhagen is seeking the biggest mandate in history to stop the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. History will be made in the next few days. How will our children remember this moment? Let’s tell them we did all we could.”

No, I haven’t done all I could have done, but despite my reservations I think it is worth trying to put a little pressure on in this simple way which might just get a little more progress. Even if it only makes a very small step for mankind it is after all better than throwing money away into space.