Paul Hardisty
Director, Green Cross Australia & Executive Director, Sustainability, WorleyParsons

Green Cross at the Copenhagen Climate Conference

By Paul E Hardisty

We are now in the final days of the UN Climate Change Conference here in Copenhagen.   Many here are referring to the event simply as "Hopenhagen".  But it is going to take a lot more than hope to cut the world's greenhouse gas emissions to the levels that the vast majority of climate scientists say are needed.  No matter what the outcome of these talks, involving the biggest number of world leaders (117) ever to congregate in one place for one reason, huge effort will be required by us all over the coming months and years to move the world in a more sustainable direction.

Green Cross International has had a strong presence in Copenhagen, one of hundreds of NGOs here to observe the proceedings and represent the views of civil society.  On the day that 100,000 people marched through the streets to the conference centre to urge their leaders to act, GCI delegates from around the world met to plan the week's strategy.   The team included representatives from Green Cross operations in Denmark, the USA (Global Green), the UK, France, Sweden, and of course Australia.  In addition, members of President Gorbachev's Climate Change Task Force are here:  Jean-Michel Cousteau, Bill Becker (Executive Director of the US Presidential Climate Action Project), and Ian Dunlop from Australia.  Check out the CCTF web site and blog at www.climatechangetaskforce.org

On Sunday night, GCI hosted a special screening of Jean-Michel Cousteau's new film "Dolphins and Whales" at the Copenhagen IMAX theatre.  Adam Koniuszewski, COO of Green Cross International, hosted a panel discussion to open the event, at which Mr Cousteau spoke passionately about the plight of the oceans, and the extreme dangers posed to all marine life from climate change.  "So much of what I saw as a boy, ten, twenty, thirty years ago, is no longer there", he said.  "The ocean is our life support system, but we are treating it like a sewer.  It is affecting the entire food chain.  The oceans are rising and acidifying because of climate change.   The Oceans are dying.  Climate change is about saving ourselves, and everything else gets saved too."

The Climate Task Force is here asking the world leaders to conclude a fair and legally binding agreement that will lower greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2020, and completely by 2050, with an emissions peak by 2015.   This position aligns with many other groups around the world, including the Pacific Island Nations (who have been very vocal at this conference), in demanding that warming be limited to a maximum of 2C, with concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere stabilised at 350 ppm.  Given that we are at 385 ppm + now, we have already overshot that target.  As Ian Dunlop says, "there is a widening gap between what the politicians are negotiating for now (450 ppm stabilisation), and what the latest science is telling us."  CCTF members have spent the week attending press conferences, giving interviews and making presentations, getting the message out.

As the motorcades scream along the highways carrying presidents and prime-ministers to their meetings, as the demonstrators battle with police, and the delegates argue and wrangle within the labyrinth of the Bella Centre, there is a palpable feeling here that whatever happens in the final days in Copenhagen, the world has changed.