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Rainbow Warrior joins Balinese flotilla of hope for urgent climate action

Coal is the worst climate offender Enlarge Image

Stop climate change

The world's leaders meet at the end of 2009 in Copenhagen to determine the fate of the climate. They could set us on the path to a deep emissions cuts or they could lock the planet into catastrophic, irreversible climate change.

Take action

With the world on the brink of runaway climate change, millions are anxious about the effects that a warmer globe will have on our everyday lives. Wanting to learn, act and agitate is a perfectly valid response.

Flooded village in southern France, close to a nuclear power station. Earlier in 2003 the same area experienced a long drought. Climate change means more extreme weather like flooding and droughts. Enlarge Image

Impacts

No one knows how much warming is "safe". What we do know is that climate change is already harming people and ecosystems. Its reality can be seen in melting glaciers, disintegrating polar ice, thawing permafrost, dying coral reefs, rising sea levels, changing ecosystems and fatal heat waves. And it is not only scientists that are witnessing these changes. From Inuit in the far north to islanders near the equator - people are already struggling with the impacts of climate change.

Pita Meanke, of Betio village, stands beside a tree as he watches the 'king tides' crash through the sea wall into his family's property, on the South Pacific island of Kiribati. Enlarge Image

Sea level rise

"The Maldives is one of the small states. We are not in a position to change the course of events in the world. But what you do or do not do here will greatly influence the fate of my people. It can also change the course of world history." -- Statement by H.E. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom (Maldives) Kyoto, Japan, 3rd Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC

A family living next to the sea in the village of Tenoraereke, stand with Greenpeace Climate Change campaigner on the South Pacific island of Kiribati, beside some collapsed coconut trees, fallen over due to sea erosion. Enlarge Image

Climate voices

The real meaning of climate change can not be fully grasped from scientific charts and equations alone; one needs to hear the stories of those who are living through it, grappling with its implications, and struggling to find ways to halt it. Part of what we do is to give a voice to these first hand witnesses of climate change. Here is what some of them have to say:

Greenpeace Czech Republic marks Kyoto coming into force with a large banner reading "Kyoto for the Earth" in the front of famous National Museum in the centre of Prague. The museum is a place marking historic and symbolic events in recent Czech history. Enlarge Image

Kyoto

On 16 February 2005, in the culmination of ten years of sometimes exhausting and often frustrating negotiations, the Kyoto Protocol became law. Thirty-five industrialised countries along with the European Union are now legally bound to reduce or limit their greenhouse gas emissions.

A Greenpeace activist dressed in a polar bear suit holds up a sign advocating the Kyoto Protocol near an entrance to the Forbidden City. Enlarge Image

Protests and direct actions

Carbon dioxide, the most significant global warming gas, is odourless, invisible, and an easy thing to ignore as our world heats up to dangerous levels. At Greenpeace, it's part of our job to make the invisible impossible to ignore. Often this means going to the source of the problem - hanging a banner on a coal plant's giant smokestack, for example. Other times, it means reminding decision makers they have a higher responsibility than the corporate bottom line.

Greenpeace negotiators and members of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development call for action on climate change at the Johannesburg Earth Summit. Enlarge Image

International negotiations

This page is intended primarily for policy makers, journalists and others who attend or report on international meetings about climate change. Hopefully though, it is also useful to anyone who wants better understanding of what goes on at these meetings, and what is at stake from their results.

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General media enquiries:
+31 (0)20 718 2096.

Hotline:
+31 (0)20 718 2470

For EU related:
Mark Breddy
+32 2 2741 903(p)
+32 496 15 6229(m)
mark.breddy@greenpeace.org

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