Three major rallies occurred in San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston and were synchronized with similar events in Europe and across the world. Smaller events also took place in dozens of communities across the country.
Mounting scientific evidence demonstrates that current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are already having dramatic impacts on our global environment. NASA's top climate scientists have said that to avert disaster, countries need a plan to dramatically cut CO2 emissions in the next 5 to 10 years to avoid the worst impacts of the crisis.
The Poznan meeting is the latest in a series of international conferences aimed at negotiating a new international climate agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, to be finalized in Copenhagen in December 2009. The U.S. pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol shortly after President Bush took office and has been an obstruction to meaningful action on global warming ever since. During the negotiation, Greenpeace will be urging the U.S. and the other nations of the world to commit to science-based reductions in global warming pollution.
Specifically, Greenpeace is calling for the following principles to be included in any agreement:
• Strong global caps on emissions in developed countries in line with the climate science without loopholes;
• Substantial funding for renewable energy and energy efficiency in developing countries;
• Funding to end deforestation in developing countries (one-fifth of all global warming pollution worldwide comes from deforestation);
• Funding for adaptation to global warming impacts in vulnerable countries.
