I’m up here in Oslo, Norway to help our local Greenpeace activists and the crew of the Rainbow Warrior congratulate US President Barack Obama on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, which he’ll be awarded in a ceremony at City Hall tomorrow. Our message for Obama is simple: You won it, now earn it. Which is to say, in order to live up to the prestige of the Peace Prize, he needs to go down to Copenhagen next week and help establish a fair, ambitious, and legally-binding climate treaty at the UN climate summit so that this doesn’t become reality:
© Christian Aslund/Greenpeace
I shot this quick and dirty video to give you a glimpse of the Rainbow Warrior with its banner messages for Obama:
Traditionally, the people of Oslo hold a candle-light vigil the night before the ceremony for the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, but Obama isn’t coming until tomorrow. We’re having the vigil tonight anyway, and expect hundreds of concerned citizens to show up to help us call for leadership from the US president.
My colleagues here in Oslo have already been extremely busy sending messages to Obama in some very clever ways, as you can see in the pic above. When he gets here tomorrow he’ll be welcomed Greenpeace-style as soon as he arrives at the airport, while he drives through town, and when he gets to City Hall to accept his award. Stay tuned, I’m going to have lots of video and photos for you.
The photo at the top of this post is a projection my colleagues here in the Oslo office did on the building where the prime minister’s office is. In other words, the very same building where Norway’s Jens Stoltenberg and Barack Obama will be meeting tomorrow to talk politics. The projection repurposes one of our airport adverts, but puts the Norwegian prime minister on there along with Obama to call on both of them to lead the way on climate change. I think it looks fabulous.
