350 Climate Action Rally

We will meet at the legislature at 1:30 to join the Global Day of Action on Climate Change. Our rally will include speakers including Dr. Danny Blair - climate expert, music, and an hopefully an audio link to Ottawa's "Fill the Hill" event. Then we will walk to the Museum of Human Rights at the Forks for our rally photo.

Come and join our rally and let's get our message across. Time waits for no man, and global warming isn't waiting for us either!

Our message to Ottawa is simple: Canada must negotiate seriously and constructively in Copenhagen.

1.We need real emission reduction targets not "intensity" targets

2.We need to stop waiting for other countries like China and get on with it ourselves

This past year, Canada's climate change performance ranked 59th among the 60 countries with the highest CO2 emissions, worse than every country except Saudi Arabia. Canada persisted in blocking even the meager measures of the Kyoto protocol. Our Kyoto target was a 6% reduction from 1990 emission levels by 2012. Our newest commitment translates to a 2.7% reduction from 1990 levels by 2020. (Dressed up in new language as 20% below 2006 levels.) By contrast, Norway, another oil-exporting nation, is planning a 40% reduction by 2020.

Winnipeg's Climate Action Rally is part of the Global Day of Action on Climate Change. People in thousands of communities in 150 countries will gather to show their concern for our climate crisis and to call for real action at the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen. Photos of the thousands of events will be displayed to global media on Oct. 24 via the giant screens in New York's Times Square. Then they will be hand-delivered to diplomats and delegates at U.N. Headquarters.

350.org has chosen to centre this campaign on the number 350 because most policy discussions are still based on the goal of staying under a limit of 450 ppm atmospheric CO2 and 2 degrees warming, as suggested by the data in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 Report, which greatly underestimated the pace of climate change. Current science suggests that 350 ppm and 1.7 degrees warming are more likely the threshold to prevent irreversible runaway warming.

Cheers