Dec 2, 2011 Press Release

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 2, 2011
 
Contact: Jamie Henn, jamie@350.org, SA: +27 (0) 76 312 8940

Island Ambassadors Lead Rally to Support Calls for a New Climate Treaty in 2013
 

Rally held outside the UN Talks as protests against the 2020 timeline builds within the negotiations

 
DURBAN --  Ambassadors from island nations joined nearly a hundred activists outside of the UN Climate Negotiations in Durban this Friday to call for talks on a new, ambitious climate treaty to begin immediately, not in 2020 as some developed nations are calling for. The delay would make it nearly impossible to reach the ambitious climate targets necessary to safeguard the survival of many small island states.
 
“I don’t have to tell you how high the stakes are for the people Ambassador Williams and I represent,” said Ambassador Marlene Moses of Nauru. “Nor do I have to relate that there is a strong push from the usual suspects to further delay action, which, if successful, would all but spell the end for many countries in my region.”
 
The demonstration was a sign of growing opposition to proposals from the US, EU, Brazil and China to delay any new climate treaty until after 2020. Scientists say that emissions must peak by 2015 in order to reach the goals of reducing carbon dioxide concentrations below 350 parts per million and avoiding a temperature increase of 1.5C.
 
“Delaying a new agreement or deeper targets until 2020, as some of the big emitters have proposed, is not an option,” Selwin Hart, lead negotiator for Barbados, told BBC News yesterday. “It is quite frankly a dereliction of our collective responsibility to present and future generations.”
 
The 350 ppm and 1.5C targets have been endorse by the world’s top climate scientists, IPCC Chair Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, former Vice President Al Gore, UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon and many others. Over the past three years, 350.org has organized more than 15,000 demonstrations across the planet supporting the targets.
 
“Island nations have the full support of millions of people across the planet,” said 350.org founder Bill McKibben. “They will be among the first of the 99% of us who feel the impacts of climate change and their voices should guide these negotiations.”
 
###
 
More information on 350.org
 
350.org works with hundreds of thousands of activists in over 189 countries to build a movement to solve the climate crisis. Here in Durban, 350.org has brought together a delegation of top activists from around the world to push for ambitious climate action inside and outside the negotiations.