Since autumn 2008, Christian Aid has been running a campaign targeting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate change summit in December 2009. Christian Aid has identified that the EU, as the world’s largest economic bloc, will have a major impact at the Copenhagen summit.
The Copenhagen summit is a key campaigning moment as the deal struck at Copenhagen will replace the Kyoto treaty as the world’s principal weapon against global warming.
The European Union has failed to adopt a powerful plan to tackle climate change – leaving campaigners’ task in 2009 feeling as big as ever.
Join our call for a fair international climate deal – take our Copenhagen pledge.
Missed opportunity
The package – a collection of measures designed to cut Europe’s greenhouse emissions – was meant to pave the way for a sound global deal at next December’s UN climate summit in Copenhagen. It fell way short of this, however.
Christian Aid supporters sent more than 10,000 emails to their MEPs in October, calling for the package to acknowledge the need for 40% carbon cuts by 2020 and assistance for poor countries as they continue to face the realities of climate change.
However, in the wake of pressure from industry lobbyists and the current economic crisis – and despite our campaigners’ last-minute efforts – the final package is disappointing in the extreme.
French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is calling the package ‘historic’ – but if this is supposed to be the EU’s Christmas gift to the world, we hope they kept the receipt.
So what next?
Weakness on the European stage and the lack of progress at UN climate talks in Poznan are not cues for us to sit back. This is only the start. As 2009 begins the size of our task couldn’t be clearer.
Join our call for a climate deal that is effective and fair by taking our pledge for action in Copenhagen in 2009.
To learn more about the campaign, please follow this link to the Christian Aid climate change campaign targeting MEPs.
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