FW: Copenhagen: "the elephant is moving"
Kim Kemp
From: Ricken Patel - Avaaz.org
[mailto:av...@avaaz.org]
Sent: Monday, 21 December 2009 10:04 PM
To: k...@originideas.com.au
Subject: Copenhagen: "the elephant is moving"
Dear friends,
It's
been a tough ending to an amazing week. In all-night negotiations, leaders
have reached a weak agreement in Copenhagen that fails to set the emissions
targets needed to prevent catastrophic global warming. The agreement was
stronger on funding, but it was not binding, and set no urgent deadline to sign
a real climate treaty. Big polluters like China and the US wanted a weak deal,
and potential champions like Europe, Brazil and South Africa didn't fight hard
enough to stop them.
But while leaders failed to make history, people around the world did. In
thousands of vigils, rallies and protests, hundreds of thousands of phone
calls, and millions of petition signatures, an unprecedented movement rose
to this moment. After hearing the result of the talks, one member from Africa
wrote "It takes a lot to get an elephant moving, but when you do it is
hard to stop...the elephant is moving..."
Despite the outcome, Copenhagen has built the movement that can win the
fight to save our planet. Click below to say "thank-you" to all the
other amazing people who participated, see pictures, video and reports on
what we've done in the last week, and join a global, instant translation
multilingual live chat where we can all exchange words of wisdom for the road
ahead:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/after_copenhagen
In just the last week, we've organized thousands of vigils and events in
140 countries, an enormous multi-million person petition, and dozens of
national phone calling campaigns that made thousands of phone calls.
We've generated thousands of news articles, organized peaceful petition-reading
sit-ins at key government buildings, and ran several high level stunts and
events at the summit itself.
On Wednesday UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown requested an emergency
conference call with Avaaz members, telling 3000 of us: "You have
driven forward the idealism of the world...do not underestimate the impact on
the leaders here". Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu personally appealed to
us to take up the torch of causes past and never give up.
This weekend we saw that the fight to save our planet cannot be won at a single
summit. But we also learned what we're capable of, when we all come
together. If we stay together, nothing can stop us.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/after_copenhagen
With hope and gratitude,
Ricken, Ben, Paul, Alice, Luis, Milena, Iain, Pascal, Graziela, Paula,
Benjamin, Veronique, Taren, Sam, Raj, Raluca, Yura, Saravanan, Vladimir, Josh,
David and the entire Avaaz team.
PS - There were some opening champagne in Copenhagen today. The polluting
industry lobbyists and corporations -- those who have captured our
democracies and divided our leaders -- celebrated their victory. They operated
quietly in the shadows, but their voices were loud in some politicians' ears.
As they drank their champagne their one concern may have been us - the
potential of our new people-powered movement. In fact, they're already launching
an attempt to silence us, and next week, we'll take our fight to the heart of
this powerful polluter lobby - watch out for the email...
----------------------------
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