#Cop25 started today, and it’s one of the more important COPs. I’ve been following them for over 10 years now, sometimes physical, sometimes online. In my experience, it’s quite effective to use Twitter to keep yourself updated on what’s happening in the major meetings.
The reason why this COP is more important is because in the #parisagreement in 2015, all members came together and decided that every fifth year, each country needs to be more ambitious with how much emissions they will cut. The EU is talking about a #newgreendeal . This is worth following. We are talking about our shared Earth. That’s what’s at stake.
You are not too old to join in on the climate cause, and you are not too young. You are just perfect, right now, today. All you need to know to become a climate advocate is the knowledge that temperatures are rising at an alarming high rate, and that we humans need to turn these graphs the other way.
So, what can we as ‘civil society’ (as they call it in the UN 🇺🇳 lingo) do when #COP25 is happening? We can help our climate delegation by putting pressure on our elected politicians and tell them if they are not being ambitious enough! We must call out lies, as Norway 🇳🇴 right now, saying ‘it’s not an emergency’ yet. It’s not an immediate emergency for main land Norway, read Oslo, right now, with the heat, but there are evidence even here with more extreme weather like floods. However if you look towards the #arctic , the temperatures has risen 5-6 degrees here, which is the fastest warming place on the globe! And that is worth calling out the crisis for!
Also, the #globalsouth is already experiencing the #climatecrisis directly today. This is why the climate crisis is also about solidarity. You don’t have to wait until your own home is on fire to do the right thing. 🔥🌍
I sincerely hope this years COP will dare to be as ambitious as the world needs it to be, and that this week, when worlds leaders are gathered in Madrid, they use this opportunity to actually talk about ways to solve the climate crisis, not ways to buy themselves out of it, in order to continue doing business as usual, as Norway famously has done with its rainforest initiative in order to keep drilling for oil that we know is harming the climate.
This years COP needs to solve how countries divide emission cuts. It has been suggested that a country can pay for emission cuts in another country, in order to reach their targets. However, both countries can’t take credit for these emission cuts. Then, it would look like the world was doing double of what it is actually doing. Needless to say, there is lots of work to be done these next two weeks, and I invite you to take part in it in what ever way you can.
Link to UNFCCC where you can watch livestreams and follow the different debates https://unfccc.int/cop25