Demonstration time

Saturday has been by far the best day in Poland so far. It was time to demonstrate.

Over 1,000 people marched through the streets of Poznan to the convention centre demanding urgent action now to prevent disastrous climate changes.

With my “Stop Kingsnorth” T-shirt I joined a group of people in Climate Justice Now! – a coalition of organizations from across the world, including WDM. With Benny from India, Juana from Cambodia and Ricardo from El Salvador we demanded “Climate Justice Now” and proclaimed “People, united, will never be defeated.”

But as the cold set in to our fingers and toes, eloquence hit a new low with the chant of “CDM… Boo”.

I knew that back in London friends and colleagues would also be marching, and felt a sense of that global action we need to tackle the climate crisis.

Returning to the conference centre, a journalist from Reuters asked me about the march. “Should someone have come to speak to you?”

Of course they should.

A delegate from the EU should have justified how we are going to tackle climate change if the EU meets over half its targets for reducing emissions through dodgy offset projects.

A delegate from the UK should have told us how we can tackle climate change whilst building new coal power stations and new runways.

It would have been refreshing for any country to tell us one thing they have done this week to move the world towards a just way of tackling climate change.

From the first week here it is clear that officials and ministers are not going to take the lead in getting us out of the climate crisis we are in. But then again, that’s always been our job, not theirs.