Climate change is on the world agenda once again, seven years after the failed talks in Copenhagen. This time, the people of the world have made themselves heard on the streets and via social media, to pressurise countries into making stronger commitments on keeping global climate in check. Over the weekend, around 600,000 people joined over 2,300 protests in 175 countries around the world to advocate greater action against climate change. All major continents saw people take to the streets to push leaders and global businesses to move to greener ways of making the global economy work. The biggest protests saw over 50,000 people in the streets of London, 20,000 in Madrid and over 140,000 in Australia while protestors defied the ban on protests in Paris with a ‘Shoe March’; Pope Francis and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon donated their shoes to add symbolic weight to the protest. The protesters have two key demands. One, that countries should make greater commitments to curbing greenhouse-gas emissions. And two, that wealthier countries should set up a larger fund to help vulnerable and poor nations in the transition to cleaner energy. The biggest promise has come from the European Union, which has promised to cut its emissions by 40 percent by 2030. The US has promised to cut emissions by around 28 percent by 2025 while China has promised that its emissions will peak by 2030. Most developed countries have agreed to actual cuts in emissions. Developing countries are agreeing to a range of targets, including limits on emissions and promises to increase low-carbon energy investments. Climate change activists say that countries must do more and there should be a legal mechanism of making sure commitments are met. The irony here is that it is the advances of the industrial age that are the biggest threat. Capitalism has laden the world with the burdens of over-production and over-consumption. It has taken over a century and a half to come to a verbal consensus over the dangers of unfettered capitalism. It is hard to see how the carbon emissions reduction promises can be met without agreeing to ‘de-growth’ – a forced scaling back of industrial production and fossil fuel usage around the world. The hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of the world have made themselves heard. This gives key world leaders a platform to push through an agreement that can begin to reverse the path towards destruction the world has been set on.
