IT'S TIME TO TAKE ACTION!

IT’S TIME TO TAKE ACTION!

On the eve of the opening of the United Nations climate change conference in Paris, campaigners around the world from Melbourne to London marched to demand action. More than 600,000 people took to the streets in 175 countries around the world to call for a strong deal in Paris that will see a swift transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, making the 2015 action ahead of the summit the biggest set of global marches in history, according to a campaign director at Avaaz.org, a global advocacy organization. According to estimates made by Greenpeace, around 20,000 protesters rallied in Madrid to make their feelings known about the need to fight climate change.

The Paris Climate Summit (COP21) started yesterday in France with a strong call to find an arrangement that avoids an increase of the planet’s temperature more than two grades at the end of the century. Some of the agreements that had been held are:

• UUSS and China: The US President, Barack Obama, and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have pledged to work together for a climate change agreement in order to ensure a "low global economy in carbon dioxide" this century. “As the two largest economies in the world and the two largest emitters of carbon dioxide, both have determined that is our responsibility to take action” Obama said.
• Business: Bill Gates (Microsoft), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) or Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) are some of the best known by the general public. All pledged to provide the initial capital needed to accelerate research into clean energy in the top laboratories in the world, as well as to provide the money that is needed to facilitate the development of these alternative sources on a large scale. The objective is to manage the negative effects of climate change. Gates was the first to set his investment: 2,000 million dollars. value that it makes it the largest donor private history of climate action.  
• End of subsidies to fossil: Promoted by New Zealand, 40 heads of State and Government - including Germany, United States, France or Mexico - signed a declaration that commits to eliminate more than 500,000 million dollars annually allocated to subsidize the fossil fuels.
• Solar Alliance: As an alternative to more polluting energies that emit the gases that cause climate change, France, on behalf of the rich countries, and India, on behalf of developing nations, sealed international alliance which consists on the transference of technological knowledge from the first group to the second.

The raising of awareness of the threat and a favorable political context generated some optimism between various environmental NGO experts, who were rather satisfied by the start of the COP21." I am optimistic because the political momentum is" said François Juilliard, director of Greenpeace France. "There is a rather positive dynamics," said Romain Benicchio, Oxfam, although he said: "no one surpassed its red lines". Celia Gautier, Climate Action Network, said that "everything is open, everything is possible: the best and worst".