World gears up for global climate wake-up call - Cities, towns and villages on five continents are sounding the alarm
Green Party members across towns and cities in theWest Midlands joined with others to send a ‘wake up' call to Gordon Brown andother world leaders through 'flashmobs' that are an inventive way for ordinarypeople across the globe to make voices heard.
Celebrities Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox,Michael Stipe, Stephen Fry, Harry Belafonte, Emiliana Torrini, Lila Downs,Groove Armada, Zap Mama and more have pledged support and are askingfans to join the global action
The global outcry comes amid expertwarnings that a UN climate pact in Copenhagen in December risks failure unlessworld leaders revive bogged-down negotiations at a UN summit in New York onSeptember 22.
Over 1,000 events organised in morethan 100 countries will sound the alarm with people gathering in public places,ringing cell phone alarms and making actual ‘wake-up' phone calls topoliticians. Music artists are calling on fans to blast their favourite tunesand street bands from Taiwan to Trinidad and Tobago are gearing up to back therallying cry to ‘make some noise'.
At the US premiere of climate filmAge of Stupid, to be shown in 400+ theatres simultaneously, audiences will viewfootage of the day's events and take part in flooding their government withcalls to action.
"The idea of a global climate wake-upcall got going just a few weeks ago, and it's snowballing into a massivemobilisation of millions who want leaders to do more to stop runaway climatechange," said Ricken Patel, Executive Director of campaign network Avaaz.orgwhich has provided an online hub for its 3.6 million members worldwide to findlocal events to attend or organise their own.
Roy Sandison from Rugby Green Partywho joined the protest in his town said "It shows how the internet can bring peopletogether across the globe - in aninventive and quick way - that sparked off a fair bit of interest from shoppersin Rugby Town centre during the ‘flashmob'
"It shows the huge level of public concernthat climate talks move far and fast enough to deliver a deal that will avertclimate catastrophe and unleash a new green economy."
The climate wake-up events are based onthe idea of "flashmobs" -- fun, peaceful demonstrations in which participantsassemble suddenly in a public place, blending in with the crowd, perform anunusual action simultaneously for a few minutes, and then quickly disperse.They will be mostly self-organising, so should be easy foreveryone involved.
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