#44 Civil Society for Climate Justice

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Just before the start of the historic UN climate talks open in Copenhagen, UK civil society will come together and encircle the Houses of Parliament. They will demand that the UK and Europe do much, much more than they have pledged so far as part of a fair and effective climate agreement in Copenhagen. We speak to the director of the Stop Climate Chaos coalition, Ashok Sinha, about The Wave and other events they have planned for December 5th and about their policy platform. The SCC brings together over 100 organisations with a combined membership of around 11 million people – one in six of the population.

Their demands include:

• Reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to around 350 ppmv CO2(e)
• Global emissions peak and decline by 2015
• UK & EU reduce emissions by 40% by 2020 with the vast majority of these reductions (preferably all of them) achieved within the UK & EU i.e. without offsets
• Protecting forests be additional to, not instead of, these cuts
• Industrialised countries transfer at least $160 billion annually to developing countries to fund adaptation and low-carbon development
• UK bring in an emissions performance standard for new electricity plants that is strict enough to rule out coal power stations unless they have 100% Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) fitted from the outset
• Test CCS on existing power plants only
• The UK invest in a transition to a low carbon economy thus creating hundreds of thousands of green jobs
• The UK support the renewable energy sector and investing in energy efficiency and demand reduction, in order to meet our EU renewable energy target for 2020 and decarbonise our energy sector by 2030
• Ensure a just transition for the workforce

We end the programme with a reflection on the state of the Climate Justice movement  as Copenhagen approaches from Climate Justice hunger striker, Anna Keenan.

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Also on December 5th in London: Climate Emergency Rally and Cop Out Camp Out. Then on December 12th: Global Day of Action – demonstrations in 106 countries on climate change.