Melanie Gosling
Environment Writer
PEOPLE around the world will take to the streets on Sunday on the eve of the two-week UN climate talks in Paris to urge world governments to clinch a global deal to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
About 2 000 rallies have been planned under the banner of the Global Climate March, organised online by a range of organisations, but those scheduled for Paris have been cancelled in the aftermath of the attacks which killed 130 people.
The global march website describes the marches as “our chance to help set an ambitious agenda for the conference: 2015 is on track to be the hottest year in recorded history. Our message: keep fossil fuels in the ground and finance a just transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050”.
In Cape Town the climate march will start outside CPUT at noon and end at Parliament at 1pm. It is being organised by the COP21 Climate Action NGO Alliance, which has invited mayor Patricia de Lille, Premier Helen Zille and Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson to receive a memorandum.
Key points are the need for South Africa to increase its commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and to move away “more determinedly” from fossil fuels.
It calls on the provincial government to put into practice its own report on climate change by re-evaluating policies related to land-use change, economic development and conservation of coastal, wetland and biodiversity-rich areas. It calls on the City Council to revise its policy on electricity generation from rooftop PV solar installations, which “inhibits” citizens from being able to contribute electricity to the grid.
“As Naomi Klein says: ‘Climate change isn’t an ‘issue’ to add to the list of things to worry about, next to health care and taxes. It is a civilisational wake-up call’,” the alliance said.
The climate summit, which begins on Monday, hopes to map out a global agreement to limit greenhouse gas emission beyond 2020, when the Kyoto Protocol commitment period ends. So far the voluntary pledges made by countries to cut emissions are not sufficient to keep the average global temperature increase to below 2ºC, and would put the world on a path to a 2.7ºC increase.
Climate scientists have labelled anything above 2ºC as “dangerous” climate change.
South Africa’s target is to reduce emissions by between 398 and 614 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (mtCO2e) between 2025 and 2030. This is consistent with the pledge South Africa made under the Copenhagen Accord to reduce emissions below “business as usual” by 34 percent in 2020 and 42 percent by 2030.
The online Climate Action Tracker has rated South Africa’s commitment as “inadequate”. “If other countries were to follow South Africa’s approach, global warming would exceed 3ºC to 4ºC.”
It said South Africa’s emissions were expected to increase on 1990 levels by 110 percent by 2020 and 141 percent by 2025.
More info is available from [email protected] and you can follow the twitter account: @CTClimateMarch