Solutions: Global Climate Deal
Copenhagen 2009
It’s one of the most important meetings in history. Let’s make sure they get it right.
In December 2009, governments of the world will meet in Copenhagen to make the next global climate deal. They must agree on an action plan to cut global greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid catastrophic climate change.
What is the Copenhagen meeting?
Copenhagen is the most important meeting since Kyoto, where the first climate protocol (the Kyoto Protocol) was written. We’re even wiser and closer to climate catastrophe now, so the Copenhagen meeting must get it right. The resulting new plan will take over when the current Kyoto Protocol commitments end in 2012.
Why is it so important?
To stop global warming, scientists warn that global greenhouse pollution must peak by 2015 and start to fall after that. The world needs to agree on a deal, an action plan, that can do this effectively. Copenhagen is our best chance to secure this global deal.
To find out more, read the report:
Copenhagen Climate Summit: Greenpeace demands [PDF 780kb]
Australia’s role in Copenhagen
Australia must stop undermining the new global deal and come to the talks with a strong emissions reduction target and positive solutions.
Australia needs to:
- increase our emissions reduction target from 5-25% by 2020 to 50% by 2020
- commit $US3 billion a year to the global fund for developing countries
- align ourselves with countries that are calling for a deal based on climate science demands, including our Pacific neighbours in the Alliance of Small Island States.
More solutions
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At Copenhagen governments must:
1. Agree to make adequate emissions cuts
- Emissions cuts for industrialised countries
40% by 2020 (based on 1990 levels) - Emissions cuts for developing countries
15-30% of projected greenhouse pollution growth by 2020
2. Commit to end deforestation by 2030
- Deforestation causes 20% of greenhouse pollution worldwide, so climate change can’t be stopped without protecting forests. This must be done in a way that protects indigenous communities and biodiversity.
3. Commit $US140 billion a year to help developing countries
- To date, industrialised countries have caused 80% of greenhouse pollution in the atmosphere. We have grown rich through industrialisation while polluting the planet and the atmosphere. Climate impacts will hit developing countries much harder than the developed world and we have a moral obligation to help them address the problem.
The global fund paid by industrialised countries will help developing countries to:
- end deforestation
- fund adaptation measures
- take up clean technologies so that they can leapfrog the dirty carbon dependence of industrialised countries
Keep informed
Before, during and after Copenhagen, we'll keep you updated with the latest developments and what you can do. One of our campaigners will be reporting from the meeting, in addition to commentary from our team in Australia.
In March 2009, more than 2500 former coal miners, ministers, mothers, students and climate activists blocked entrances to the Capitol Power Plant in Washington DC. It was the biggest civil disobedience action on the climate crisis in US history. © Greenpeace