“We have 24 months until the Paris Summit, the meeting that world leaders have decided will determine the fate of our efforts to fight climate change.”
The above was the assertions of Ricken Patel of Avaaz.org as part of Christmas message 2013, in a global petition made available to NaijaAgroNet, saying that the world could step up the fight against climate change, if action is taken very fast, and in unionism too.
Avaaz, meaning ‘voice’ in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages was launched in 2007 with a simple democratic mission including to organize citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world and most people.
NaijaAgroNet recalls that Avaaz since formation empowered millions of people from all walks of life to take action on pressing global, regional and national issues, from corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change, with the model of internet organizing, which allows thousands of individual efforts, however small, to be rapidly combined into a powerful collective force.
Noteworthy is that the Avaaz community campaigns in 15 languages, served by a core team on six continents and thousands of volunteers. Avaaz also said they take action through signing petitions, funding media campaigns and direct actions, emailing, calling and lobbying governments, and organizing ‘offline’ protests and events; to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform the decisions that affect us all.
Out of this extinction nightmare, the group says it could pull one of the most inspiring futures for the children and grandchildren, declaring that “A clean, green future in balance with the earth that gave birth to us.”
He narrated how a scientist Julienne Stroeve who had studied Arctic ice for decades and had every summer travelled north to measure how much ice has melted. She knows that climate change is melting the ice fast, but a recent trip surprised even her because the vast areas of Arctic ice have disappeared, beyond every worst expectation.
Arctic Ice is better traced to Polar ice packs which are largely areas of pack ice formed from seawater in the earth’s polar regions, according to an online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and is also known as polar ice caps. The Arctic ice pack or Arctic ice cap, in this instance is of the Arctic Ocean and the Antarctic ice pack of the Southern Ocean, which fringes the Antarctic ice sheet. Noteworthy is that Polar packs significantly change their size during seasonal changes of the year. However, underlying this seasonal variation, there is an underlying trend of melting as part of a more general process of Arctic shrinkage, which may not be entirely oblivious by the human race with this era of climate change.
The Arctic Ocean, experts say is very different, being a polar sea surrounded by land rather than to a polar continent surrounded by sea, and its ice shows less seasonal variation. Currently, the 28 per cent of Arctic basin sea ice is multi-year ice, thicker than seasonal up to 3 – 4 meters (9.8 –13.1 feet) thick over large areas, with ridges up to 20 meters (65.6 ft) thick.
Although this story of arctic ice may not be conversant with the African continent, it may be nice not to forget in hastely the recent snow experience in the northern African country of Egypt, after over 100 years of such.
This is what the climate change experts are warning the world about, emphasizing that as the earth warms, it creates many “tipping points” that accelerate the warming out of control. Warming thaws the Arctic sea ice, destroying the giant white ‘mirror’ that reflects heat back into space, which massively heats up the ocean, and melts more ice, and so on.
This, experts lamented spinned out of control in 2013 with everything including storms, and temperatures were off the charts and predictions of the metrologists; the people who performs and deals with the science of measurement involving precision measurement and comparison of physical quantities such as mass, length, time, force, speed, and voltage to name a few above the technician levels.
In spite of this, Patel and his group further told NaijaAgroNet that 24 months might seem like a long time before the Paris summit, but it’s not, although the two-year average is to get the right leaders in power, get them to that meeting, give them a plan, and hold them accountable.
“And it’s us versus the oil companies, and fatalism. We can win, we must, but we need to blast out of the starting gate with pledges of just a few dollars, euros, pounds per week until the summit. We’ll only process the donations if we hit our goal. For the world we dream of, let’s make it happen,” Patel said.
Avaaz, he said, thus solicits for pledges, urging member or the community to do all they could, saying they would only process donations when it reaches the goal of 50,000 sustainers, across one to three Euros per week.
Describing fatalism on climate change as not just futile, it’s also incompetent. The hour is late, but it is still absolutely within our power to stop this catastrophe, simply by shifting our economies from oil and coal to other sources of power. And doing so will bring the world together like never before, in a deep commitment and cooperation to protect our planetary home. It’s a beautiful possibility, and the kind of future Avaaz was born to create.
According to Patel, facing this challenge will take heart and hope, and also all the smartness possible, including some five highlights by going political with elected climate leaders; make Hollande a hero; take the campaign to the next level; oust the spoilers; and finally define the deal for the benefit of commoners.
On the essence of going political through ensuring the emergence climate leaders, pointing out that at least in the next two years there are three crucial countries having elections within this period. He urged the community to make certain that the right people win, and with the right mandate.
“Avaaz is one of the only major global advocacy organizations that can be political. And since this fight will be won or lost politically, it could be at some points just us versus the oil companies to decide who our politicians listen to,” Patel encouraged.
For the entire Avaaz community, he pointed out that by making the French President Francois Hollande, who will also preside the Paris summit, a hero of the people, it would make his position formidable. Stressing that every tactics and channel have to be engaged comprising his personal friends and family, political constituency, policy advisors, so as ensure the goal of making him the hero of the people as far as the climate change campaign is concerned at the summit, a success.
In order to take the campaign to the next level, he said, the scale of this crisis demands action that goes beyond regular campaigning, hence it’s time for powerful, direct, non-violent action, to capture imagination, convey moral urgency, and inspire people to act, probably by thinking ‘Occupy’ which in the parlance of activists means protest in a central location until something good happens.
On ‘Out the Spoilers’ the Avaaz community cited for instance that billionaires like the Koch brothers and their oil companies are the major spoilers in climate change, because they are funding junk science to confuse the world and climate change community as well as spending millions on misleading Public Relations (PR), while buying politicians wholesale.
“With investigative journalism and more, we need to expose and counter their horrifically irresponsible actions,” he declared.
Therefore, he underscored the need to define the deal, so that even in the face of planetary catastrophe, 195 governments in a room could be just incompetent. Hence the need to invest in top quality policy advice to develop ingenious strategies, mechanisms, and careful compromises so that when the summit arrives, a critical mass of leaders are already bought in to a large part of the deal, and no one can claim that good solutions don’t exist.
“We need tens of thousands of us to pledge small donations to blast out of the starting gate on this plan. The amount doesn’t matter as much as the choice to hope, and to act,” he submitted.
NaijaAgroNet recalls that at the last major climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, Avaaz community played a pivotal role in German and Japanese ‘climate’ elections, in shifting Brazilian policy, and in helping to win a major global deal on financing, with rich countries promising $100 billion per year to poor countries to help them address climate change.
Back then, Avaaz was just 3 million people, but after Copenhagen, the community reflected that it needed to be a lot bigger to meet the challenge posed by climate change. Declaring that “Now, we’re 32 million, and growing by 2 million per month.”
He went on to describe climate change as the ultimate global problem that requires collective action, and requires also cooperation from every government in the world. Whereas Avaaz sees itself as the ultimate collective action solution, with millions of united community people with common vision across every nation.
“This is our time, to build a world for our children whose beauty matches our dreams. Let’s get started. With hope and appreciate this amazing community,” Ricken Patel said on behalf of Avaaz.org community.
While we all await the manipulation of Avaaz community and like minds towards December 2015, the onus is on every countries of the world to up their game on combating climate change to the best of their ability and in line with the five-agenda proclaimed by Avaaz from both developed and developing economies of the world, if something tangible must be achieved eventually.
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