Creating blog outposts around the world
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When ActionAid asked our Project TOTO shortlist to blog about the link between climate change and poverty, we really didn’t know what we’d get back.
In the end, we received nine well crafted blogs that reflected the huge diversity of people in our shortlist. We had climate change sceptics, climate change converts and climate change champions. We also had discussions about horse poo. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: blogging, challenge, climate change, Copenhagen, human rights
The below post is from Laurel Papworth in response to TOTO Challenge #1
DISCUSSING CLIMATE CHANGE
Hmmm. “climate change” – does anyone NOT have an opinion? Even if it’s “I wish they’d shut up about climate change” it’s still on our radar, in a big way. We have the time and education and resources to debate the issue in the pubs, loungerooms, bars, gyms, and on Twitter. If we want to. Our choice. Yet not every country has the luxury of being able to stop and discuss global issues at a local level.
Tags: challenge, climate change, Copenhagen, inequality, poverty, technology
The below post is from Harriet Riley in response to TOTO Challenge #1
The Poor Poor Polar Bears: Far from being a problem for other species, climate change is already robbing people in developing nations of their homes and livlihoods
It’s good to be back in Copenhagen for the COP15. This is the place I came to two years ago trying to answer one simple question; how do you run a functional society? Being happy, prosperous and good-looking to boot is something the Danes have always been famous for, and this stable home-life has freed them up to play advocate on the international stage for more generous aid projects and green development. No doubt these were the people to answer my question. But my quest left me mildly unsatisfied –it was one of those ‘simple’ questions, after all, the type that only the United Nations, ancient Greek philosophers and myself ever seem to bother with– and I’m hoping that this time, at the climate summit, I can find a better answer.
In early 2008 I found myself seated with 99 other bright-eyed young people in an airy lecture theatre of the CPH Business School. We are attending the Copenhagen Consensus Youth Forum hosted by the infamous Bjørn Lomborg of ‘Sceptical Environmentalist’ fame. In front of us, a panel of Nobel Prize winning economists nodded and hummed as they tried to explain, in terms we would understand, just what was wrong with our complicated world.
Tags: challenge, climate change, human rights, United Nations Climate Change Conference
The below post is from Sharna Bremner in response to TOTO Challenge #1
I need you to do me a favour. Why, you ask? You don’t know me, why on earth should you do anything for me? Well, maybe you shouldn’t. But just indulge me.
Close your eyes and imagine, if you will, an attack like the one that occurred in the United States on September 11, 2001 happening each and every week. Horrific right? According to the World Health Organization (www.who.int) approximately 150,000 people died in the year 2000 from causes that were directly related to climate change.
Tags: actionaid australia, challenge, climate change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Oxfam, World Bank, World Health Organisation
The below post is from Joel Katz in response to TOTO Challenge #1
Chacaltaya’s days are numbered. Nestled away in the Bolivian Andes, the glacier has existed for 18,000 years, but over the last two decades most of it has melted away.
Tags: challenge, climate change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The below post is from David Rooney in response to TOTO Challenge #1
Do a quick Google on “climate change” and “food shortages”. Here, I’ll make it easy for you: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=climate+change+%22food+shortages%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
“About 225,000 pages” Google tells me, with headlines such as “One in six countries facing food shortage”, “Billions face food shortages, study warns”, “Melting glaciers will trigger food shortages”… You get the picture.
So does this mean the jury’s in and the verdict has been passed, that we humans are guilty of raping and slowly destroying our planet?
Tags: actionaid australia, challenge, climate change, United Nations Climate Change Conference
The below post is from Emily French in response to TOTO Challenge #1
ActionAid is calling on Kevin Rudd to personally attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December (see petition). But, why is an anti-poverty agency like ActionAid focussing on climate change instead of other clearly pressing issues such as education, food and human rights?
It is fundamental in addressing this question to establish that climate change should not be considered an independent issue from human rights. The staggering impact that climate change is predicted to have on the developing world will prevent many individuals from accessing their most basic rights, including food, water and sanitation. To ignore the need to combat climate change is to deny human rights to vulnerable communities that will be worst affected.
Tags: actionaid australia, Africa, challenge, climate change, human rights
The below post is from Father Dave in response to TOTO Challenge #1
My passion for social justice has earned me a lot of labels over the years. I’ve been branded unpatriotic (because of my friendships with Muslims). I’ve been called anti-Semitic (because of my commitment to Palestinian human rights). I’ve been told that I’m a disgrace to the church (because I’m too concerned with feeding bodies and not souls). And, of course, I’ve been called a leftist ratbag.
One thing I’ve never been called though is a ‘tree-hugger’ or a ‘greenie’, and there’s a reason for that. In all my writing, speaking and campaigning, I’ve never once focused on the environment. Even the subject of Global Warming has tended to leave me cold (pun intended).
Tags: challenge, climate change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The below post is from Michael Quall in response to TOTO Challenge #1
like white privilege, the wealth privilege of developed nations goes largely unchallenged.
like their populist majority, these wealthy nations prefer to think of themselves as ‘average’, and ‘middle class’, lest they be viewed by their peers as elitist or aloof.
the reality is they are rolling in cash, of every currency and every denomination. hiding behind a thin, weak veil of democracy and a ‘free’ market, these nations flaunt their privilege effortlessly, rubbing the noses of their undeveloped and developing cousins in the dry, dusty playground of poverty.
Tags: challenge, climate change, human rights
The below post is from Renee Barnes in response to TOTO Challenge #1
When politicians (Kevin Rudd included) demurely defend their inadequate, or lack of, action on climate change they are asking you to think of this person:
Source: istockphoto
Tags: challenge, climate change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, project toto
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