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The World Climate Day created at the initiative of several NGOs, but whose citizens are the main actors, is celebrated on December 8 to recall the very real threat of global warming and the need to act.
World Climate Day is also an opportunity to recall some figures and alert the public to the foreseeable consequences of global warming. Because our planet is warming up, and many are already suffering. In the midst of the 25th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP25), this day, accompanied by marches around the world, is of particular value.
Citizen awareness
In anticipation of the COP21 (21st United Nations Climate Conference) held in France in 2015 and the signing of the Paris Agreement, citizen initiatives have developed.
As early as October 2013, to raise awareness and federate citizens around the warming of the climate, the Alternatiba movement created the first village of alternatives to climate change in Bayonne, in the French Basque Country.
Events of this type then multiplied around the world until COP21. Then, little by little, in the light of the recurring climatic disasters relayed by the press, the youngest ones realized the urgency to act to limit the warming, until the school strike for the climate, "Friday for future", launched by Greta Thunberg on August 20, 2018.
As a result, there has been an increasingly shared awareness, which has had a profound impact on society, particularly because of the link between climate justice and social justice.
In the midst of the COP 25: an important moment
The 25th Climate Conference has been taking place in Madrid , Spain, for the past week. The stakes of this conference could seem negligible compared to those of the COP26, which will concretely decline the commitments of 194 countries to stop global warming below 1.5 ° or 2 ° by 2100. But the discussions that during these two weeks in Madrid will lead precisely to the concrete plans of the States to reduce by 45% their emissions of gases in effect in the next ten years or to eliminate them completely by 2050.
This COP is therefore expected to increase its ambitions, because in view of the commitments made by the countries, which are not necessarily fulfilled, following the Paris agreement, and the report of the UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) published in November 2019, on the financing of fossil fuels by these same countries, we are very far from the account. The temperature will not stop climbing to 2 °.
2019: a dark year for the climate
The year 2019 recorded the warmest months since temperatures were measured and everyone could see the harmful consequences.
Everywhere on the planet, forests have burned. In the Amazon, these fires have accelerated the melting of continental glaciers. In Australia, drought combined with high winds and exceptional heat has triggered fires that remain uncontrollable to this day . Neither sub-Saharan Africa nor Europe, from Portugal to Sweden to Germany, have been spared.
In France, of the 60% of the territory that experienced one of the longest known droughts, the lack of water and the hot weather decimated the trees and crops, causing unprecedented losses. These findings, shared throughout the world this year, motivate the desire of citizens to be listened to and taken into account by their politicians on the occasion of this day.
The citizen engine
Around the world, there are marches and events accompanying the World Day. This Sunday, December 8, in France, at the call of more than 140 nongovernmental organizations, the march for the climate could be the apogee of a movement which federates many citizens, with for objective to put pressure on the participants to the Madrid conference.
Because many topics are on the table: in addition to the ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there is funding, by the countries responsible for emissions (without the United States, out of the agreement this year) losses and damage already suffered by the most vulnerable countries. However, this subject remains to say the least tricky and the pressure of the street will not be superfluous to train these states to assume their responsibilities.