Living with climate change: a family affair?Zac Macaulay, MMIXI get to do some strange things working for Oxfam. On Wednesday night I watched as an average family — mom, dad and son — sat around with their dinners on their laps staring at the TV. Glasses of soft drinks and wine sat on the lounge table with the bowl of fruit.
Then the bananas decided to float off and a turtle swam past.
The setting for this surreal scene was the Sea Life Aquarium on London’s South Bank. We were there to mark the fact that we’re now 100 days away from the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, arguably one of the most important meetings in human history.
At this meeting, world leaders need to agree to a fair and safe deal that prevents catastrophic climate change. For this to happen, we need Western leaders to accept their country’s historic responsibility for climate change and to do two things.
First, they have to take a lead in agreeing to slash carbon emissions by 40% by 2020. And second, they need to earmark $150 billion a year to help poor countries adapt to the impacts of climate change and reduce their own ... Read more
