Campaign to reverse global climate change launched

Accra, Dec. 2, GNA 96 An internet campaign to instigate African peoples to take the issue of global climate change more seriously and compel their governments to takes steps to influence the developed world to adopt lifestyles that would reduce the level of greenhouse gases emission into the global environment was launched on Friday. The campaign, dubbed www.stopkillingus.org, is also a website that seeks to inform ordinary Africans about the causes and effects of climate change and also provided the opportunity for such ordinary Africans to let their voices be heard on the issue of climate change. The message was clear: 93Africa cannot adapt to climate change, Africa needs a reserve in climate change to survive.=94

Mr Stuart Gold, Main Co-ordinator of the campaign noted that whereas developed nations were the worse culprits of greenhouse gas emissions, which caused climate change, Africa stood to bear the brunt most severely if nothing was done about it now.

Meanwhile, he observed, the industrialised nations had all the money in the world to adapt to climate change but 93Africa simply does not have what it takes to adapt.=94

=93The 900 million people living in Africa contribute only 3.8 per cent of global GDP and that means heavy industrial activities and its resultant greenhouse gas emissions, are very negligible in Africa. =93America, which is the worst culprit of the causes of climate change and the biggest beneficiary of industrial activity, is not even a signatory to the Kiyoto Accord, which seeks to reverse climate change and save the global environment,=94 he said.

Mr Gold noted that average Africans were at the moment not very much concerned about the issue of climate change because the change was slow and that they had not taken note of its serious effects yet. He said at the UN Conference on Climate Change held in Nairobi in 2004, it was made clear that Africa would suffer most from climate change in the nearest future if nothing was done about it now. Mr Gold said at Nairobi 300 million dollars was voted to help Africa adapt to effects of climate change between 2008 and 2012, saying that estimates, however, showed that whereas the worst offenders of climate change had all the money to adapt, Africa needed about a thousand times what was voted in Nairobi to adapt. He said the solution for Africa was not adaptation but rather the reverse of climate change because the continent simply did not have what it took to adapt.

=93Such disastrous effects of climate change such as hurricanes, desert storms, rain and wind storms, draught, flooding and their attendant loss of property, hunger, disease and the like, would hit ordinary African children, women and farmers the most if we do not act now,=94 he said.

He pointed out that expert research on the matter indicated that at the moment only one per cent of global GDP was needed to reverse climate change, but if action was postponed, the world would need 25 per cent of global GDP to reserve climate change.

=93It is therefore necessary to agitate for our governments to influence the developed world to stop the greenhouse emissions now that we need less money to do that,=94 he said.

Mr Gold reiterated UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's call on African peoples to make climate change an election issue to ensure that parties voted into government were committed to the fight to reverse climate change.

As part of the campaign, hundreds of thousands of t-shirts with the inscription www.stopkillingus.org had already been distributed free of charge in various parts of the country as a way of giving the campaign a wide presence.

=93We will also sell some t-shirts to ordinary citizens of industrialised countries to create more presence of the campaign across the world. Meanwhile, in Africa we will embark on a major educational campaign to discourage ordinary Africans from using vehicles that emit lots of fumes into the atmosphere,=94 he said. He called on the media to assist in promoting the campaign to save the continent from the disastrous effects of climate change.