Protests Following the COP 21 Climate Pact

 

Climate activists have organized more official and unofficial protests following the COP 21 Climate Pact in Paris on December 12. Thousands of activists have protested near the Arc de Triomphe, in a demonstration that was exempted from the ban on public gatherings set in France after the terrorist attacks from the last month. Another big protest has been organized at the Champ de Mars by a coalition of environmental groups.

Representatives of 195 countries present at the COP 21 have reached an international agreement to lower the greenhouse gas emissions. It is for the first time when all the countries have committed to lower their emissions. Until now, the climate pacts were only including the developed economies while developing countries – even great polluters like India and China – were not subscribing.

World leaders were saluting this agreement, with President Obama declaring that it sends a powerful signal that the whole world is committed to a future with lower carbon emissions.

However, protesters coming from all over the world are unhappy with the agreement, saying that it’s not enough. One protester from the Philippines thinks that the change need to be faster, since in the Philippines there have already been record typhoons and the rising sea levels are already making people from small islands and coastal areas to live their houses to the waters. So an agreement to slow the global temperature increase to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 Celsius) by 2100 is simply not enough.

Protesters from France believe the same thing, arguing that since people are already leaving their homes from the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea because of the rising sea levels, this is not an issue which can be left for 2100. It is an issue which needs a solving right now.

According to the NY Times, another protester, from Toronto, said that the Climate Pact is just a big disappointment. He thinks that the world leaders have been doing nothing else but deciding in which decade we are going to perish.

The Saturday protests following the COP 21 Climate Pact have been peaceful. Most of the protesters have been holding a red tulip while others had banners or flags. Two red ribbons, each of them being 100-meter long, were carried by activists at both of the protests. Protesters have chosen the color red to express the emergency of the situation.

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