This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
With less than a week to go before the 21st annual Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), environmental organizations are working hard to get the public engaged. The Sierra Club innovatively pulled at its members’ heartstrings with a video that features a pug in a Hawaiian shirt.
A pug in a Hawaiian shirt. A pug in a Hawaiian shirt demanding a progressive climate accord from every world leader congregating in Paris this December. If they’re not already motivated enough by their mother, brother, cousin or partner who will be affected by climate disruption, then hopefully they’ll be moved to action by all the pugs out there wearing Hawaiian shirts.
That is the hope of the Sierra Club’s #ActInParis campaign anyway. The aim is to demonstrate strong public support for climate action on local, national and international levels, generating momentum and awareness for the climate negotiations. Grassroots efforts have been spearheaded by members and non-members alike who have come across this action alert, Jared Leto’s virtual reality promotional video or the #ActInParis selfies that can be found across all social media networks.
Why all the effort? After all, 20 climate conferences have come and gone with very little fanfare outside of the environmental world. That will not be the case in 2015. This year is different. It marks the first time that leaders from all 195 United Nations recognized countries will be in attendance at the conference.
That’s right. 2015, the warmest year ever on record, has the potential to be the first year on record to unite the biggest economies in the world around climate action. Can you imagine? Countries like the U.S., China, the UK and Germany finding common ground on something this divisive is groundbreaking and deserves our recognition.
Does this dog not deserve a world populated with people who believe that it is our moral imperative to keep climate disruption under two degrees centigrade?
That is what world leaders hope to achieve at the climate negotiations this year and, with new Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) summarizing the actions each country intends to take in the next fifteen years coming in every day, that goal is within their reach.
Our acknowledgement of COP21 will make a difference. World leaders need to know that the world is, in fact, watching. That we are, in fact, watching. That we care about the text of their next international agreement on climate. That we know that any agreement that elicits temperature increases of more than two degrees centigrade is unacceptable. That we will hold them accountable for their climate commitments. That we care about what they will accomplish in Paris because we know that their actions will determine our collective future on a healthy, functional plant Earth. The pug in the Hawaiian shirt will be watching President Obama and 194 other world leaders #ActInParis. Will you?
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
4 Ways Exxon Stopped Action on Climate Change
Groups Demand French President Lift Ban on Climate Protests and Marches
Viral Video: Watch Your Favorite YouTube Stars Demand Climate Action
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
Singapore will become the first country in the world to place a ban on advertisements for carbonated drinks and juices with high sugar contents, its health ministry announced last week. The law is intended to curb sugar consumption since the country has some of the world's highest diabetes rates per capita, as Reuters reported.
A typical adult takes around 20,000 breaths per day. If you live in a megacity like Beijing, with many of those lungfuls you're likely to inhale a noxious mixture of chemicals and pollutants.
By Susan Cosier
First there was Fred Stone, the third-generation dairy farmer in Maine who discovered that the milk from his cows contained harmful chemicals. Then came Art Schaap, a second-generation dairy farmer in New Mexico, who had to dump 15,000 gallons of contaminated milk a day.
Trending
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that that bans the sale and manufacture of fur products in the state. The fur ban, which he signed into law on Saturday, prohibits Californians from selling or making clothing, shoes or handbags with fur starting in 2023, according to the AP.
By Simon Evans
During the three months of July, August and September, renewables generated an estimated total of 29.5 terawatt hours (TWh), compared with just 29.1TWh from fossil fuels, the analysis shows.
Trending
The night before Indigenous Peoples' Day, an Indigenous-led movement in Ecuador won a major victory.
One week into Extinction Rebellion's planned two weeks of International Rebellion to demand action on the climate crisis, the London police have banned the group from the city.