Montreal 2005: United Nations Climate Change Conference

There are two agreements already established by the international community to deal with the issue of climate change:

• the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a framework agreement under which signatory countries committed themselves to implementing policies and measures to prevent human activity from posing a serious threat to the world’s climate.
• Kyoto Protocol , which flows from the UNFCCC. The Kyoto Protocol was designed to ensure a series of commitment periods, each comprising a set of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction objectives. We are currently in the first commitment period, in which signatory countries set the objective of reducing their GHGs by about 5% below 1990 emission levels, to be achieved by 2008-2012.

It is the signatory countries of these two agreements that will meet in Montreal from November 28 to December 9, 2005, for the “Montreal 2005: United Nations Climate Change Conference”.

This climate conference will be determinant in many respects of our future and the future of the ecosystems on which we depend. In fact, it is at this conference that the countries present will start to negotiate the future global response to combat climate change, once the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and its objectives have expired in 2012.

The challenge is enormous. Will the international community be truly able to prevent changes to our climate that threaten our future, by establishing new, more stringent GHG emission reduction objectives? Or will blind faith in some miraculous technological solution to the problem, where we are not forced to change our habits, end up deadlocking the debate? Will the U.S. and other countries agree to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions? Indeed, how the 10,000 delegates to the Montreal Conference answer these question will be crucial to the future of this planet and its inhabitants.

One thing is for sure: citizens of Quebec, Canada and the world must take advantage of this opportunity to send the message loud and clear to political leaders from around the world that THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW to stop climate change. We must let them know in no uncertain terms that we DEMAND that they agree on an equitable, effective and ambitious solution for reducing life-threatening climate change to a minimum, thereby protecting the environment and human health!

The Montreal 2005 Global Climate March is our opportunity to have our message heard. Do not remain silent! On December 3, 2005, come out and walk to for the climate!