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Protesters urge climate action before Kenya meet

04 Nov 2006 17:56:38 GMT
Source: Reuters

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Razorlight lead singer Johnny Borrell performs during a climate change demonstration in central London November 4, 2006. Thousands of environmental campaigners rallied in London on Saturday ahead of international talks on climate change in Kenya, demanding that world leaders act to curb global warming.
REUTERS/ALESSIA PIERDOMENICO

(Updates number attending, adds new quotes, byline)

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - More than 20,000 protesters rallied in London on Saturday ahead of international talks on climate change in Kenya, demanding that world leaders act to curb global warming.

The event included a march from the United States embassy in protest against U.S. President George W. Bush's refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on cutting climate-warming gases from fossil fuels.

It was held at the end of a week in which a British government-backed report published on Monday painted an apocalyptic picture about any failure to act on global warming.

Police said the crowd reached 22,500 people, packing out Trafalgar Square in the capital's centre.

"We are reaching audiences today in a way that was impossible a year ago," Ashok Sinha, director of organisers Stop Climate Chaos (SCC), told Reuters.

"We are getting people to look at the total carbon emisson of their lives and to start making adjustments, because every single bit helps.

"We are talking about personal actions but it is also bulding up pressure on governments to take action to stop the destruction of the planet."

United Nations climate talks involving 189 nations start next week in the Kenyan capital Nairobi to negotiate a successor to the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.

Reaching a deal is expected to take up to three or more years.

The British report by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern warned of economic collapse if the world failed to pay the comparatively smaller costs of tackling climate change.

Levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere hit a record last year and are likely to keep rising unless emissions are radically cut, the World Meteorological Organisation said on Friday.

SCC, a broad coalition of green, scientific and charitable bodies, called on Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government to negotiate an international deal to keep the overall warming of the earth's environment below 2 degrees centigrade.

Several hundred people, including environment activists and two of Belgium's four environment ministers, gathered in Brussels where they set off alarm clocks at 1055 GMT, to show that time was running out to prevent radical climate change.

(Additional reporting by Tim Castle)

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Last updated:Sat Nov 4 17:57:30 2006