BBC News 5 Dec 09;
Demonstrations have taken place around the UK to urge action on climate change ahead of the Copenhagen summit.
Organisers Stop Climate Chaos want world leaders to reach a tough new deal on cutting emissions.
In London, police originally said about 20,000 people had taken part - but did not contradict claims by the organisers that the actual figure was over 40,000.
Gordon Brown praised the protesters for "propelling" leaders to reach the "first world climate change agreement".
About 7,000 turned out for a demonstration in Glasgow. A protest also took place in Belfast.
As the main protest drew to a close on Saturday evening , some 150 protesters from a different action group - Camp for Climate Action - set up camp in Trafalgar Square, central London.
Organisers of the camp told the BBC News website they wished to draw attention to the role of the "political and economic system" in causing climate change.
The Metropolitan Police said they had been told the camp would remain in place for 48 hours.
"A small neighbourhood style police team will be in place to provide a police presence around Trafalgar Square," said a Met spokesman.
'Flat earth group'
The prime minister, who met some of the demonstrators in Downing Street, said it was essential that a deal be reached in Copenhagen and leaders had to be "ambitious".
Mr Brown said he and the "vast majority of people" were convinced by the scientific evidence for man-made global warming.
He said Copenhagen had to convince everyone of the risks, including the sceptics.
"There's a flat earth group over the evidence, if I may say so, that exists about climate change, and we've got to show them that the scientific evidence is strong," he said.
"The public need to be angry about the extent to which we have not taken action sufficiently as a world until now, and they've got to then see that the first climate change agreement is not only necessary, it's absolutely essential."
Cut emissions
The demonstrators on Saturday made several demands, such as calling on Western nations to commit to an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050.
A series of events known collectively as The Wave took place in London.
They began with an ecumenical service at Westminster Central Hall, which involved both the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and Archbishop Vincent Nichols, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
Religious leaders said they were taking part in The Wave because they "recognise unequivocally that there is a moral imperative to tackle the causes of global warming".
At about 1200 GMT, they joined environmental campaigners, aid agencies, trade unions and organisations including the Women's Institute for a rally close to the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, before beginning their march to the Houses of Parliament.
In Glasgow, demonstrators marched from Bellahouston Park in the south of the city to Kelvingrove Park for a rally.
Strathclyde Police said about 7,000 had turned out, which is believed to be Scotland's largest protest in support of action on climate change.
Ashok Sinha, from the Stop Climate Chaos coalition, said: "We will call on Gordon Brown to make Copenhagen count by committing rich countries to reduce their emissions by at least 40% in the next 10 years, finally putting the right sort of money on the table to help poor countries, and urgently start the process of decarbonising our energy supply.
"With bold leadership at home, Mr Brown can help inspire a fair, effective and binding international deal at Copenhagen."
Mr Brown will join Barack Obama in Copenhagen next week, after the US president announced that he had changed his plans and would now attend the end of the conference.
Ahead of the summit, Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband took part in "the first ever ministerial mass phone call" on Saturday, after inviting questions from members of action group 38 Degrees via his website, Ed's Pledge.
He told the BBC: "We're going to go all out, the whole of the British government, over the next two weeks to make sure we get the most ambitious agreement we can."
Any agreement made at Copenhagen must become a legally-binding treaty "within months", he added.
Barbara Stocking, chief executive of Oxfam, said world leaders must do more to help those in developing countries cope with the effects of global warming.
"For poor people, climate change is not something in the future. Climate change is hitting them now," she told the BBC.
Protests add pressure for Copenhagen climate deal
Erik Kirschbaum and David Fogarty, Reuters 5 Dec 09;
BERLIN/COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Climate activists staged protests on Saturday to add pressure on leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, to agree a strong deal to combat global warming at talks this month in Denmark.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose country is the world's number four greenhouse gas emitter, announced he would attend a closing summit in Copenhagen, joining 104 other leaders including Obama in a sign of growing momentum for a deal.
In the Danish capital, delegates from 190 nations were gathering for the start of the December 7-18 meeting. The biggest U.N. climate talks in history are aimed at working out a new pact to curb global warming, replacing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
Among protests, activists in Berlin, posing as world leaders, sat inside a giant aquarium that was gradually filled with water to highlight the risks of rising sea levels from melting glaciers and ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica.
About 20,000 people marched in London to protest against global warming before the conference, where senior officials will lay the groundwork for the summit. A Greenpeace demonstration in Paris drew 1,500 people.
"We want the most ambitious deal we can get at the climate change talks," Britain's Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told BBC television from the march.
Denmark welcomed Singh's decision to attend and said that 105 leaders were now due to go.
"India is a key country in the global efforts to tackle climate change," Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in a statement. "Together these 105 leaders represent 82 percent of mankind, 89 percent of the world's GDP and 80 percent of the world's current emissions."
CHANGE PLANET'S COURSE
He added: "If this group of assembled leaders can agree, then their decisions can change the course of the planet."
Obama on Friday dropped plans to stop off in Copenhagen on December 9 -- on his way to Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize -- and the White House said he would instead join other world leaders on December 18.
Governments and activists welcomed the switch, which raises pressure for a deal to combat rising emissions that the United Nations says will cause desertification, mudslides, more powerful cyclones, rising sea levels and species extinctions.
But an agreement is still far off.
China, India, Brazil and South Africa this week rejected a Danish suggestion to set a goal of halving world emissions by 2050, saying rich nations which have burned fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution must first slash their own emissions.
Many developing nations at preliminary meetings in Copenhagen on Saturday were lining up with the four in opposing the Danish proposals, delegation sources said. China is the top world emitter ahead of the United States, Russia and India.
The United Nations says rich nations must accept deep cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and come up with at least $10 billion a year in aid to the poor to kick off a deal. It also wants new actions by developing nations to slow the rise of their emissions.
In Berlin, the German activists -- dressed as Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel, Chinese President Hu Jintao and wearing caricature face masks -- saw 4,000 liters of water rise to their chins to symbolize the impact of global warming.
"The longer world leaders just talk and do nothing, the higher the water levels will rise," said Juergen Maier, a leader of campaign group Klima-Allianz which staged scores of other demonstrations around Germany on Saturday.
In London, many protesters wore blue clothes and face paint and made their way toward the Houses of Parliament chanting slogans and blowing whistles. They carried placards saying "Climate Justice Now" and "Climate Change: The End Is Nigh."
Around 1,500 people gathered in central Paris with banners saying: "Climate Ultimatum" and chanting: "Things are hotting up, act now."
(Writing by Alister Doyle, with additional reporting by Lucien Liebert in Paris, Tim Castle in London, Rina Chandran in Mumbai, editing by Mark Trevelyan)
Experts flag rights issues for climate summit
Yahoo News 4 Dec 09;
GENEVA (AFP) – UN human rights experts warned three days ahead of a key climate summit in Copenhagen that a weak outcome of the negotiations could endanger human rights with poor communities the most vulnerable.
More than 100 world leaders meet in the Danish capital on Monday to tackle global warming, said to be caused by greenhouse gases and responsible for climate changes and rising sea levels that threaten environmental disaster.
"A weak outcome of the forthcoming climate change negotiations threatens to infringe upon human rights," 20 rights experts said in a joint statement.
Rising sea levels, increasing temperatures and extreme weather like storms and droughts have "direct and indirect implications for the enjoyment of human rights," it said.
"Inadequate mitigation and adaptation strategies can lead to human rights violations when, for example, tree planting efforts fail to ensure adequate participation of local communities or if due process is not respected for any necessary displacement."
The experts said the adverse effects of climate change were felt most acutely by poor communities which were often in areas prone to natural disasters and were dependent on natural resources.
They were also less able to prepare for or adapt to climate change and its effects on issues like access to food, drinking water, sanitation, housing and health care.
The Copenhagen meeting is meant to work on a new treaty on climate action for after 2012 when obligations run out under the current Kyoto Protocol.
The rights experts called for an agreement that "prevents further climate change, protects affected individuals from its adverse impact" and leads to responses based on human rights standards.
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