It’s been two months since my last blog post.  I will keep blogging, but not as frequently as I had in the past.  I just have to now, to hopefully encourage a good turnout of support for the People’s Climate March on 21 September.  I’m hoping to persuade a few of you reading to turn up in one of the cities that are holding marches, or at least to join in with an online Thunderclap.  This is huge.

Why now?  Why 21 Sept?  The reason is that Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, has convened a meeting of all of the world’s leaders in the lead up to the 69^th UN General Assembly, in New York on 23 September.  On the agenda will be one item only – commitments to action to address climate change by curbing man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.  This is in preparation for the Paris COP in 2015, the point at which all of the countries of the globe have committed to set out their plans and targets jointly for reducing emissions.

“The world needs to see what countries are already doing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The race is on, and now is the time to for leaders to step up and steer the world towards a safer future.” Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General.

All sounds great – until you realise that the commitments so far made fall far short of those needed to keep global warming to less than 2°C, the temperature increase that was agreed by all governments internationally as the threshold for catastrophic climate change.

The world’s leaders need to know that they have our support to go further and make our planet safe.

There is hope.  China has just announced that they will set up a national carbon pricing market – effectively putting a price on carbon emissions.  It means China are getting serious about reducing their impact, and paves the way for others to do the same.  Europe already has a carbon pricing market, currently the biggest in the world, but which was reduced in effectiveness a few months back when they accidentally voted to release more permits to emit carbon dioxide than they should have and flooded the market.  I say accidentally because some of the MEPs later admitted that they’d got confused and meant to vote the other way – it was a close vote.

I’m going to the march in London, meeting friends around 12 noon.  The march starts from Temple at 1pm, only lasting 45 mins before a rally at 1.45pm.  Let me know if you are going.

Elsewhere in the UK, there are marches in Stroud, Manchester and Edinburgh, as well as another 7.  There are other marches all over the world, with the biggest in New York itself, where hundreds of thousands are expected to take to the streets.

This could be the most important moment in history.  You’ll want to be there just to be part of it, take a few photos for the grandchildren.  They’ll be miffed if you don’t.

John Bell,

Ordinary Bloke

PS – I promise to write about the climate changey stuff I’ve been doing over the past couple of months at some point – I’ve not been dormant.  Transition Roadshow, Mike Berners-Lee coming here on 23 Sept, organised a picnic for the people in my street, been to Houses of Parliament to launch the “For the Love Of” campaign, da di da.  I also plan to set out my step by step guide to saving the earth, and talk about different sorts of people.