The next United Nations climate
change conference (COP21) will be held in Paris Le Bourget from 30 November to 11 December this year. This will be the first time a COP has taken place in France, even though they have been held annually for 21 years. The stakes could hardly be higher. With the Kyoto Protocol having expired the UNFCCC signatories have committed to organise its successor in 2015 at the latest. The stated overarching goal of the Convention is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The specific objective is to achieve a legally binding agreement on climate that includes all the nations of the world. COP 21 follows the spectacular failure of the previous COP 15 in Copenhagen in December 2009 that broke up without a binding agreement and with countries only re quired to 'take note' of the targets fixed. On the last day of the talks the leaders of the United States, China, South Africa, Brazil and India came up with an agreement that was far worse than the one already in place. Climate activists and environmental organisations were deeply demoralised, and that demobilized (affected) the movement for years. The 50,000 people who travelled to the summit demanding a binding agreement were bitterly disappointed at the outcome. Five years later the situation is even more desperate. Unless decisive action is taken soon climate change is set to spin out of control. (Already droughts and more intense hurricanes and typhoons are affecting communities around the world). For many millions living in in the countries of the south climate change is not a fear for the future but a devastating reality today. Climate chaos is responsible for more intense hurricanes and typhoons which have cost thousands of lives. Entire communities have been made homeless, infrastructure destroyed and clean water sources polluted. Desertification and the salinification of water supplies have also resulted from climate change. While the effects of climate change are al5 ready sharper in the global south, they are also felt across the globe. The disaster of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and the floods in Britain may well be caused by the failure not only to limit carbon emissions but by capitalism's relentless drive to increase them in its insatiable search for profit. An effective international mobilisation for Paris is therefore crucially important and that means a big mobilisation from Britain. And such a mobilisation is now underway. In fact the successful by the Time to Act demonstration organised by the Campaign Against Climate Change in London on March 7 was a part of the preparation for Paris. The campaign has said the following about the Paris COP: "We need to make it clear that the people simply cannot and will not allow an agreement [in Paris that would spell climate catastrophe for humankind. We would prefer by far that the Governments reach an adequate agreement of their own accord in Paris, and fervently hope that they will. But if they do not, then we need to be ready to take whatever action is necessary to ensure that climate catastrophe is avoided. For this reason we hope that at the time of the summit the people of Paris and beyond will be ready to rise up and demonstrate their overwhelming opposition to any agreement which fails to address the problem and avoid climate catastrophe." Apart from building for the main events, the demonstrations and the counter summit, the CACC aims to give a high profile to its One Million Climate Jobs campaign either as a stand-alone event or as a part of the wider counter summit. The One Million Climate Jobs Campaign aims to create a million secure government backed jobs in renewable energy, in increasing energy efficiency by insulating homes and public buildings free of charge and by hugely expanding cheap public transport. Following discussions at the World Social Forum in Tunis in late March, it is now clear that the mobilization for Paris will have two foci - demonstrations throughout the world on November 28/29 followed by a demonstration in Paris on December 12.