Flashmobs for climate action

Next Monday at 1pm, I'm joining a climate change wake-up call flashmob event in Edinburgh. It’s organised by Avaaz and is one of almost two thousand events taking place on September 21st all across the world to demand a strong global climate treaty.

Here is the Avaaz description of the idea:

Flashmobs are fun, peaceful demonstrations in which participants assemble suddenly in a public place, blending in with the crowd, perform an unusual action simultaneously for a few minutes, and then quickly disperse.

On the morning of September 21, everyone participating will set our alarms and gather together a few minutes before the assigned time, at locations chosen by the hosts in our local area. When our alarms go off, we'll hold up our mobile phones and find each other, and then, as a group, call our leaders to urge them to go to Copenhagen and sign a fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty this year. We'll make as much noise as we can, while recording videos and photos for the UN presentation -- then head back to work, school, or home to upload the results!

Want to join me? Here's the link. And here are the details:

When: 21st September, 2009 at 1:00pm
Where: St Andrews Square, Gardens -- Edinburgh, Edinburgh, SCT

Not in Edniburgh? Find one near you.

By themselves, protests like this might not change much. And personally, I'm fairly downbeat about the likelihood of Copenhagen resulting in an agreement over ambitious global targets. I'm also not persuaded that carbon trading is some kind of magic bullet or even the best way forward. Nonetheless, the size and success of symbolic actions like this help to keep ecological issues on the political agenda, which is one small good thing.