Read the full supplement here.

Green is funky, Green is sexy, Green is wacky!

If you think that climate change and sustainability communications are dull and boring, well think again. Here is a sample of exciting comms that intend to showcase environmentally friendly behaviour as cool and sexy.

“God save The Green”

These three short movies directed by Nadege Winter aim to inform people about energy efficiency by diverting the traditional codes of environmental activism.  Imagine that you run into a peep show. You see a beautiful pin-up naked, but instead of engaging in an erotic conversation, the beautiful woman gives you a lesson of ecology.

Unfortunately you can see these only from France. But here is the teaser that will, I hope, feed your imagination.

“Fuck For Forest”

FFF is a project created by a non-profit environmental organisation founded in Norway.  The two persons behind the concept adopted a refreshing perspective to help addressing deforestation issues. FFF basically produces pornographic films whose profits go directly to reforestation projects. They were officially backed by the Norwegian government and received seed funding to help launch the concept.

You can buy their videos here.

“Green Porno”

Green Porno is a series of short movies written and directed by the ex-model and actress Isabella Rossellini. The quirky little movies combine ecology and pornography. Both comic and instructive they are the result of genuine scientific research and observation. They help viewers understand how gnats, cockroaches and other bees reproduce. An anthem to biodiversity….

You can watch the three episodes on Sundance Channel.

Author Caroline Martinot

The 2010 Winter Olympic Games will begin tomorrow, on February 12th in Vancouver and they are already considered as ones of the “greenest ever organised”.

These days many journalists’ are asking the same questions: are the 2010 Olympics the greenest games ever? “Vancouver Olympics: The greenest Games ever?” (Yahoo), “Vancouver 2010: The greenest Olympics?” (Mother Nature Network), “Green Olympic Games - Myth or Reality?” (environmentalism.suite101.com). But what can we compare Vancouver 2010 to, to get a clear answer to that interrogation?

By screening the web, I realise the answer is contrasting: “Vancouver Olympics are going for the green” (Yahoo), “Vancouver Winter Games, Not surprisingly, to be Quite Green” (greenr.ca), “the 2010 Games will be pretty green” (Ms Coady, Vanoc’s vice-president for sustainability), “Vancouver 2010 Promises Greenest Olympic Games Ever” (Inhabitat.com).

Indeed Vancouver has some pretty impressive green credentials to put forward.

The LEED building criteria were used to reduce venue footprints and to create facilities that have minimal impact on nature, and that use water and energy efficiently. The priority has been given to the refurbishment of existing facilities rather than building new sites. Basically Vancouverites did not get super-structures such as a ‘Birds Nest’ stadium or a ‘Water Cube’ swimming pool. The emphasis has been put on responsible construction and nearly every building has a purpose and a meaning that will outlast the two weeks- long Games.

Vancouver’s Olympic organizing committee (VANOC) partnered with Offsetters Green Technology Inc., to offset the direct emissions generated from the Games by investing in clean energy projects. The estimate direct emissions are of 110,000 tonnes including all aspects of staging the Games, including transportation, energy consumption, venue construction and the torch relay.

Regarding sponsorship corporate sustainability program has been introduced, the “Vancouver 2010 Sustainability Stars program”, that highlights the leading innovations in sustainability made by Games sponsors, partners and organizers. So far, over 60 “sustainability stars” have been awarded. Coca Cola was awarded a star for its “Waste Diversion Program” that will ensure that 95% of waste generated during the Games will be diverted from landfills.

Public transport will be free and unlimited for ticket holders on the day of their event.

And it may seem anecdotal, but all the medals to be awarded to the successful athletes, are made from recycled materials from used electronics , allowing 6.8 metric tons of circuit board to be diverted from landfills.

But the answer to the question “Vancouver Olympics: The greenest Games ever?” is far more simple.

In 1932, Lake Placid hosted the third Winter Olympics. Due to the financial crisis only 17 countries attended, represented by some 250 athletes, half of them were coming from Canada and the United States, and only 21 were women athletes. The Games required the construction of one new stadium, all the events being organised outdoor or in existing facilities. Lake Placid Games is just an example of how green were the first Games back in the late 19th and early 20th century.

In 2010, 80 countries will participate to the Games. Vancouver is set to host 5,500 Olympic Games athletes and team officials, 1,350 Paralympics Games athletes and team officials and 10,000 media representatives from all over the world. 1.6 million tickets were made available. 3 billion viewers are expected to watch the Games on screen. Two villages have been built to host them. Olympics infrastructures also include a new subway line and $600m upgrade of the “Sea to Sky highway”. These Games will leave a massive environmental footprint despite all the efforts of organisers to lower it. No need to be an environmentalist to figure out which one of Vancouver or Lake Placid Games have the lower environmental footprint. Vancouver Games are probably going to be the greenest games ever organised, during the past 15 years.

Carbon neutrality is the BHAG (“Big Hairy Audacious Goal”) of Vancouver that does seem unachievable due to the size of such an event and the inherent limits to carbon offsetting. On the other hand the impact of their social inclusion programs was a bit diminished when IOC (international Olympics Committee) was nominated for a Public Eyes Award (organised by Greenpeace) for having awarded the 2010 Games to Vancouver, “causing the displacement of a large part of the indigenous population around the venue, the Games being held on Indian lands whose title was never ceded”.

2012 London Summer Games are coming soon, and they are already putting forward “never seen before” green credentials. But what I like about London strategy is that it is not focused only on environment. Organisers have also embedded social sustainability in their strategy, highlighting the social benefits that the Games could have on the east of the capital.

The “Greenest Games ever” is a recurring theme and a PR leitmotiv.

In substance Vancouver 2010 organisers claim that the Games will have no impact on the area where they are organised. They will leave the place as it was found. Whereas London BHAG is to make London a better place than before the Games and that’s a much hairier goal…

GREEN is delighted an article about their 2009 Green Awards is featured in the “National Geographic Green” first issue.

National Geographic names the Green Awards as the “Green Oscars” and writes : “Proving your business is worth its weight in green initiatives has become increasingly important, not least since the creation of The Green Awards.”

National Geographic Green magazine is a quarterly magazine supplement “dedicated to exploring the broad er environmental debate and offering information about consumer products and choices” .The free 120-page publication ‘GREEN’ is being distributed to 250,000 subscribers with the December issue of National Geographic magazine. The first issue entitled “How green is London”, explores the capital’s ecological credentials.

You can read the full issue and the Green Awards article at http://www.greennatgeo.co.uk

Credits: National Geographic winter 09-10

Author: Caroline Martinot

2010 has been declared the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) by the United Nations. It was officially launched on January 10th in Berlin by Angela Merkel and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The global campaign is being run by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which was created after the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

The campaign is an opportunity to promote the understanding of ecosystems and to raise awareness of the importance of biodiversity, the variety of life around the planet and how human activity is endangering it. And ultimately to slow if not to stop the extinction of many species.

“You are biodiversity. Most of the oxygen you breathe comes from plankton in the oceans of the world and lush forests around the globe. The fruit and vegetables you eat were likely pollinated by bees, and the water you drink is part of a huge global cycle involving you, clouds, rainfall, glaciers, rivers and oceans.”IYB Message (excerpt)

The campaign aims to impact both the world’s decision makers and citizens.

Indeed, 2010 will be punctuated by a series of official events.  On January 21st and 22nd in Paris, the UNESCO hold an inaugural event to present what we know about biodiversity and raise awareness of the alarming rate of biodiversity loss among world leaders.  During this meeting Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the CBD highlighted that  member states “failed to fulfil the target to reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity by 2010” and warned that biodiversity was being lost at an “unprecedented rate”; stressing thereby the urgency of drastic actions. But as a good communicator and as recommended by the UN Campaign Guidelines, Ahmed Djoghlaf also instilled optimism and excitement to his audience by reminding them of the regional successes.  “We need to identify these important successes and build upon them as we prepare the next strategic plan of the CBD.”

Current trends make it hard to share his optimism.  Indeed, in 2010, approximately 34,000 plant and 5,200 animal species face extinction (the current global species extinction rate is estimated to be 50 to 1 000 times higher than the natural background extinction rate). Forests are home to much of the known terrestrial biodiversity, however, forest biodiversity is increasingly threatened as a result of deforestation, and about 45 per cent of the Earth’s original forests are gone, mostly during the 20th century. Climate change is also progressively becoming a more significant driver of biodiversity loss.

Anyway, in the UK the IYB is supported by the campaign “Biodiversity is life”. It showcases simple things you can do every day to preserve biodiversity: i.e. “eat organic”, “seek out a rare British food crop or animal, like Scottish Beremeal and support biodiversity by eating it”, “don’t mow your lawn”. There will be also a plethora of events run all over the country for the public. From the dodgy exhibition The Occurrence of Malformation in Amphibians (London 5- 31 March) to the hippie Bristol Festival of Nature (12–13 June).

The UN campaign for biodiversity preservation is well done. The UN have led to a multitude of national and local campaigns. By adopting some clear communication guidelines the UN incites the national actors to apply some basic communications tricks to foster awareness and behaviour change such as targeting audiences, being inspiring and translating the messages into practical actions. It’s tricky to assess the success of such planetary campaigns. The UN seems to be good at mobilising political and it’s a good thing that they delegate the task of communicating to citizen, to local actors. But who remember that 2009 was the International Year of Natural Fibres?

“It is hard to imagine a more important priority than protecting the ecosystem services underpinned by biodiversity. Biodiversity is fundamental to humans having food, fuel, clean water and a habitable climate.” Professor Georgina Mace

The Dieter Rams ‘Less And More’ exhibition at the Design Museum in London
(18 November 2009 – 09 March 2010).

When visiting that exhibition last Sunday I was stunned by the sustainability avant-gardism of Dieter Rams.
Rams is a German designer who served as head of design for Braun from 1961 till his retirement in 1995 and is today considered as “one of the most influential industrial designers of the late 20th century by defining an elegant, legible, yet rigorous visual language for its products.”
More than twenty years ago, the icon designer has established “10 Principles of Good Design”. His innovative vision of design makes him one of the precursors of industrial sustainable design. Indeed Rams’ products integrated sustainability and durability years before these issues became inevitable and essential for industrial designers (?)

read the rest of this entry

It’s a fact: Climate change communication can sometimes be dim and dull. Few communication campaigns succeed in reaching their targets, raising awareness and sparking off a reaction. Add to this that many campaigns are aiming at hitting an unidentified and obscure target known as “the people”. Defining your target, digging into its aspirations, motivations and the channels to reach it, is the preliminary step of any successful communication campaign.

This task can be even harder when you try to reach an audience which defines itself as “not mainstream” and is fighting hard not to be labelled or targeted. But this is exactly the challenge that Greenpeace and the Blacksmoke art collective tackled when they set up a project to communicate climate change issues to the British underground “scenesters”, a young British sub-culture group (“urban middle class adults and older teenagers with interests in non-mainstream fashion and culture” –Wikipedia).

The Danger Global Warming Project is an independent multimedia initiative aimed at raising awareness around climate change issues through the medium of art and digital media.  Artists from all over the world were asked to incorporate Greenpeace’s black and yellow warning tape motif into artworks of any forms. As a result, multimedia pieces of art (video, image, installation…) were submitted from all over the world.

The collective has efficiently dug into its audience culture to highlight its motivations (the hunt for exclusive arts) and aspirations. The campaign features sharp music bands like Utah Saints and underground stars such as Bruce LaBruce and Billy Childish; artists few people know, but icons for the British underground scene. Blacksmoke is going against a majority of climate change campaigns that feature global celebrities such as Leonardo Di Caprio, thus aiming at reaching the wide majority of “people”.

Blacksmoke aim at creating a buzz in the British underground scene and on the internet. Visuals and clips are relayed on the web through Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube etc.

One can however question the efficiency of such an unconventional campaign. Indeed the use of alternative artists pushes the target audience to focus more on the communication channel than on the actual message. Just flick through the comments posted underneath the pieces of art on the internet and you will see that the majority of posts are actually more interested in the artistic happening than in the message conveyed.

The campaign manages to reach its target audience (get a foot in the door) but actually fails to transmit the message (pass the door) and therefore inspire action. This observation leads to the question to what extent climate change communication can be tailored to an audience’s motivations and “scene” without dissolving the message in everyday life inspirations.

As an example of the material featured in this campaign, you can watch below the Danger Global Warming tune, remixed by Utah Saints and video clip by Alexandre Athane, “As an allegory for recycling, influential musicians and DJ’s from around the world are remixing the official Danger Global Warming theme tune, featuring lead vocals by Hugh Cornwell and a 35 piece orchestra”.

Caroline Martinot

Article reproduced, author: Donald Carli*

Most people will tell you that they care about saving our forests, but they tend to be uninformed or misinformed when it comes to knowing the causes of deforestation or some of the places being affected most significantly by land use change that kills trees, pollutes rivers and contributes to climate change. Until recently the conventional wisdom has been to demonize paper and print media as the major culprit behind “killing trees” and to idealize digital media as “green and groovy” alternative without consideration for the full backstory or life cycle footprint of either.

Pixels Don’t Grow on Trees

Paper and print media supply chains are far from being sustainable, but may be far less of a threat to forests than the “Tree-Wash” claims about how digital media saves trees or how pixels are greener than pages. “Tree-Wash” is my term for a special class of “greenwash” making false, misleading or unsupported marketing claims that ignore the causes of deforestation associated with digital media, or that fail to identify the actual trees and forests allegedly being saved or planted.

However, the Copenhagen Climate Summit and technologies developed to verify land use are likely to play a major role in changing the status quo with regard to foot-printing forests, identifying trees and the calculating the climate impacts of coal-powered IT.

Are You Seeing REDD yet?

Deforestation and the sustainable management of the world’s forests are serious issues that should be top of mind given the world’s focus on climate change. Trees sequester carbon equal to half of their dry weight, and scientists estimate that as much 20 percent of total emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) are emitted due to deforestation, land use change and forest degradation. For that reason, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is a major issue that will be addressed in Copenhagen.

Sustainable forestry will play an increasingly important role in supporting the literacy and sanitary existence of the world’s growing population. In addition to providing millions of jobs and providing the wood fiber used to produce over 350 million tons of paper per year, the world’s forests also serve as the planet’s “lungs” by converting or “sequestering” atmospheric carbon dioxide into woody biomass and providing other important environmental services. In addition, sustainably harvested forest biomass will increasingly be employed by a new generation of integrated biorefineries to replace fossil fuel energy and petrochemical feedstocks.

According to some reports just one day’s deforestation is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions of eight million people flying to New York; in order to address such a serious challenge and provide a basis to monitoring the reduction of deforestation and forest degradation, an impressive array of geo-locative and remote sensing capabilities are being developed to map the world’s forests and identify the location of individual trees with startling precision.

For example, as part of the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and its member countries and partners is undertaking a global remote sensing survey of forests covering the whole land surface of the Earth. FAO is also providing technical support for national forest assessments and the establishment of national forest monitoring systems. See: Global Forest Resources Assessment

Do You See the Forest or the Trees?

Remote sensing of forest biomass and geo-locative tagging of trees will become increasingly important as the exemption of carbon dioxide emissions from bioenergy use will only be appropriate if there is a system that also counts emissions from deforesting land and land use activities that degrade forest ecologies. In that way, if biomass for energy use results in deforestation, emissions are counted as land use emissions equivalent to fossil fuel emissions. However, these new applications will also be making it possible to stem the tsunami of “Go Digital, Save Trees” Tree-Wash marketing claims that many marketers of e-billing, e-books and digital media have been flooding the market with.

One of the little known but significant causes of deforestation in the United States related to digital media is the practice of Mountain Top Removal, employed to mine the coal used to generate electricity in states like West Virginia. In 2008 over 41 million tons of coal were extracted by means of Mountain Top Removal in West Virginia. Coal provides the majority of electric power in 32 states, and 99 percent of the electricity generated in West Virginia comes from coal.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that by 2013 an area the size of Delaware will have been deforested to extract coal. In addition to the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the energy consumed by digital media’s IT infrastructure, the deforestation, toxic air pollution and water pollution impacts associated with coal mining, coal combustion and coal waste need to be considered before making claims about digital media being greener than print or saving trees.

Truth in Augmented Reality

Deforestation, illegal logging and land-use changes that result in greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental damage are serious matters that billions of people care about. With today’s advanced remote sensing and geo-location capabilities consumers have every reason to expect marketers making claims about their offerings saving trees, or resulting in the planting of trees, to identify the trees in question and account for the life cycle impacts associated with their products. Even if the FTC does not yet prosecute such cases, that would not preclude a competitor from calling on the National Advertising Review Council to review the truthfulness and accuracy of a green marketing claim.

As we enter the “Post Madoff” trust-but-verify age of social-media powered transparency and climate awareness, it is becoming more possible and important than ever to monitor the green message content and supply chain impacts of advertising. Pixels may not grow on trees, but it is increasingly likely that remote sensing and augmented reality pixels can and will be used to hold marketers responsible for the carbon footprint of their media supply chains and the truthfulness and accuracy of advertising claims they make about saving or planting trees.

*Author: Donald Carli
Senior Research Fellow
Institute for Sustainable Communication
http://www.sustaincom.org

By Ben Ferguson and Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

Monday, 30 November 2009, Independent

Only seven days to go now, in the Countdown to Copenhagen – one week until 192 nations come together to try to negotiate a new international climate treaty that will allow the world to deal with the potentially catastrophic threat of global warming.

Most world leaders, from US President Barack Obama down, will attend the meeting in the Danish capital which begins on 7 December and lasts until 19 December; it will be one of the largest international gatherings ever seen, with about 15,000 delegates and diplomats working behind the prime ministers and presidents who will make the final decisions.

But there is another gathering taking place in Copenhagen, running in parallel with the main conference, and that is the coming together of environmental activists from all over the world, who are flocking to Denmark to cheer the conference on, as it were, and also to give it a few sharp prods – to remind the presidents and the prime ministers doing the deciding that the situation is serious and needs an adequate response.

There may be 10,000 of them. There may be 20,000. There may be even 30,000. Their official focus will be Klimaforum09, the alternative “people’s summit” which will host speakers such as the anti-globalisation activist Naomi Klein, the author and climate campaigner George Monbiot and the radical Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva. “Klimaforum’s aim is to provide an opportunity for the public to enter into discussion,” said its spokesman Richard Steed. “We’re going to be looking at radical solutions.”

Plenty of people will be offering them. Naomi Klein, the Canadian author whose book No Logo became a key text for anti-globalisation campaigners, contrasted Copenhagen with the “Battle of Seattle”, the angry confrontation with the authorities at the World Trade Organisation conference in 1999, which she took part in.

This time around, she believes, “it’s really tricky for activists in terms of figuring out how you interact with a summit like this. There’s a different dynamic [from Seattle], because the fact is that the people in the streets overwhelmingly support the mission of the meeting in Copenhagen. And, so, they’re not saying ‘no’ to the idea of a climate summit. In fact, they’re saying ‘yes’.”

Friends of the Earth International (FOE) have organised one of the major actions during the conference, known as The Flood. Part of the Global Day of Action on 12 December – the middle Saturday of the conference when the city centre will become a carnival of parades – this will consist of about 3,000 members of the public taking to the streets dressed in blue. They will march towards the Bella Centre, where the main climate conference is being held, after joining up with other groups. “System Change, Not Climate Change” is the slogan for the less formal actions being organised by Climate Justice Action (CJA), the umbrella group for an international network that includes Climate Camp, Focus on the Global South, and the Indian Social Action Forum.

The organisations marching that day plan to convene outside the Bella Centre to show the level of solidarity needed to cut carbon emissions at an appropriate rate. As well as attempting to persuade governments to commit to these targets, the demonstrators will also argue that market-based ideas such as the trading of carbon emissions are merely opportunities for companies to profit from pollution. Most of the protesters reject the involvement of the World Bank in international climate finance.

Exhibitions by members of indigenous populations from Peru, the Philippines and the Arctic will discuss the policies of developed governments, such as the idea of carbon offsetting as a method to reduce carbon emissions. NGOs including The Third World Network, Focus on the Global South and Jubilee South will participate in the official conference and lobby against the dangers of these proposals to local communities.

Crowds are expected to gather in Copenhagen for the arrival of the high delegates on 16 December. At 7pm, during “Earth Hour” the lights of the city will be turned off, sending a message about the need for a commitment to a global climate deal. On the same day, demonstrators will attempt to enter the Bella Centre en masse, turning the debate into the People’s Assembly for Climate Justice.

“We’ll definitely be met with violence from the police,” said UK-based protester Isabel Jama. “CJA has a guideline that we’ll only use our bodies in the protest, and we’re anticipating police tactics to be an obstacle to get around, not to confront. However, this will be different to UK protests where police don’t use teargas, and we’ll be working with legal and medical teams on the day. Danish kids are rowdy and the police use dispersal tactics there.”

Danish officials have taken a firm stance against activism in recent years, and UK protestors are expecting to witness the type of resistance seen in the dismantling of the “Ungdomshuset”, a youth community centre run by activists and musicians in the centre of Copenhagen. When police emptied the building in March 2007, more than 400 people were arrested and teargas was used against the crowds.

The Danish government announced recently that they have turned warehouses and gyms outside the city into temporary prisons, and a new law has been hurried through parliament ahead of the summit to allow police to arrest anyone who they suspect might breach the peace.

“Protests have begun to combat these infringements of civil liberties, and whilst there’s an ideological perspective to their action their point is informed by the environmental agenda that requires a constructive outcome,” said Danish student Seb Ross.

Who’s who: The activists

Never Trust a Cop: anti-capitalist network which formed in April 2009 to mobilise against COP15 and link social struggles and climate activism.

Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination: art-activist group from Bristol which is teaming up with Climate Camp, pictured, unleash civil disobedience on Reclaim Power day.

n La Via Campesina: movement which coordinates peasant organisations of small and middle-scale producers to search for sustainable agriculture.

Food Not Bombs: grassroots movement which shares free vegan and vegetarian meals at demonstrations.

Climate Justice Action: global network committed to taking the urgent actions needed to combat climate change

Indian Social Action Forum: national forum of more than 500 social action groups, people’s movements and progressive intellectuals that resists globalisation and defends democracy in India.

Act on Copenhagen

UK Government’s ambition for aglobal deal on climate change
www.actoncopenhagen.decc.gov.uk

Global Climate Week 21^st – 25^th September 2009

As part of the Seal the Deal! Campaign, UNEP are leading the Global Climate Week, which is planned to coincide with the United Nations Secretary-General’s High Level Summit on Climate Change on 22^nd September 2009.

This important week and the lead-up weekend will be marked by synchronized activities in more than 100 cities to urge world leaders to seal a fair and effective climate agreement at the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen this December.

Global Climate Week will unite efforts, whether individual or collective, calling for urgent action to combat climate change – the greatest challenge of our time.

Cities, organizations, groups and individuals are invited to mobilize their networks and join the effort.

The United Nations is also encouraging communities, businesses and individuals to add their voices to the “Seal the Deal!” campaign during Global Climate Week by signing the online Climate Petition, which will be presented to the governments of the world in Copenhagen, she said. The petition is available at http://www.sealthedeal2009.org/the-climate-petition

According to a statement by UN spokesperson, Michele Montas, “the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon is calling on communities around the world to take advantage of the week to encourage leaders to seal a fair, balanced and effective agreement on climate change.”

Montas stated that events have been planned in more than 120 countries “for this first Global Climate Week, which coincides with the UN Summit on Climate Change convened by the Secretary-General in New York, on 22 September.”

Be part of Global Climate Week

Enter your Global Climate Week pledge at www.sealthedeal2009.org.Afterwards, share your activities with the world by uploading a report, including video and photos.

The Lead-up Weekend

Day 1 - Saturday 19th
Global Tree Planting Drive

Mass tree planting activities may actually help save the planet! Beginning on 19 September, each tree pledged or planted during Global Climate Week will carry the Seal the Deal! message – a direct call for political action on climate change. Let us know how many trees you are pledging to plant and where. The planting can be part of your Clean up the World activity.
Make sure tree-planters sign the Climate Petition at: www.sealthedeal2009.org. The tree-planting drive is carried out in cooperation with the UN Billion Tree Campaign.

Day 2 - Sunday, 20th
Climate Petition Day

Organize public events or online activities to encourage as many people as possible in every corner of the world to sign the Climate Petition. We need millions to show their support in favour of a definitive agreement on climate change by signing the Climate Petition, which calls on leaders to sign a definitive and equitable agreement on climate change this December.

Global Climate Week

Day 3 - Monday 21st
Climate Change Assembly Day

Young people around the world will hold peaceful assemblies in support of definitive global action on climate change, under the banner “Seal the Deal!” The Climate Petition will be made available online in a print-friendly format to allow campaigners to hand over a meaningful statement to their national and local authorities, urging governments to reach an agreement in Copenhagen.

Day 4 - Tuesday 22nd
Seal the Deal! Green Day

Wear SOMETHING GREEN to show support and solidarity for sealing the deal in Copenhagen on the day the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, hosts world leaders at a UN High Level Event on Climate Change in New York. Leaders will come face-to-face with the latest support for the Climate Petition.

You can also:

• Arrange for a Seal the Deal! Support Day at work or school
• Add a message to the Climate Wall Twitter, blog, or write an Editorial or a letter to your editor
• Download the Seal the Deal! Screen Saver
• Get creative and do your own thing to show support for urgent action to combat climate change!

Day 5 - Wednesday 23rd
Go Climate Neutral Day

Power down! Go climate neutral for the day in a personal show of support for a definitive agreement on climate change.

Countries, cities, businesses and organizations:

• Pledge innovative action to lessen your carbon footprint.
• Join the UN Climate Neutral Network www.unep.org/climateneutral

Communities and individuals:

• Ride your bike, car pool or take public transport
• Enjoy a candlelit dinner while you turn off the lights
• Find ways to offset your carbon footprint.
• Make a pledge and upload your action, photos, video, songs and comments at www.sealthedeal2009.org

Day 6 - Thursday 24th
Climate Voices Day

Join the global chorus calling on world leaders to act now to protect people and the planet, and to power green growth. Have your voice heard on climate change and acknowledge the heroes and victims of climate change, as well as the individuals and groups who are taking positive action to combat climate change in their communities.

Nominate your local climate champ at www.sealthedeal2009.org

Record your testimonial of how climate change is affecting you at the Climate Wall

Day 7 - Friday 25th
Climate Solutions Day

The latest science shows our climate is changing more rapidly than expected. But it is not too late to change our habits and implement solutions so that humans stop harming the climate. From low energy bulbs to fuel-cell cars, solutions for a low carbon future are evolving every day.

Showcase your green technology innovation and share it with the world at www.sealthedeal2009.org