Climate Protesters Maintain Hunger Strike
No commentsThe global climate campaign appears to have assumed a novel dimension as some die-hard environmental activists grit their teeth through a hunger strike, vowing not to eat until a comprehensive solution is agreed.
Seven individuals from Australia , France , Sweden and the US are hungry for climate justice, but have vowed not to take a single bite until 18 December, when they hope a legally-binding climate resolution will be reached by negotiators at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen (known as COP-15).
Essentially, the strikers want to see a resolution that recognises the need to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations below 350 parts per million.
Five of the seven fasters actually began their strikes more than a month ago on 6 November, at the final UN climate talks before Copenhagen that took place in Barcelona. Two additional activists joined in later in November.
All are following in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and other notable political activists who went on hunger strikes to draw attention to their causes. But this uses tools they never had - the internet, blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other media outlets.
These efforts are apparently working, as over 100 people from 14 countries have begun their own hunger strikes, ranging from one day to three weeks in length.
Ted Glick, a New Jersey policy director and Jen Rowe, a Vermont university student, began their fast across the street from the UN building in New York City, while Sandeep Srivastava is fasting with his organisation in Lucknow, India.
Oxford University graduate Dominic Rowland and project manager Howard Balmer are fasting in London ’s Parliament Square , while a Filipino International Youth Council Director, Esperenza Garcia, has embarked on a rolling fast.
The fasters’ website ClimateJusticeFast.com lists the rationale for the hunger strike as follows: “We are offering the strongest form of moral protest against climate inaction, and standing up for true climate justice. We call on both the global public and their political representatives to fulfil their moral responsibility to halt and reverse climate change, and to protect the world’s most vulnerable people and our children from its effects.”
Daniel Lau, a Hong Kong-born Australian studying in Denmark, began fasting on 13 November and plans not to eat until the end of COP-15. So far he has subsisted on water and salts for nearly a month. But even though he isn’t eating, he is still in high spirits, though admittedly delirious at times.
Nonetheless, he still cooks for others and tries to maintain his high spirits. On his blog, Lau wrote: “I am not an activist. So why am I on a hunger strike?”
He answered the question quite simply: “Building a climate movement is a complicated process. But finding an opportunity for individual action and acting on it was surprisingly straightforward.”
But other members of the group take a more aggressive approach. “This is a political cop-out”, 23-year-old Australian hunger-striker Anna Keenan said. “The nations negotiating within the UN framework have been delaying real action on climate change for the last 15 years.”
“Whether it’s engaging in civil disobedience, joining our hunger strike, or something as simple as calling your political representatives, or writing letters, we need people to get active”, said Keenan. “Every year of political delay brings scientific tipping points closer.”
Observers believe that even though the strikes may not have the desired effect on the actions of politicians and negotiators in Copenhagen , they may achieve the goal of drawing global media attention to the activists’ cause.
