What if a billion people jump?
Posted on 04. Oct, 2010 by annac in United Kingdom
Another Monday morning at the UN. However I’m really glad to say this morning I didn’t get that usual deja vu feeling. Maybe it’s because the conference centre here is not like any we have been to before, it’s super modern, huge and very, very fancy. It is definitely a lifetime away from the hotel where negotiations are held in Bonn…
Another major difference is the number of people in the conference centre. Not as in negotiators and NGOs, no there are exactly the same number of them wandering around (if anything a few less). No, the difference is in the number of people who are here to help. Here to point you in the right direction, here to hand you things, here to walk you the 2m to the buffet, here to tell you you can’t go places…. There’s MILLIONS of them! All in their fancy new tracksuits.
I guess in a country of a billion people there’s generally a few of them milling around.
I mean have most of you ever heard of Tianjin? Probably not. Even though Tianjin is a city of 12 million people. That’s nearly twice the size of London! Just to illustrate further at the minute it’s a national Holiday here in China, which also means it’s wedding season. Every day in Tianjin this week 30,000 couples get married. 30,000! EVERYDAY! (just imagine how many firecrackers this means get used, it honestly sounds like we live in a war zone!)
People…a billion people…. they really are China’s biggest resource.
In fact people are the world’s biggest resource.
Because it is people who are going to sort this mess out.
People, not politicians.
Luckily people are already getting it. This morning as the talks started we erected a visual Great Wall of China, a picture mosacic under the banner ‘I will act on climate, will you?’ A picture mosaic made of thousands of people who get it.
That’s why as these talks finish on Saturday people all over the world will be showing politicians how it’s done. On 10/10/10 people all over the world will mobilise to do their bit, to get to work, to act on climate change.
People get it.
People are already doing it.
And when people act together we can change the world.
As for the politicians, well politicians are important, but they are important only when they act as people. In the talks here what we need now is a bit of humanity. We need people. People with ideas, people with vision, people with ambition, people who care. That’s what makes us people - the ability to care. As we enter another week of negotiations we need to see the people who care here act like it.
A human will jump through fire to save someone they care about.
Imagine what would happen if all of China jumped at the same time.
Imagine if we all jumped…
