Climate change campaign

The last station of the one-week long Climate Deal campaign was organized in Szolnok by Nimfea Environmental and Nature Conservation Association and Tisza Klub in partnership with Friends of the Earth Hungary, joining to the Europe-wide campaign. During the campaign all passers-by could make their deal to the policy-makers: they could offer a small change in their own life in exchange for a request from the decision-makers, in order to stop climate change.

    The campaign lasted from 11 to 21 September, starting in Budapest. On the same day a national climate conference was held in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, organized by the Environment Protection Committee of the Parliament, the Environmental Science Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Environment and Water, the National Environment Protection Council and Friends of the Earth Hungary.
“Several symptoms, such as the increasing level of carbon-dioxide emission in the EU and in Hungary as well, extreme weather conditions, like cataclysmic storms, droughts and floods clearly show that policy-makers do not address climate change in an appropriate and comprehensive way” – said István Farkas, managing director of Friends of the Earth Hungary.
    The last day of the campaign was 21 September, and the event took place in Szolnok, a town of 55.000 inhabitants in the Great Hungarian Plain. The huge Carbon Dinosaur was a highlight of the day, and passers-by could formulate their deal to the government, such as “I will use my bike more often. In return, government should improve public transport in town” or “I will use train instead of motorways – in return, the government should make steps to promote railway transport in the case of industrial and agricultural products”. During the day citizens made 84 deals, written to large speech bubbles. A photo was taken of each deal, and a photo album will be compiled of the bubbles of European citizens, which will be delivered to the UN climate conference in Nairobi, Kenya in November 2006.
    Friends of the Earth Hungary continued the campaign with a Climate Bet, including a meeting with Miklós Persányi, the environmental minister, accompanied by students of three high schools. The students made a bet that they will decrease their carbon-dioxide emission by 8% by the end of the year. The minister pledged that if the students can keep their promise, he will use public transportation once a week instead of his car, he will turn off electronic equipments instead of leaving them in stand-by mode, he will drink tap water instead of soft drinks and bottled mineral water, even in the ministry tap water will be served in jugs instead of bottled soft drinks, and 23 cars will be sold from the car fleet of the ministry.
    Let’s wait and see if the minister will keep his promise – the students will surely make their best!

More information on the campaign is available on the website of Friends of the Earth Europe at www.foeeurope.org in English,
and on the website of Friends of the Earth Hungary at www.mtvsz.hu in Hungarian.