Sydney marchers are also warming up – as is the weather, with that blue sky deciding to put in an appearance after all – and is expected to be the biggest Australian march of the day. Will NSW be able to best Melbourne’s 40,000+ from Friday?
Reader Tim Senior and friends are well stocked with placards for the Sydney rally:
A reminder: do keep your pictures, videos, thoughts and headcounts coming, to me directly @Claire_Phipps or via the blue GuardianWitness button at the top of the blog. Thank you!
Nations responsible for more than 90% of global emissions have now come up with their targets – known in the UN jargon as intended nationally determined contributions, or INDCs.
These include all of the major developed and developing countries, though their contributions vary: in the case of developed countries, actual cuts in emissions, but for developing countries a range of targets including limits on emissions compared to “business as usual”, and pledges to increase low-carbon energy or preserve forests.
However, that is not the end of the story. One of the key components of any Paris agreement would be to institute a system of review of the emissions targets every five years, with a view to ratcheting them upwards.
Another, and complementary, approach is to make more effort to bring down emissions outside the UN process, for instance by engaging “non-state actors” such as cities, local governments and businesses to do more.
It’s Canberra’s turn now, and again it looks to be a very healthy turnout under a beautiful blue sky (it’s rather grey here in Sydney, not that that should put anyone off):
A reminder: you can contribute your own pictures and videos via the blue GuardianWitness button at the top of this live blog, and/or to me @Claire_Phipps.
Avaaz, the campaign group behind the march, says more than 120,000 people have already taken part – with thousands of rallies yet to take place on Sunday, the main day of action.
Organisers said thousands took part in 35 New Zealand locations – the smallest being on Raoul Island, where the island’s entire population of seven turned out.
My colleague Melissa Davey was at the Melbourne march on Friday evening and sent this report:
Thousands of people were marching through Melbourne’s CBD on Friday evening in what is expected to the largest in a series of climate change protests being held throughout Australia over the weekend.
They gathered in front of the state library and, as the lawns filled with protesters putting finishing touches on their placards, they took to the surrounding roads just in time for peak hour.
Environmentalists, unionists, religious organisations, youth groups, doctors, Indigenous organisations, and people from the aid and development sector were part of the crowd. Police estimates put the crowd numbers by the end of the night at about 40,000, but organisers said 60,000 turned out for the event.
After the terrorist attacks of 13 November, the meeting of world leaders in the French capital beginning on Monday has an added poignancy.
But the COP 21 talks – it stands for conference of the parties, the yearly United Nations climate change conference; this is the 21st – will focus on hammering out a new global agreement to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and with them the threat of climate change.
Here are a couple of key questions answered by the Guardian’s environment reporter Fiona Harvey:
Why now?
Current commitments on greenhouse gas emissions run out in 2020, so at Paris governments are expected to produce an agreement on what happens for the decade after that at least, and potentially beyond.
Why is this important?
Scientists have warned that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, we will pass the threshold beyond which global warming becomes catastrophic and irreversible. That threshold is estimated as a temperature rise of 2C above pre-industrial levels, and on current emissions trajectories we are heading for a rise of about 5C.
That may not sound like much, but the temperature difference between today’s world and the last ice age was about 5C, so seemingly small changes in temperature can mean big differences for the Earth.
Will world leaders go to Paris?
Yes. The heads of state or government of more than 130 countries have already said they will come. These include French president Francois Hollande, Barack Obama of the US, Xi Jinping of China, Narendra Modi of India, Angela Merkel of Germany, Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull, John Key of New Zealand and David Cameron of the UK.
Unlike the Copenhagen talks in 2009, however, at which world leaders turned up at the last minute of the two weeks of talks, this time the leaders will arrive at the beginning of the conference, give their negotiating teams clear instructions, and expect a fully formed agreement at the end of it.
Some Australian cities have already met and marched, with Melbourne getting in first on Friday evening, and Darwin and Brisbane on Saturday. I’ll have reports and pictures from those marches on this live blog shortly, along with news from New Zealand, which held most of its events on Saturday too.
Here’s the line-up for today:
Adelaide: Action started from 11am local (11.30am AEDT) at Ester Lipman Gardens, adjacent to the Torrens Parade Ground.
Canberra: Speakers from 12 midday at Parliament Lawns before the march to the Tent Embassy grounds and West Lawns.
Sydney: Marchers are asked to gather at 12.30 for a 1pm start from the Domain.
Hobart: March begins at 1pm from Parliament Lawns.
Perth: Another 1pm start (4pm AEDT), from Wellington Square.
Welcome to live coverage of the global climate march – a continent-spanning series of rallies which organisers hope will see millions of people join to highlight the need for a worldwide consensus on tackling climate change ahead of the COP21 talks in Paris, which open tomorrow.
I’ll be kicking off this live blog from Sydney, handing over later to colleagues in London and New York, and aiming to bring you updates from marches in all those places and everywhere in between.
This year, marchers will not be able to rally in Paris, the home of the climate talks starting on Monday – demonstrations were cancelled in the wake of the 13 November terror attacks. Instead, others have been encouraged by Parisians to #March4Me; we’ll be keeping an eye on that campaign throughout the day.
If you’re taking part in the marches and want to share a story, an observation, a pun or a picture, please do get in touch below the line or give me a shout on Twitter @Claire_Phipps. I’ll tweet key developments from there too.
You can also share your pictures and videos of the march via GuardianWitness here or the blue button at the top of the blog, just up there.
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