THE 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (COP) is taking place in oil-rich Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, under the slogan “In Solidarity for a Green World”. There’s an even larger climate change project happening on the other side of the world in Florida.

US President-elect Donald “I’ll show King Canute how it’s done” Trump is a climate change denier: an opinion he has reached with even less critical thinking than Jeremy Clarkson used before he said he would be perfectly happy if the British weather was a bit warmer.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has made welcome commitments in Baku on the UK’s targets to reduce emissions. If his Government is to meet these targets, he will need a willing population, ready to take the necessary action. All this means that we must not only know about climate change: we must also understand it. The world has now experienced its first year with an average temperature 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, so there really is no time to lose.

To this end, Fiona Atkinson has begun a petition on the Parliamentary Petitions website. It calls for the Government to run a public information campaign on the crisis – a good way of keeping the issue in the public eye. The petition has already been signed by 7,440 people. Its first target is 10,000. Please sign it – and share this article with your friends and family so that they sign too.

●Sign the petition here:
Petition

●To catch up with the news in East London, go to:
East London News