Keep it cool! The new FYEG campaign.
Since September 2007 FYEG is running a new campaign, and as already announced during the last GA in Vienna the campaign is on climate change. Raising awareness among Greens, people, and governments to take action in the fight against climate change is the main goal of the campaign. We therefore ask Greens to think about their political role, urge people to use less energy and call for governments to take serious measures to curb the threat of climate change.
But time is running out. Every week scientists tell us that climate change is going faster than they expected and that the effects will be more severe than they thought. In the meantime we postpone all measures and turn to half-hearted measures and fake solutions, while worldwide energy consumption keeps on growing. We can wait no longer, the time for action is now!
The main content of the campaign is filled with several European-wide action weeks and exchanges for Member Organisations. Furthermore, there is an awareness raising campaign that everyone can join on an individual level and a photo contest (deadline April 30) with great prizes to win! All the information about these actions and more can be found on the website www.keepitcoolcampaign.org.
Captain climate
A very special campaign team member is Captain Climate, a green female superhero who is also the mascot and logo of the campaign. Captain Climate will travel through Europe the rest of this year to tell people to take action against climate change. If you want to follow her, you can become her friend on Facebook. She has subscribed under the name of Cap. Climate. Apart from lots of energy saving tips that she will put on the campaign website, she will be visiting many cities and exchanges to collect messages from the people for government leaders, who will meet in Poznan this December for further negotiations on a climate treaty.
Action weeks
The first action week was organized in December 2007; 25 Member Organisations took over the streets on the 8th of December to join the global climate campaign protests! Not only young greens, but people all over the world protested against the lack of action and asked their national governments to start working on serious solutions during the Bali conference that took place that week. The second action week was held between 22-29 April. You can find reports as well as many ideas for actions in the future on the campaign website, as well as all the material you need to make your own Captain Climate. But of course we also invite the members to organise a range of activities related to climate change.
Awareness
An other very important part of the campaign is awareness raising among citizens of the EU. For this part of the campaign you don’t need large numbers of people. The only thing you need to do is print some of the posters that are on the website and hang them in public places, your school, work place or community buildings. You can even use them to decorate the Green headquarters, because even Greens need to be remembered to be green sometimes! You can translate the texts on the poster to your own language so everyone will understand them.
There are posters about turning lights off, using less water or taking public transport. You can also find a link on our website to the global footprint network, where you can measure your own footprint to see how much land you use to sustain your lifestyle. A fair share, the amount of land that every world citizen would be entitled to, is 1.8 hectares- However, most Europeans use almost 4 hectares! If your footprint is to big, we provide you with lots of tips on how you can make your footprint smaller and get a sustainable green lifestyle!
Exchanges
This year FYEG is organising several exchanges related to energy and/or climate change where Captain Climate will also present herself. She was for instance present at the Winter camp recently held in Nantes, France. Other exchanges that will be linked to the campaign are the Summer camp in Czech Republic, the exchange on Nuclear Energy in Norway, the Green summer university and the FYEG GA. FYEG campaigns are made for Member Organisations that can be found all over Europe, increasing the impact that the campaigns can have. On the other hand they only work if all Member Organisations and their members take an active role in the campaign……..
So check out keepitcoolcampaign.org and become a climate hero yourself!