Volunteers are being recruited for Christian Aid's upcoming climate change march in the UK. The charity is searching throughout churches and communities nationwide for people who will 'put their best foot forward' for the first ever mass march for climate justice this summer.
The 11-week, 1000 mile Cut the Carbon march will need hundreds of marchers, including 10 core marchers who will walk the whole route. They will join campaigners from the developing world to protest against the scandalous injustice that poor peoples' lives are being wrecked by dangerous greenhouse gas emissions pumped into the atmosphere by the rich world.
Letters of recruitment have already been sent to the Anglican, Baptist, Methodist and URC churches and Christian Aid is also talking with leaders of many black majority churches.
Beginning in Northern Ireland on the 14 July 2007, Cut the Carbon will pass through Scotland, England and Wales and arrive in London via Bournemouth and the Labour Party conference eleven weeks later.
The march will be in the tradition of marching against injustice that informed both the Jarrow March for jobs in 1936 and the Nelson Mandela freedom march in 1988.
"Climate change is the most serious threat to the future of all of us, but the shocking truth is that it's poor people in the developing world who are already on the frontline of climate chaos," said Paul Brannen, head of campaigns at Christian Aid. "We have a moral duty to stop this now and where better to start than at home?"
The march will deliver the essential message that the world's poorest are already suffering due to climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions from the rich world, that the UK government must take action to reduce UK carbon emissions immediately and dramatically - by five per cent year on year, and that the UK government must also take the lead on negotiating a fair international agreement that will deliver a 90 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050.
In addition, the charity has switched to an energy supplier that sources from - and funds the building of - renewable energy installations. Christian Aid is reducing staff travel, especially air travel, and is taking all feasible energy-efficiency measures.
