The United Nations Climate Change Secretariat on Friday announced the launch of a global citizens’ climate pledge, calling for people worldwide to halve their carbon footprints within 10 years. “The climate talks in Paris this past December highlighted the urgent role that individuals are playing in addressing climate change. When we take hands-on action to reduce our personal climate footprint, we join a global movement of action on climate change,” U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa said in a press release.
Using a website launched for the initiative, citizens can calculate their carbon footprints and then pledge to reduce it by 50 percent in no more than a decade “by making low carbon choices around energy use, travel, eating and consumption habits, electronic devices and household appliances, and by offsetting emissions they cannot reduce,” the release says.
Thousands of Finnish citizens have signed on to the initiative since it was launched on a small scale in Finland last year. “Citizens’ role in the mitigation of climate change is bigger than most of us expect. We have studied that with just a handful of energy and transportation related choices and solutions, citizens can have significant potential to reduce CO2 emissions in Finland,” Jouni Keronen, executive director of the Climate Leadership Council and a board member of Finland’s Myrskyvaroitus ry (Storm Warning Association), said in the release.
