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Friday FTW: Greenpeace billboards show world leaders the future, and it's not pretty

kim hart macneill

Stephen Harpers grim, digitially aged face warns of what will happen if world leaders dont take decisive action at the Copenhagen climate summit Dec 7 - 18.

Stephen Harper's grim, digitally aged face stares down at travellers passing through the Copenhagen airport. Greenpeace is pressuring world leaders to take decisive action at the Copenhagen climate summit Dec 7–18.

Greenpeace predicts world leaders will be making a big apology in 11 years if they don’t step up at the Copenhagen climate summit next week.

A new line of giant ads in the Copenhagen airport features Harper, Obama, and 6 other serious looking, digitally aged world leaders saying, “I’m sorry. We could have stopped catastrophic climate change… we didn’t.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s billboard appears next to an advertisement informing travellers of the efforts the airport has taken to reduce their CO2 production. At least someone’s trying.

The project is a partnership between Greenpeace and tcktcktck.org, a hub for mobilizing individuals and groups to urge world leaders for a binding agreement to take bold action on climate change.

“If leaders like Obama, Sarkozy, Merkel and Brown don’t deliver at this summit their legacy will be mass starvation, mass migration and mass famine. If that happens sorry might be the hardest word, but it won’t be enough,”

“Now is the time to act on climate [change] in order to save our future. Not next year – and not the year after. If we want to have any chance of stopping climate chaos, global emissions must peak by 2015.”

Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International and Chairman of tcktcktck.org.

Another project allied with tcktcktck.org is Love Letters to the Future. The site asks people around the world to post letters, tweets, pictures, or videos with their thoughts for the people of 2109. The love letters voted into the top 100 will be put in a time capsule in Copenhagen on December 13, to be opened in 100 years.

The messages apologize for environmental destruction, promise to do more, and share images and descriptions of snow, trees, slow loris, and blue skies – just in case the time capsule out lives them. A scary thought indeed.

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