One day during his travels photographer Mark Edwards was walking in a barren desert in the heat of day. A nomad came up to him and asked if he wanted some tea. He then knocked two sticks together and created fire to make him some tea. Right then and there out of his recorder sounded Bob Dylan's A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. And with a little help and goodwill from Dylan himself this later became the title of Mark Edward's photo exhibition accompanied by the Dylan song.The photo exhibition comprises photos of people living in poverty and in barren places. And it intends to make an impression on world leaders when they meet at COP15 during the next couple of weeks. The photo exhibition was opened formally at Kongens Nytorv in central Copenhagen today, Sunday, together with the Seal the Deal campaign to make the same leaders sign a binding climate action plan.
At the opening was also, Klaus Bondam, Mayor of Technology and Environment in Copenhagen, and Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the Environment Programme. The Seal the Deal supporting signatures will be handed over to the COP with recordings and photographs from people all over the world stored in a silver globe.
'It will be handed over in a symbolic gesture to the Conference of the Parties [COP]. Over a hundred heads over states are now coming, and I think it is partly because of this. People have expectations of their leaders, and these signatures is just one way of expressing the feeling, that we must act now on climate change,' Achim Steiner said.Hopefully they will. Since this is what will happen, if not:
Alison Gannett from Colorado, USA, was at the opening in Copenhagen with a global warning to signal the urgent need for fighting global warming. She is an extreme ski enthusiast, and just finished a walk from London to Brussels with her skis on her back under the motto of Save Our Snow.
And on one of the squares in Copenhagen a melting polar bear gives symbolic witness to the effects of global warming. If these things will not give a global warning to world leaders for the upcoming COP15, what will?