Global day of Action in Poznan

Today was the global day of action on climate change. There was a bike rally organised here by friends of the Earth Poland and some other groups under the coalition of bikes for climate.

It was a huge critical mass of many many cyclists. It was bigger than any other group of cyclists i have ever been in. We cycled around the misty city singing and chanting for climate action. It was really great to see the road filled with only by Trams and bicycles, very much the way I think it should be.

When we had finished our cycle around the city we returned to freedom square to join the march on foot. There was quite a heavy police presence. A particular line of eight or nine of them stood outside Mc Donalds, protecting that particular symbol of capitalism in case any of us got big ideas about the root causes of climate change.

There were a strong band of red and black flags waving from the anarchist block, but all the police horses had to do in the end was try to eat some of the lovely array of green banners. I wonder how things went back home, where I know that all over Ireland people were ringing in the changes to herald a new era of action on climate change. Back at the convention centre the feeling was that things inside the talks were very much being held up by things outside.

The Eu are jeopardising the hopes of progress here with their weak positon. On tuesday Merkel and Tusk are meeting in Warsaw and a special train full of activists from the cop will travel there to present them with provisional fossils. they can make these fossils go away if they make good and create a strong eu package. The wonderful youth people here had a strong action yesterday.

Their prop was a huge parcel that represented the Eu package, however the thing was that it was empty! This action was a great visual display and caused a ripple that went beyond Poznan. News reached us that Ed Miliband had heard of ths action and liked it! Its been a really long week and I am feeling the effects. My tired head is swiming with acronym soup, REDD, CDM, AWG-Kp.

I can't gp to bed though because tonight is the big NGO party famed for being the biggest bash the COP sees. SO i'm off to drink nice polish beer. Don't expect any posts too early tomorrow morning. Not becuase your blogger will be suffering (although she may be) but because the foe strategy meeting is from 9am to 1pm tomorrow!