September 28, ೨೦೦೯,
When I arrived in New York last week to follow the journey of four women from across the world during Climate Week - I knew I would find some interesting stories. And I expected to feel a little emotional -- but I had no idea how meeting these amazing women would really affect me. The affects of climate change were already obvious to me -- or so I thought.
As a web editor for Greenpeace - I find myself writing facts and figures about climate change mostly every day. I've read about the Pacific Islands, I'd heard about the droughts in Africa and I saw the catastrophic impacts of Hurricane Katrina on the news. But until I got to New York last week - I had never met a single person who had been seriously affected by events that are now increasing and becoming more severe as a direct result of a climate that's changing mainly thanks to us. And by 'us' I mean folks from industrialised nations.
Todd Lucier, a blogger who also met these women last week, puts it really well:
For many of us, the idea of a changing climate is just that, an idea, something vague, distant and unfortunately irrelevant.
Hearing what these women have been through first hand - and what they have witnessed with their own eyes - really brought the issue of climate change alive for me. What were previously numbers on my latop screen were now four women sitting in front of me. And while most of them have experienced great suffering, they have all found tremendous strength and become community leaders - raising awareness, driving solutions and calling for action.
