The coalition - which includes groups such as Oxfam, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the WWF - called the protest “The Wave,’’ and organizers asked marchers to dress in blue. The march ended with a mass “wave’’ around Parliament.
Thousands more people attended climate protests in Glasgow and Belfast, as well as in other European cities, including Brussels, Paris, and Dublin.
The 192-nation Copenhagen conference will begin tomorrow and continue until Dec. 18. At least 100 world leaders, including President Obama, are expected to attend at least part of the conference.
The summit is expected to produce, at best, a framework for continuing talks that would lead to signing internationally binding final agreements next year.
Among the goals of this round is to set targets for controlling emissions of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases, including by the leading contributors, China, and the United States. The delegates also hope to agree on how much rich countries should pay for poor nations’ clean-energy technology and for sea walls, irrigation, and other projects to counter a changing climate.
“The UK government must fight for a comprehensive, fair, and binding deal at Copenhagen - that is our demand today and we expect it to be fulfilled,’’ Barbara Stocking, chief executive of Oxfam Great Britain, said yesterday. “They must return home with a strong, effective climate deal both for our own sakes in the UK and for the millions of poor people already suffering from the effects of climate change around the world.’’
Also yesterday, Britain’s Met Office said it would publish some of the data it uses to analyze climate change, after thousands of pieces of correspondence between some of the world’s leading climate scientists were stolen from the University of East Anglia and leaked to the Internet.
Skeptics of man-made global warming say the correspondence proves that scientists have been conspiring to hide evidence about climate change.
On Friday, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, said the issue raised by the e-mails was serious and would be looked at in detail.
Most climate scientists say their content has no bearing on the principles of climate change itself, but the leak - just before the Copenhagen summit - has been politically explosive.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said yesterday that “the scientific evidence is strong’’ and it was essential for a deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in Copenhagen.
Barry Gromett, Met Office spokesman, said data from 1,000 weather stations around the world, covering 150 years, will be released early next week.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India will attend the UN summit, a spokesman said yesterday, ending days of speculation about the country’s level of representation at the landmark conference.
Singh will address the summit during his two-day visit, said the spokesman, Muthu Kumar.
