Wake-up Call

At first, Monday night seemed much like any other September night
in Ardfern. The wind drove the rain down the empty street and
buffeted against the door of the red telephone box. A pair of dogs
circled each other near the pub. Inside the pub, a barmaid polished the
glasses as the clock ticked noisily on the wall. Nothing much was happening. But
then, out of the shadows, forty or fifty people arrived with pots and
pans and drums and fog horns. Over the next five minutes, cold
was forgotten as children and adults worked to make as much noise as
possible. They needed to make a lot of noise because their wake-up
cal had to reach all the way from this tiny west-coast village to
London and to sound the alarm in advance of a meeting of world leaders meeting
in New York (September 22). Scotland already has a world
leading climate change bill but this event was part of a global wake
up call to governments all over the world to urge them to secure a
fair, ambitious and binding treaty when they meet in Copenhagen for the
Climate Change Summit 2009. In 134 countries, from Argentina to
Zimbabwe, millions of people took part and Ardfern was on the map. A few polite phone calls to our government
leaders backed up the message and some photos were taken. As one local noted
“If we don’t tell our leaders what we want and what is important to us, then we
can’t complain when they get it wrong.” After five minutes of noise, as
quickly as they had arrived, the wake-up callers left, the dogs
trotted back into the puddles and the wet wind blew through the
echoes: the clock was still ticking. Had anything changed? Most definitely yes.
The children were now wide
awake and had sent an unmistakable message to our leaders for a fair
climate treaty.
photo: John Revie