Love Leitrim gathering to call for urgent Climate Action at COP27

This Saturday November 12th at the Famine graveyard in Manorhamilton at 12 midday Love Leitrim are asking people to gather and join the call for global leaders at Cop 27 to take urgent action to tackle climate change.

Love Leitrim will join other climate, environmental and social justice groups groups from around the world in a global day of action. 

The Famine graveyard has been chosen for the gathering making the connection between Ireland's historical experience of famine and those people today living with extreme hunger, famine, flooding and displacement as a result of the climate crisis. A similar event will also take place in Dublin on the same day at the Famine Memorial. 

Love Leitrim Chairperson Jamie Murphy said "The devastating impacts of Climate Change are more and more visible across the world with in recent weeks with flooding in Pakistan resulting in almost 2,000 people killed, millions displaced and over half of the farmland submerged by water.

"In the last year according to the World Health Organisation there have been a minimum of 15,000 heat related deaths in Europe The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said the world is "on the highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator" while the UN’s environment agency has said there is "no credible pathway to 1.5c in place".

"All countries at COP 27, including Ireland, have a critical responsibility to make sure that real action is taken to protect this and future generations, in particular to protect people who have done the least to cause the climate crisis but suffer the most. We need the Irish government to take a lead, be ambitious, and at the vey least reject  fossil fuel projects like Shannon LNG who want to import fracked gas into Ireland.

"We also need them to use any influence they have to oppose any possibility of fracking in Northern Ireland. The time for promises and words are over. We need action. "