All aboard the month-long Climate Change Express to Copenhagen

With the Copenhagen conference quickly on its way, a new and one-time train link between Kyoto and Copenhagen has just opened for traffic. Sponsored by the United Nations, the Climate Change Express is a one-month, 9,000-kilometer journey that symbolically joins the site of the last global warming pact with what is hoped to be the birthplace of the next major, and stricter, treaty to combat climate change.

The Train to Copenhagen will roll across the globe through the vast wilds of Russian Siberia and into Europe as part of the UN Seal the Deal! campaign. Aboard, environmental experts and climate change campaigners will send eye-witness accounts of global warming signs under way while working to raise awareness of the impact of the transport sector, which already accounts for over one fifth of global CO2 greenhouse emissions.

These emissions are projected to double within only 40 years and railways are crucial in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and developing sustainable transport systems.

Redirecting the “road to nowhere”

Launched by UNEP, WWF and the International Union of Railways (UIC), the Train to Copenhagen aims to galvanize political will and public support for reaching a comprehensive global climate agreement in December.

“We are on the road to nowhere if existing policies and economic models prevail with their over-emphasis on private cars and on shifting shipments of goods to the roads,” UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said. “The Train to Copenhagen project is a showcase of sustainable transport solutions that will be part and parcel of a resource-efficient, low-carbon Green Economy of the 21st Century.

“By Sealing the Deal on an ambitious climate agreement in Copenhagen, governments will get into gear to propel the world to a low-carbon future so that societies may also finally embark on a journey to more sustainable transport.”

Trekking through climate change “hotspots”

The Train to Copenhagen departs Kyoto station on November 5th – leaving behind the Japanese city where the Kyoto Protocol that sets binding greenhouse gas reduction targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European Union (EU) was adopted in 1997 – and make its way by ferry to Daejeon, Republic of Korea (ROK).

There it will board another ferry for Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East for that vast transcontinental journey to drum up support for a new compact with much stronger cuts to replace the Protocol on the expiration of the first commitment period at the end of 2012.

Rumbling across Siberia – a global climate change hotspot -  it will be hauled along the famous Trans-Siberian Railway and go by ferry across Lake Baikal, the most voluminous freshwater lake in the world, and stop in Moscow, the Polish city of Poznan and then Berlin before arriving in Brussels on December 5th.

From Brussels, The Express will take on board more than 400 climate change negotiators, campaigners and other high-profile personalities going to Copenhagen, for a 12-hour on-track conference focusing on how to solve the challenges posed by the transport sector with regard to global warming.

On arrival, the Climate Express will remain at Copenhagen Central Station throughout the two-week conference, serving as a mobile exhibition open to the public about low-carbon transport solutions.

“It is clear that business as usual is not an option if we want to reverse current trends and prevent catastrophic climate change,” UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said. “If we can really integrate the costs of pollution into the price of transportation, rail will be a big winner.”