(10/08/2008)

Nic Balthazar directs film clip in Oostende: biggest ever event in Belgium against climate change

10th August 2008, Oostende, Brussels ? Nic Balthazar today directed more than 6,000 members of the public in the film clip ?SOS Climate?. The event, which took place on the Klein Strand in Oostende, forms part of ?The Big Ask? climate campaign of Friends of the Earth, calling for an annual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in Belgium and across Europe. The scenes recorded today included a giant animated human banner giving messages to politicians that it is time to take action on climate change, as well as smaller scenes with well known actors including Micha?l Pas, Ann Miller, Herr Seele, Benthe De Graeve. There were DJ sets from Flip Kowlier and Gabri?l Rios, Axel Daeseleire, Adriaan Van den Hoof, Zohra.

INTERNATIONAL: This event is part of a campaign which is running in 17 European countries and Japan. In all these countries citizens are calling on their politicians to commit to legally binding annual cuts in climate changing emissions. In the UK, Friends of the Earth?s ?Big Ask? has already led to draft law for a climate bill which will be implemented before the end of the year.

BELGIUM: The ?SOS Klimaat? event comes 2 days after the Belgian Disasterfund announced a significant increase in flooding in Belgium over the past decade. Since 2000 the Directie Rampenschade van Binnenlandse Zaken has recorded 54 official disasters, mainly floodings ? already 5 times more than in the nineties. This increase can be directly linked to the effects of climate change, which will significantly increase the amount of rain that falls in North-Western Europe. Combined with sea level rise, an increase in stormy weather caused by climate change puts up to 300 million people in low lying coastal regions around the planet at risk from flooding. A global temperature increase of 2?C could also potentially trigger a ?tipping point? where the increased temperature would cause impacts such as the release of methane from frozen tundra. As methane is itself a powerful greenhouse gas, this would create a spiral of ?runaway climate change?.

While Belgium is being increasingly affected by the effects of climate change, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology placed Belgium at the bottom of the class in a recent international survey of the action that countries are taking to prevent greenhouse gas emissions. The survey found that Belgium had yet to take any significant structural steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The message of The Big Ask climate campaign is that we have a very limited window of opportunity to take action on climate change, and that we need to start taking action now to prevent these catastrophic impacts. The campaign is calling for a strong climate law in Belgium, which would oblige the Belgian government to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 3% per year, leading to a 30% decrease by 2020 and a 90% decrease by 2050.

Koen Cornelis , climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth stated: ?In order to prevent the catastrophic impacts of climate change, we need to achieve significant decreases in greenhouse gas emissions. The issue is too urgent to put off until some point in the future. We need to see annual reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and we believe the best way to achieve this is with a strong and binding climate law, which puts obligations on the government to achieve these changes. Making this film clip with thousands of people is a way to show that many people are aware of the need to take action to prevent catastrophic climate change, and also to show that we have a roadmap for how to achieve this.?

The campaign received the support of Nic Balthazar, and many of the most important companies in the Belgian audiovisual industry, to help realize this ambitious project. The Klein Strand of Oostende was transformed into a giant film set for the day, with members of the public from across Belgium, and as far away as Germany, France, the UK and the Netherlands answering the call to take part in the filming.

Many people took notice of the call to come to Oostende in the most ecologically friendly way possible. The majority of the participants arrived with the Kusttram, the bus or the train.