Saturday, December 12, marks the day of international vigils for climate (350.org/vigil) and the 37th day of an international hunger strike.  Four members of the strike, called Climate Justice Fast!, are accredited delegates to the summit.  Two people in Australia and one in the U.S. are also on the 37th day of the hunger strike.

The original fasters have refused food and drunk only water since November 6. One long-term faster, 61-year-old Michael Morphett of Australia, was hospitalized Tuesday for dangerously low blood pressure.

Another faster, Daniel Lau, is an Australian graduate student in Economics preparing for a PhD in Denmark.  He worked for eight years in the steel industry, the single most intensive point source of CO2 in Australia.  He joined Climate Justice Fast! one week after the strike began, though he had never been involved in political activism before.

"Climate change is the defining challenge of our generation.  A hunger strike clearly symbolizes the value of the lives and livelihoods at stake, and the urgency with which we must act.  I am fasting to pay penance for the ways in which I have and continue to contribute to climate injustice and to call for governments, boardrooms, families, and all people everywhere to act with conscience, meet the science, and unite to create a sustainable future."

Sara Svensson, a 25-year old long-time climate activist from Sweden who began fasting on Nov. 6, added "We must begin examining and fixing the root causes of the climate crisis - our reliance on fossil fuels, and a development paradigm that sees excess as a virtue and rewards abuse of people and the planet."

Inside the Bella Center, Deepa Gupta, founder of the Indian Youth Climate Network, and two Greenpeace executives, along with many, many others, will be fasting in solidarity for the twelve days of the climate talks.

To achieve climate justice, Climate Justice Fast! calls for governments to commit to reducing atmospheric carbon to 350ppm, as well as the provision of 195 billion USD per year from wealthy, high-emitting countries to support adaptation efforts, forest protection, and low-carbon development in those countries first and worst impacted by climate change.

Recent announcements from world leaders – including President Obama, who will be joining negotiators on December 18th – indicate that a legally-binding international climate treaty won’t be signed at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen this December.

Anna Keenan, a 23 year-old Physics graduate from Australia and one of the key organizers of Climate Justice Fast! said “I am still calling on governments to negotiate a fair, ambitious, and binding treaty.  If our leaders do not, the world’s most vulnerable people, and our children, are set to suffer the catastrophic consequences of a problem they did not create.”

The long-term fasters will continue fasting until at least the end of the Copenhagen Climate Summit.  The circumstances under which the hunger strike will end are not yet decided."