Cannes - Archbishop Desmond Tutu was one of the pitch-men used at the Cannes Lions Festival on Friday to persuade the world's top advertising executives to support the Advertising for Climate Justice campaign. It's not the first time Cannes has been the platform to bid for support from advertising for a good cause.
But Tutu in a video recording and former United Nations (UN) secretary-general Kofi Annan live on stage played second fiddle to an impassioned plea by the campaign's frontman, Bob Geldof, for the ad biz to bring its persuasive skills to bear. The cry of the campaigners is "the rich get climate control; the poor get climate change".
And as a direct result of climate change, 300 000 of them die every year.
"By 2020 the ice on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro will have disappeared for the first time in 11 000 years," said Geldof, a former pop musician and Live Aid founder.
"There is a powerful force in this room. I like humans. I want us to think our way out of this. We need to cut our emissions by 80% by 2050. Whatever you do or dream you can do, begin it."
The call is a prelude to the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December.
- Fin24.com