The awareness-raising campaign “You Control Climate Change” which was launched last week by the European Commission in the 25 member states of the European union, was yesterday extended to an activity at the Pembroke primary school where well over 120 children had the opportunity to learn more about the effects of global warming. The campaign challenges individuals to make small changes to their daily routine in order to achieve significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.

The event, which was attended by Rural Affairs and Environment Minister George Pullicino, included an entertaining interactive show featuring well known TV presenter, Marie Briguglio and Xummiemu, which urged the youngsters present to follow the campaign’s message and “Turn down. Switch off. Recycle. Walk.”

Apart from aiming to give people a sense of personal responsibility and empowerment and help them contribute to the fight against climate change, the campaign also includes a new website http://www.climatechange.eu.com, which offers a wealth of practical and easy-to-do tips on how to reduce emissions.

Households in the EU are responsible for some 16 per cent of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions, most of which comes from the production and use of energy. Per head and year, each EU citizen is responsible for 11 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly CO2.

The consequence of this has been that over the last century, the average temperature increased by 0.6ºC globally, and by almost 1ºC in Europe. Therefore, ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, and the number of storms, droughts and floods is increasing.