I saw two videos this morning from yesterday, the Youth and Future Generation day, that exemplify the challenges that we face as young people in trying to shape the negotiations. These videos convey the frustrations, hopes, anger, and compassion that young people from the developing world are facing as they see their negotiators and their nations’ mainstream media delay and misinform. If you do one thing today to stay on track with what’s happening in Copenhagen today, watch these videos.
The first one is a follow-up to the action that U.S. youth organized to disrupt climate denier and AIDS-detention-camp advocate Chris Monkton (he likes to be called Lord, but I don’t care). You can see a video of that action here.
The second video is from the Canadian Youth Delegation. Canada is one of the contries with the worst emissions reduction targets, commitments to financing sustainable development, and overall attitude. Check out this courageous young person giving an emotional appeal to her country’s lead negotiator:
Young people from across the world are united in demanding that their respective nations set aside their ego and agree to a fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty. Unfortunately many nations are still under the tight grip of Big Oil and King Coal and are unwilling to take a stance for their people and against the destructive ways of the past. It is inspiring to know that the Millennial generation is united in this, but saddening to think that by the time we take over it might be too late to save millions of lives of people in the developing world.
Missed a day on my daily blogs due to the sheer amount of things that have been happening here. Some of the highlights:
- Kyle Gracey, Campus Progress network member and Chair of the SustainUS steering committee, facilitated a youth briefing featuring the the Chairs of the negotiation working groups (Kyoto Protocol and Long Term Cooperative Action Working Groups) – two of the most important people at the summit.
- Youth made up over 80% of the audience at an off the record briefing with the U.S. negotiators featuring U.S. Climate Envoy John Pershing and E.P.A. Administrator Lisa Jackson. Out of 9 questions asked, about 6 were from youth. Obviously cannot comment on the content of the questions, but it was amazing to see such a presence from U.S. youth.
- On Wednesday morning we heard word that Lisa Jackson requested a meeting with 10 international youth. U.S. youth helped brief them about Administrator Jackson’s role as a champion within the administration.
- As soon as the Canadian youth event ended, word got around that the small island state of Tuvalu took a courageous stand during the negotiations to force the process towards crafting a binding and enforceable agreement. This caused an impromptu uprising of over 200 young people and others from civil society (the Copenhagen term for non-governmental folks). Check out a great post about it on ItsGettingHotInHere.
- Enforcement has become one of the hot issues discussed here and various Fossil friendly countries rejected Tuvalu’s attempts to address the issue head on. Among them is Saudi Arabia that spent the day yesterday trying to convince the rest of the least developed countries that the science behing the climate crisis isn’t sound(confused about the fake debate waged by neocons to discredit scientists? Check out this great illustration!)
- As the day wound down, word spread about a side event happening outside of the center organized by ‘Americans for Prosperity’ featuring climate denier Chris Monkton (who is well known for publicly advocating that all HIV-positive people be “corralled in a giant quarantine facility for life”). U.S. Youth quickly organized and send a bunch of undercover young people with banners to disrupt the fossil fuel funded astroturfers. Their action was an absolute success, check out their posts here and here. Check out this amazing video from the action.
- While much of the U.S. Youth delegation was off disrupting the work of oil company propagandists, the ones that stayed behind called over 100 people and sent out over 200 e-mails to rapid responders in the U.S. urging them to call President Obama. The U.S. negotiators have been trying to remove wording about 350 parts per million from the negotiating texts and we need to make sure that the White House knows that young people cannot have a stable and prosperous future if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stays above 350 parts per million.
- Finally, the Fossil of the Day awards took an interesting twist yesterday. Instead of declaring a 1st place fossil winner, the island state of Tuvalu won the first ever Ray of the Day award in the 10 year history of the Fossil of the Day tradition while Canada, Croatia and Russia were awarded with the coal-laden cup. Today Poland and Germany entered the ranking due to their obstruction within the European Union delegation and New Zealand was awarded the third place for proposing ridiculous targets. Another Ray of the Day was awarded to France for standing up to the fossils.
That’s it for now, need to run to another off-the record briefing! If you are interested in more policy heavy updates check out the Wonkroom, ClimateProgress, and CAN international’s videos.
The first day went fast and was extremely busy. While official national delegations were busy talking about decision making processes and approving agendas, young people were working on organizing fun and effective actions. Check out my video highlighting a couple of actions I attended!
I was also on a PodCast with Deputy Field Director of the Energy Action Coalition Whit Jones. Check it out here:
(sorry for my bad performance in this first video, I’m still getting used to being in front of a camera!)
I got to Copenhagen on December 4th and will be hanging out here at the United Nations international climate negotiation until the 20th. In this time, delegates from all nations in the world and many world leaders will swing by to either try to move the process forward or put roadblocks to climate action.
Official delegates aren’t the only ones here. Over 1,000 young people and tens of thousands of other NGO, business and industry representatives are here to try to get their voices heard amidst the chaotic negotiation process.
This first week, negotiators from different countries will begin drafting an outline of the proposal that should emerge. As the end of the conference draws nearer and the agreed upon aspects of the proposal are finalized, Environmental Ministers (i.e. secretaries) from each country will join their negotiators for the tougher part of the talks. Finally, on the last day where only few details need to be finalized Prime Ministers and Presidents will join in on the fight, ending the negotiations in a high-level high-stakes battle over words. The whole process happens over consensus and thus every nation must agree in order to come up with a viable proposal or treaty.
Unfortunately due to the delays brought about by the Bush Administration in the past eight years we are no-where close to finalizing a treaty, but hopes are high for a meaningful structure to be finalized over the next year and some strong commitments decided upon by some of the biggest polluters.
In my time here, I will be working with partner organizations in planning media saavvy actions, document them on this blog, and help U.S. young people take action through the Energy Action Coalition’s Rapid Response Network. If you wish to help us spread the word in your community about the U.S.’s behavior during the negotiations, sign up here to join my team of Rapid Responders.
If you have thoughts and ideas about what I should be covering while here, please leave me a note in the comments!
“A Clean Energy Economy Forum hosted by the White House would have been unthinkable four years ago, so it was remarkable to watch the administration itself address youth on climate change yesterday. Young people have historically been absent from the political process, so I am honored to be alive during such an important time. It was amazing to watch Washington higher-ups yielding not to our wishes, but to our “demands”. I am currently working in Florida with students and youth leaders to pass a renewable energy investment fund at the University of Florida. We are excited to build off the momentum created by this historic forum, and we are thrilled to be part of the movement for sustainability on our campuses, in our communities, and in the world.”
Chris Cano, Outreach Coordinator for Gators for a Sustainable Campus at the University of Florida, hosted a live screening of the forum from his campus.
Yesterday the White House opened its doors to over 150 young people eager to share their views about the climate crisis and concerns about the administration’s lack of public advocacy on the matter. Never before has the executive branch in our government expressed so much willingness to listen to and work with young people, especially on the monumental issue of ending the climate crisis.
This forum was the culmination of years of hard work by youth climate activists nationwide. Morgan Goodwin, a fellow of the Avaaz Action Factory in Washington D.C. and a seasoned climate activist himself, wrote a fantastic post that is well worth a read to get the picture of how incredibly successful the youth climate movement has been at building and exercising power, and how it finally culminated with the White House forum. Excitement about this meeting was profound, leading to restless sleep in some of the participants who capitalized on their restlessness by writing a hard hitting letter to President Obama urging immediate and bold action. (more…)
Check out these great ads from Greenpeace that will be greeting people at the Copenhagen Airport for the duration of the international climate negotiations:
U.S. President Obama
Canadian Prime Minister Harper
Check out posters of other aged old world leaders apologizing to today’s young people here.
As you might have heard, the Energy Action Coalition has been pushing for Obama to take more of a leadership role in advocating for climate action. Our three demands were:
Go to Copenhagen
Meet with young people
Give a speech about the climate crisis outlining specific goals and plans for action.
After only a couple of months of campaigning, we already won the first 2!
Today, 150 young climate leaders from across the nation will be meeting with Obama admin officials. Among the cabinet members attending we’ll have (links to their facebook pages, leave them a nice message!):
This week, climate activists from Washington University organized a flash mob at a coal funded “America’s Energy Future” forum. Check out the video of their extremely successful action:
At the forum there was no representation from clean energy industries and most of the panelists came from coal corporations that recently joined the board of the St. Louis Missouri university. This is what the student activists had to say:
Students wish to highlight the close relationship between the university administration and the coal industry. Students have already expressed unease that the University is “too cozy” with coal… The University has dedicated $60 million in financial resources to the creation of a Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization. The name of this consortium has sparked controversy among many students and faculty, who have argued that the industry term “clean coal” has no place in scientific research.
The students also highlighted a new report released by the National Academy of Sciences that calculated the hidden costs of coal consumptions to be over $60 billion dollars per year in health, environmental, and social costs and a report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance demonstrating that Missouri could meet its energy needs entirely through renewable energy.
But it doesn’t end there! Newsweek and the American Petroleum Institute recently partnered to launch their own forums on clean energy, despite API’s continued efforts to undermine climate legislation and deceive the general public. Petroleum companies have much to gain from the ‘clean coal’ insanity due to their expertise in drilling and their extensive pipeline infrastructure. Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn’t as Carbon Capture and Sequestration is an untested technology with no proven record and that is expected to be extremely expensive to implement even if possible.
Newsweek’s journalistic integrity is at stake when they partner with organizations who’s whole purpose is to push disinformation and halt honest conversations about the energy future of the United States. I have crashed a Newsweek energy event already and I was the only young person in the audience. We will be present and numerous at these forums, possibly borrowing some tactics by the young climate activists at Washington University.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu is an energy efficiency geek and that’s why he is loved by anyone that has a rational view on energy policy.
Today he gave us efficiency geeks another reason to gloat by writing a fantastic piece on HuffingtonPost explaining in plain words the importance of home weatherization (or ”saving money by saving energy” as he likes to say) and outlining new federal programs to help average Americans cope with the high upfront cost that comes with reducing residential energy use.
Just like Berkeley’s fantastic solar initiative, the new Department of Energy plan will make low-interest loans available for people investing in efficiency improvements in their homes. The loan will be tied to your property taxes and therefore stay with the house.
The homeowners might pay an extra $400 per year on their property tax bill but save $500 a year on their utility bill. Since the financing would be attached to the property tax bill, both the savings and the loan payments stay with the house if the owners decide to sell.
These are the type of programs that will make sustainability improvements accessible to everyday Americans and that result in saving people money, reducing harmful carbon pollution, cleaning up our air, and creating millions of new jobs.
Unfortunately, all the programs announced by the Secretary of Energy are backed by a token sum that isn’t nearly enough to rapidly and effectively reduce our emissions at the levels they need to be.
Every week, tons of groups come out with great videos about the climate crisis. Some focus on youth activism, some are just plain funny, while others are compelling more than any before. I’ll try to share the best ones with you all in a semi-weekly blog post. Happy viewing!
Fist off, legislators and the media love to say that people don’t support climate legislation even though every poll and common sense show the opposite. Check out the RepowerWall and add your voice to demonstrate the unstoppable avalanche of support for ending the climate crisis:
Can you imagine if every child in the world knew how much older generations are dragging their feet on climate? I can’t, but fortunately Moms Against Climate Change did the thinking for me, check it out:
And finally, exposing corruption. Dunno if you heard, but a bunch of coal industry lobbyists were recently caught red (green?) handed for sending fake letters to congresspeople from groups of color in opposition to the climate bill. As much as most of our reaction would be to punch them in the face, the Avaaz Action Factory one-upped them by wearing astro-turf suits and shaking the culprit’s hands. Check out these courageous fighters:
Funding our Future is a campaign to pass a progressive federal budget for 2010 and ensure that our nation.s key economic choices invest in our education, spark reform of our health care system, and address climate change through cap and trade and clean energy investments. Click here for more info.
Missed a day on my daily blogs due to the sheer amount of things that have been happening here. Some of the highlights:
- As the day wound down, word spread about a side event happening outside of the center organized by ‘Americans for Prosperity’ featuring climate denier Chris Monkton (who is well known for publicly advocating that all HIV-positive people be “corralled in a giant quarantine facility for life”). U.S. Youth quickly organized and send a bunch of undercover young people with banners to disrupt the fossil fuel funded astroturfers. Their action was an absolute success, check out their posts here and here. 
As I mentioned in a