Yep – that’s right. We are popping up all over the world. Once youth learn the seriousness of climate change, we generally feel the need to do something about it. And we do. This week, a stellar group of 14 year olds in Almere (close to Amsterdam) are taking action on reducing energy to fight climate change, and are betting that they can save more energy than their government.
These teens have already harnessed a significant success: getting the Netherland’s Ministry of the environment to commit to running their vehicles on natural gas by next spring.
To meet the bet, both the students and the Minister of the Environment have 4 weeks to come up with ways to meet the European Union’s Kyoto target of 8% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions , below 1990 levels, by 2012.
If the students win? It means they get 2,000 Euros. If they lose? The students have to cart the State Secretary around the Hague in a rickshaw for a full day.
Worth the bet? I think so.
Read the BBC Article, “The Dutch Kids Who Bet on Kyoto” here.
Youth power!
End age oppression!
And all that.
But, on a more serious note – natural gas vehicles? That’s a pretty silly idea. Natural gas vehicles cost enormous amounts of money, require a new infrastructure to be useful, run on fossil fuels, and threaten to catalyze an even sooner global peak and decline of natural gas (currently estimated at 2020), not to mention all the associated energy wars (and I do mean wars, i.e. Afghanistan).
But in the end, these kids are incredible for getting involved. I’m working with a couple 15 year olds, but 14, that’s just awesome.
“The Almere Bet, the latest in a series of such initiatives going back to 2001 in the Netherlands…”
I wasn’t imagining it, I thought this had been going on for a while. Awesome, awesome stuff.