It’s Getting Hot In Here

I just had a brief chat with the official Indian delegation to the UN Climate Negotiations as we both passed through a hallway in Poznan. I’ve been living in India for the past two years, working full time for the Indian Youth Climate Network, and have spent the past three months working with the Indian youth delegation to develop policy and a strategy to create a positive global deal that guarantees climate equity. For me, that means a global deal that guarantees sustainable development in India that will provide 400 million Indians with light and electricity that they don’t currently have through clean, distributed renewable energy; a global deal that will provide the 700 million youth in India (and the billions of young people around the world) with a future of green jobs and innovative research and development of technologies; and a global deal that will fund these mitigation efforts and necessary adaptation from finances from the industrialized nations with historic and current responsibility for emissions.

But when I asked my former colleague if he was optimistic about the negotiations, he said, “Well, yes, I am optimistic, but I do not think you will be optimistic if I am. A solution that makes me optimistic will not make you happy.” [Judging, one imagines, by my color of skin and my American accent, rather than the fact that my future is at stake along with his and that an equitable solution is the only solution.] I told him what my global deal looked like, a deal that prioritized climate equity and development along with aggressive mitigation targets that protects global health, the most vulnerable, and our generation’s future. He said he hoped my optimism and passion would help us get through this, but that he would be praying for my children and my children’s children. Optimism, he said, may not be able to get us to success. I’d say – optimism may not, but cooperation and vision will.

Here’s the thing. If my days surrounded with 500 global youth have taught me anything, it is that we can join together in this optimism. Young people, regardless of nation of origin, see this future as not only possible but crucial, not only necessary but the only possible option. This vision that we CAN create an equitable global climate regime; that we CAN and MUST promote development and climate action hand in hand to protect our climate and our future; that we NEED each other to come to this global conclusion as we only have one planet. We have one future, one climate, one chance, one choice. There is only one optimism.