It\’s Getting Hot In Here

Photo by Zoë Caron

This is amazing. More than a hundred thousand demonstrators from around the world make a united stand for action in the climate negotiations going on in Copenhagen. More to come soon. Continue reading ‘The Whole World Gathers for the Largest Climate Rally in History’

Cross-posted from here http://www.watthead.org/

Guest post by Garett Brennan, Executive Director- Focus the Nation

Hey folks, I wanted to share how things are going over here from our perspective at the COP15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen. On the day I arrived, I found it very reassuring that back at home, our country’s longest serving Senator, Robert Byrd from West Virginia, posted a piece denouncing mountain top removal and honestly acknowledging the need to phase out coal.

We’ve been here for a week now and it’s some sort of wild combination that energizes and exhausts you all at the same time. Just to set the stage a little first, the weather is gray, cold and rainy—a lot like our headquarters in sunny Portland. Throughout the city, the street corners are filled with photo exhibits and banners and almost everyone I meet thanks me for “fighting for the climate.” Inside the Bella Center, it’s crazy and almost impossible to follow everything that’s happening. Our awesome Focus Organizer from Missouri, Lindsey Berger, has been helping the core Rapid Response strategy team so we can let all of you know how you can help from home.

Yesterday we had more than 1000 young people in orange T-shirts that say “How old will you be in 2050?” and we’ve also handed out 1000 orange scarf’s to the “older” delegates that say “survival is not negotiable.” It has created an awesome visual solidarity between generations and cultures throughout the entire Bella Center. I also thought you’d like to know that there about 500 young people here from the US Youth movement. Our presence is large and involved. Last night, we organized a wonderful event with 50 American youth and 50 Chinese youth to talk about our shared future together.

Continue reading ‘COP15 Friday- Youth voices, US leadership, exhaustion and excitement’

Indigenous Peoples from across North America and their allies from around the world gathered at the US Embassy in Copenhagen today to deliver a message to President Obama as he traveled to Oslo to accept his Nobel Prize. The delegation of Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and First Nations Peoples is in Denmark this week for the historic COP 15 Climate Talks, and is calling for a climate deal that includes a moratorium on all new exploration of oil, gas, coal and uranium as a first step towards the full phase-out of fossil fuels and a just solution to the climate crisis.

“The United States is importing millions of barrels of oil from the Canadian Tar Sands, which is contributing to the genocide of the Dene and Cree nations of Northern Canada and to the destruction of Mother Earth” said Susana Deranger, a grandmother from Fort Chipewyan in Northern Alberta. “Last summer, there was a flock of ducks that landed on a tailings pond of Tar Sands dirty water, and they all died. This is the water that is poisioning our people. There are clusters of rare cancers that are concentrated in our communities and killing our people. Obama, we urge you: End Envirionmental Racism – Climate Justice now!” Continue reading ‘Indigenous Peoples at Copenhagen Climate Talks Deliver Peace Prize Message to Obama at US Embassy’

News from SustainUS Delegate Valida Prentice. What more appropriate time to celebrate her birthday in Copenhagen than Young and Future Generations Day?

Cross-posted from The Climateers, By Valida Prentice

Time is flying here in Copenhagen.  The question is, are we flying in a private jet or gracefully soaring like an eagle?  Are we headed towards an outcome in Copenhagen that will continue to support a dirty energy economy that pollutes greenhouse gases without thought of its grave impacts on the ecological systems and habitability of this earth or one that will give us, and future generations, a chance at a beautiful, sustainable future.

This pointed question is at the middle of today’s activities in the Bella Center. This year, global youth at the UNFCCC acquired a more formal status, that of a “constituency”.  Constituency status, initially just given to “BINGOs” (Business and Industry NGOs) and “ENGOs” (Environmental NGOs), allows NGOs falling under particular umbrellas to have greater access to the UNFCCC Secretariat by way of funneling shared issues and requests through one or two representatives or “focal points”.

credit: Robert van Warden

To celebrate the addition of YOUNGOs to the list of constituencies to the UNFCCC, today, December 10, we’re hosting Young and Future Generations Day in cooperation with the Secretariat.  We have 1,000 youth running around the convention center with bright orange t-shirts asking negotiators, NGO leaders and press, “how old will you be in 2050″ and demanding that negotiations “don’t bracket our future”.  We’re also handing out 1,000 orange scarves to our supporters in country delegations and leading international NGOs.

I’m currently sitting in a Side Event (where NGO observers have a chance to speak on various issues related to the COP-15 negotiations) presented by SustainUS on Youth Voices on REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). The opportunity to hold events such as this forest side event with its quiet, academic tone is a necessary part of youth involvement at COP alongside our other actions.

Continue reading ‘December 10: Young and Future Generations Day’

For a full 6 minutes, this guy calls youth climate activists at Copenhagen “Hitler Youth”.  Completely outrageous!  This guy needs to hire a publicist.

Cross-posted from: The Dernogalizer

Echoing the words of Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed (We will not die quietly!) and the African negotiator Ambassador Lumumba, (No to climate colonialism!) hundreds of youth created a loud and energetic “climate storm” today inside the Copenhagen climate talks at the UN. It was the largest demonstration at COP15 yet – and was just a taste of the storm to come. Youth from every continent clapped, snapped, and pounded their feet to make the sounds of a rainstorm in a representation of the typhoons and hurricanes that have ravaged communities around the world this year.

“Negotiators are turning their backs on us and telling us to keep quiet. As a young person living in the Pacific, I know what it’s like to fear climate change,” said Subhashni Raj, a youth organizer from Fiji who spoke at the rally. “I’m here to say that we will not die quietly.”

Continue reading ‘Youth and Indigenous people escalate protests inside the UN’

Today is “Young and Future Generations Day” here at the International Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen, and I’m here with my wife Wahleah and our two-year-old daughter Tohaana. Along with thousands of other young people, we’re doing everything in our power to convince world leaders to commit to a fair, ambitious, and legally binding international agreement based on a target of 350 parts per million (ppm), which is the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Less than 400 miles away in Oslo, Norway, President Obama is accepting the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” If ever there was a time and place to live up to that honor, now, in Copenhagen is it.

Four former Nobel Peace Prize winners have endorsed a target of 350ppm. On December 12th, 2008, at the international climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Al Gore (2007 winner) said to a huge crowd: “Even a goal of 450 parts per million, which seems so difficult today, is inadequate. We need to toughen that goal to 350 parts per million.”

On December 20th, His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama (1989) wrote: “It is now urgent that we take corrective action to ensure a safe climate future for coming generations of human beings and other species. That can be established in perpetuity if we can reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350ppm. Buddhists, concerned people of the world and all people of good heart should be aware of this and act upon it.”

On August 25, 2009, Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC said, “As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I cannot take a position because we do not make recommendations. But as a human being I am fully supportive of [350ppm]. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target.”

And on October 23, 2009, two days before what CNN called the “most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history”, Archibishop Desmond Tutu, who has been an ambassador for the 350 campaign and won the Peace Prize in 1984, wrote in USA Today: “Many top scientists agree that there’s a number the world needs to know. It’s 350 — as in 350 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The growing consensus is that it’s the most carbon we can have in the atmosphere without causing terrible climate havoc. Since we’re already past that level, at 390 parts per million, it also implies that we need much swifter political action than governments have supported in the past to reverse this trend.” Continue reading ‘Accept it in Oslo, Earn it in Copenhagen’

There has been quite an assault on the climate science in the past few weeks. Far more so than ever before, which is saying something given the Climate Cover-Up that’s gone on for so long. First, e-mails were hacked from a British university, showing some cherry-picked conversations between climate scientists, which global warming deniers have stretched and chalked up to data misrepresentation, and a massive global scientific conspiracy to trick people into reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Continue reading ‘The Scientists Stike Back’

UPDATE — New video from our meeting with the Japanese delegation.

Japan could shift the course of the climate talks with a strong finance proposal. It’s a huge part of Copenhagen, the financing of the $200 billion per year fund for climate change adaptation and mitigation. One of the countries that could be the lynchpin to these funds being allocated by the Annex 1 countries that need to pay their fair share in climate debt is Japan. Countries like the US have made short term financing suggestions but nothing in-line with what is really needed.  Japan like the US are needed to support poorer countries in climate change adaptation funds so that they can transition to clean energy economies and take immediate action to save the communities most impacted by climate change.

The Japanese youth delegation know the potential that exists for Japan to be a climate leader on finance. They realize Japan has the opportunity to be a leader in  unlocking the additional financing caught up in political posturing and rhetoric. To crank up this message the youth delegation joined the Avaaz aliens to take demands directly to Japan’s delegation; demands that humans can’t seem to muster up the courage to ask. Hiroyuki Hori and Jouju Vechi from Tokyo, and Yaicha Bookhout of Missoula suited up and went green to hunt down the Japanese representatives. They were determined to deliver the statement ( see below) Japanese youth statement to Japan’s negotiators

Word spread to the Japan’s offices as the aliens wondered the hallways calling for Japan to take up a climate leadership role in Copenhagen. The aliens were essentially asking Japan to save Copenhagen as without real finances there is no real deal. Japan quickly sent message to the aliens that the Japanese delegates would like to meet with the aliens and make a statement on what they are asking of Japan!

Continue reading ‘Japanese Youth Go Green, Call For Japan To “Save Copenhagen”’