It’s Getting Hot In Here

“Let’s try to keep global temperature rise below 2°C.” Some of the numbers being bandied about at the UN Climate Change conference are a little disturbing. This 2°C figure that resonates with politicians and policy makers is a dangerous thing to include in every day, roll-off-the-tongue rhetoric.

The ramifications of this 2°C fencepost are scary. By keeping global temperature rise to 2°C means that we have a 50% of avoiding what climatologists call “catastrophic climate change”. That’s a phrase that doesn’t roll off the tongues of politicians quite so easily.

And let’s pause for a moment to take a coin out of your pocket. Heads avoids disaster, tails means irreversible shifts in weather patterns that will totally alter billions of peoples’ way of life. Flip that coin. Half of the people reading this blog just ended up living a doomsday scenario. But the true fact is that it won’t be a matter of half of the world living with a climate catastrophe and the other half getting off scott free. It’s a matter of everybody trotting down a substantially more eco-friendly path, or everybody suffering the irreversible effects of climate change.

This might sound like an extreme example, but the 1 in 6 chances of Russian Roulette seem a whole lot better than the prospect of a 2°C temperature increase. Are we comfortable with shoving 2 extra bullets into our climate gun and spinning the cylinder? The fact is that we’ve already loaded our gun with at least one bullet, and unless something unprecedented happens in the next couple of years, we’ve committed to adding a second bullet to our 6 slots. A 2°C rise means that we’re happy with a third bullet in our climate gun, giving us a 50/50 chance.

Continue reading ‘BaliBuzz: I’d Rather Play Russian Roulette’

Internationalism is fascinating. Youth from around the world met in Bali this past weekend to discuss our plans for the UN climate change conference, harmonize our actions, and streamline our approach. Our aim was to deliver a consistent, global, youth message to delegates and media. We wanted to cooperate around an international standard.

The astounding breadth of globalization’s impact didn’t truly strike me until these meetings. We craved international consistency in our messaging. But it was more than that. There was sameness in our facilitation techniques (“twinkle fingers” indicating our degree of agreement, flip-charts and post-it notes). There was a certain similarity in our individual histories (well traveled, active volunteers, trained in leadership). Even while traveling to Bali, the stores in airports on three different continents were hawking exactly the same goods.

Continue reading ‘BaliBuzz: Reflections on Youth and Internationalism’