It’s Getting Hot In Here

Right now, I’m sitting in the hallways of the Bali International Conference Centre. It’s 8:58am on the last day of negotiations at the UN Climate Change Conference and I haven’t slept in over 24 hours. The representatives of 180 different countries are trying to reach a landmark climate deal - a Bali roadmap that will guide the international process for the next two years, and which will probably determine the type of world that I’ll live in.

This should be a hopeful time. I should be celebrating the moment our leaders came together to address the biggest challenge of my generation. But instead, I’m deeply worried, afraid and on edge. The talks have stalled. Everything is hanging by a thread and may all fall apart.Late last night, I learned that Canada, along with the US, was again blocking progress at these negotiations. I learned that my government would rather quibble over who goes first than take real and honest action.As a Canadian, I pride myself on coming from a country with a long history of leadership on the world stage. But today, for the first time, I wonder if this reputation is still deserving. Continue reading ‘At the 11th hour in Bali’

As I sit on a plane somewhere over the black sea on my way to Bali for the UN Climate Change Conference, staring out the window and wondering when the all-important peanut cart is coming by again, I start to think about flights and flying – the big elephant in the room for so many in the environmental movement.

As some of my friends in London so kindly pointed out when I was getting ready to leave, what’s the point of flying almost 20,000 people halfway around the world to sit in a room for two weeks and discuss how to deal with climate change when you’re creating thousands of tones of CO2 emissions just by traveling there? To me it seems clear that it’s worthwhile as long as the overall positive impact on climate change outweighs the that’s larger than the negative one. Which brings me to ask - what can we accomplish that’s worth all the carbon emissions?

If we’re talking specifically about air travel, there’s actually a lot we can do. At the moment, emissions from aviation and maritime shipping are excluded from our international climate change framework. Since this isn’t being addressed at the international level, the responsibility to tackle this issue has been pushed onto national governments. But of course it isn’t easy to pinpoint national responsibility in such a fluid and international arena, which is reflected in the lack of leadership shown so far.

Continue reading ‘To Fly or Not to Fly? What to Make of that Question…’

It’s t-minus three days to go, and I’m running around like crazy trying to get all the last-minute stuff in place. In a few days I’m off, and there’s still so much to do!

Along with over 160 young people from around the world, including 24 other Canadians, I’ll be descending on the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali from December 3 - 14. Our purpose? To keep our leaders accountable, stir things up and suggest constructive ways forward. Oh yeah, and to keep building a global youth climate movement.

But where did this movement come from, anyway?

As young people, we’re the ones who will have to deal with the biggest impacts of climate change. Our parents won’t have to clean up this mess - we will. So why don’t we have a place at the climate talks table? It seems only right that the people most affected by climate change should get a say in how an international climate agreement is shaped.

Not being the type to sit quietly on the side, hundreds of us converged in Montreal in 2005, when the Climate Change negotiations were held in Canada. We brought our energy, creativity and willingness to stir things up without worrying too much about the consequences. This conference was actually when Its Getting Hot In Here was first founded (trivia fact!).

Continue reading ‘Get Ready Bali - We’re On Our Way’