It\’s Getting Hot In Here

I spent eight weeks traveling Europe with a group of 13 AVAAZ climate activists from five different continents, organizing for a better Copenhagen.  For the past three days I’ve been trying to make sense of what happened in the final moments of that journey.

The story of Copenhagen began in Bali, Indonesia two years ago. After an intensive two weeks of negotiations, 192 countries, including the Bush Administration, signed on to the Bali Roadmap, a plan to complete a binding global climate treaty in Copenhagen. The Bali Roadmap was a political agreement acknowledging that the evidence for the planet warming is “unequivocal”, and that further delays in reducing emissions would further increase the risks of “severe climate change impacts.”

Deepa Gupta speaks to a crowd of onlookers during a global hunger strike for climate justice event in Copenhagen

Fast forward to 2009 – after two years of high level negotiations and new peer-reviewed scientific findings warning that climate change is accelerating faster than previously anticipated, the stakes had been raised for Copenhagen. In the first week and a half of the negotiations, leaders from small island states like the Maldives and Tuvalu and from African countries already being thrust into water-related conflicts from extreme drought resisted threats and bribes from developed countries as they insisted on an ambitious and fair legal treaty committed to containing warming below 1.5 degrees C. Tensions ran high and the talks were deadlocked as rich nations and emerging economies blamed each other and the most vulnerable.

After nine hours of direct negotiations from world leaders on the final day, a weak agreement was reached by a diverse group of interests. The three-page Copenhagen Accord is by all accounts far short of the ambitious and fair legal treaty promised in Bali. While it does finally tie emerging economies like China and India in with the United States under the same climate agreement, it also punts most of the hard decisions down the road another year.

At most the Copenhagen Accord can be called another baby step forward, when the world needed a bold leap. The reason for this colossal failure of leadership was a No Ambition Coalition of the United States and China. Held hostage by fossil fuel lobbyists and an addiction to a 20th century growth paradigm, China held out against a legally-binding outcome and international verification of emission targets while the United States refused to budge from their weak emission targets.

Continue reading ‘Understanding Copenhagen’

I went to the White House today, as one of 150 youth climate leaders invited to take part in the Clean Energy Forum.

Let me repeat that: youth activists were invited to discuss climate policy with 4 cabinet secretaries. This is not the same movement it was two years ago, and I think the changes have been overwhelmingly positive.

A little more than two years ago, a nervous and exuberant Energy Action Coalition gathered 5,000+ youth in DC for Powershift07. Van Jones said, ‘remember, remember, the 5th of November…’ and we raised some eyebrows in DC. But mostly, we sparked the feeling of a movement in a whole new circle of leaders: young people who went home with a sense of urgency and a sense of the plan.

Two years later, a huge youth election campaign, another Powershift, 100 coal plant permits denied and a lot of green jobs created, a small selection of an amazing movement of people were welcomed to the White House as partners in crafting the clean energy future WE want to see.

The forum didn’t result in any game-changing policy commitments, but it wasn’t supposed to. It was a chance for the administration to showcase just how much better they are than the Bush administration (an underwhelming comparison, perhaps), and for them to present a convincing argument of why they are doing a great job. I think they accomplished that, acknowledging that they can do more to stop dirty energy and lead on the clean and just economy, while placing a large chunk of blame on the Senate for their deadly inaction.

The forum succeeded wildly in a different way, and an incredibly important way. We were all in the room together – a couple dozen administration staff, 80 or 90 youth leaders affiliated with the Energy Action Coalition, and another 40 or 50 clean energy leaders. We got to see what we look like, where we come from, and what issues really move us. With that focused cross-section of the movement, I realized more than ever, that we are such a diverse generation, and we are a diverse movement united in a very large goal. Continue reading ‘Youth Climate Movement Grows Up… In a Good Way’

The title says it all – we’ve gone global. And it’s not just because of Saturday.

Photo courtesy of 350.org (and inspiring people in London, Sydney, and Copenhagen)

I won’t even try to sum up the awesomeness that was the October 24th International Day of Climate Action. Instead, I’m thinking about how this fits into the even bigger awesomeness that is the international youth climate movement:

International Day of Climate Action – Yesterday was the largest day of distributed political activism ever. It was temporarily the top news story globally. While people of all ages can celebrate in making this day happen, youth played a huge role in creating and participating in many of the actions, in spreading the popularity of the day of action, and working behind the scenes (or more likely in the middle of them) as members of the 350.org staff. Continue reading ‘We’re Building a Global Movement’

And the Conference of the Parties begins…..

Last year, in Bali Indonesia, the nations of the world agreed to reach an agreement by 2009 to tackle climate change. By December 15th 2009, in Copenhagen Denmark, governments are expected to reach an agreement that  will holistically tackle not only the issues of emissions, but also the impacts to those most vulnerable. This coming Monday, in Poznan, Poland, the UN will meet again to advance the Bali Action Plan.

The Bali roadmap, which has become more like a treasure-hunt, brings many daunting challenges to Poznan. From tackling issues of deforestation in tropical forest, to insurance schemes to help countries recover from extreme climate change-related losses, Poznan is happening in the midst of global financial crisis that many countries are already using as a scape-goat for dumping climate goals and continuing the decades of inaction and unsustainable economic policies. The stakes are high, yet ideas are not flowing. The developed countries’ proposals on technology transfer and   finance for mitigation and adaptation are a carbon copy of the failed regulation mechanisms of modern history, yet somehow they are asking developing nations to take bold steps in order to achieve an agreement.

For something meaningful to come out of the agreement next year, Poznan must set a new path.

Rather that trying fixing our future on new-yet-dirty of the same fuels that have gotten us in trouble, we need a vision of a world where well-being is not coupled with greenhouse gases. There will be over 500 young people in Poznan, and they have been organizing for months. Over this weekend they will come together at Conference of Youth to finish their strategy, and over the next two weeks youth from across the planet will be contributing to itsgettinghotinhere.org, giving their perspective on the process and their suggestions for fixing the planet we will inherit. You can also contribute with your message by sharing your views with COP14 youth messaging team

The SustainUS Agents of Change program is now accepting applications for its delegation to the UN Climate Negotiations, COP14, happening in Poznan, Poland this December. We will be extending the application deadline to July 12, 2008 at 5pmEST. COP14 will determine the future of international policy on climate change, and youth must make their voices heard.

The SustainUS delegation, comprised of key leaders in the youth climate movement from various organizations and backgrounds, will have the unique opportunity to represent American youth at the COP. Delegates will work with each other and with international youth in advance of the conference to educate themselves, develop policy priorities, acquire skills in effective lobbying, and engage the broader youth population in a conversation about international climate policy.

Apply to be an Agent of Change today!

The first week of the negotiations in Bonn has ended. It has been an interesting week, to say the least, with lots of interesting ideas on how to move forward on finance and technology transfer. One of the highlights was the discussion on investment and finance to address climate change on Thursday afternoon. These were some of the ideas put forward:

Barbados, speaking for small islands, proposed a new Adaptation fund for small islands which emphasis on insurance and technology fund.
Mexico proposed a world climate change fund on mitigation, adaptation and technology transfer, to which all countries would contribute according to greenhouse gas emissions, population and national income.
China proposed an approach for funding from developed countries as a percentage of their national income to be channeled by the UNFCCC. Continue reading ‘The Road to Copenhagen: Lots of ideas, no common vision’

The second session of the UN working group on long term cooperative action has started in Bonn, Germany. The working group (AWGLCA), created in Bali, is mandated to consider action needed to create the conditions for action on climate change–both to reduce emissions and adapt to unavoidable changes, adequate to the current understanding of the causes and science of climate change . This session will start looking at issues of investment flows, finance, and adaptation.

For the next two weeks, the UNFCCC will try to make progress on the many items listed and agreed in the Bali Action Plan –the outcome of the negotiations in Bali—, and the issues will get heated. The deadline for this new “action” is 2009, at the meeting in Copenhagen. This session in Bonn will be a forum for most substantive dialogue, ideas, proposals, and an overall (desperate) effort to go beyond programming and workshop planning into discussing the critical issues in regards to technology transfer and adaptation. enhanced conditions for a stable climate.
Members of SustainUS and CYCC are present at the meeting, and we hope to share with you occasional updates.

The bustling halls of the United Nations climate negotiations still ringing in my ears, it’s been an incredible few months since I and other youth delegates from SustainUS returned from Bali. So many friends and neighbors emailed or stopped by to say “Thanks for sending your email updates from Bali!” and “Welcome home!” I still feel the excitement of working with the best & brightest of the youth climate movement around the world.

Upon returning from Bali as a US youth delegate, I was filled with hope that humanity will create a global consciousness by rising to meet the climate emergency. In the last few months, worsening scientific predictions have only strengthened my belief that we are the leaders we seek. It’s up to us. We have the power to make the climate emergency, and the immense economic opportunities we will realize from solving it, our top priority. A bold, broad movement is needed on a scale larger than the mobilization for World War II. This mobilization will only be accomplished by unleashing a renewed civic engagement.

Continue reading ‘Post-Bali Dispatch: “Lighting Up” a movement in Upstate New York!’

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change might have happened 4 months in the past but the video footage is still coming strong both in supply of footage and the messages from the youth that attended.

Here is a video featuring Jonathan Joanassie Edward Epoo who is an Inuit youth working to educate and engage other youth on the current changing conditions that climate change is causing to the region he lives in and to his culture.

A view from the Global South.

Editorial By Sunita Narain (Director, Center for Science & Environment, New Delhi)

Continue reading ‘Bali: The Mother of All No-Deals’