It’s Getting Hot In Here

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’

In 2004, the Durban Group for Climate Justice convened in Durban, South Africa to question the central role of carbon trading and carbon offsets in governments’ responses to the climate crisis. Members of the Durban Group are traveling in various cities throughout the US and Canada in January, February, and March 2008 to share experiences of the failures of carbon trading in Europe, India, Brazil, Uganda and elsewhere, and to learn more about U.S. carbon trading plans and climate politics.

Five internationally recognized experts, fresh from the climate meetings in Bali, Indonesia, will be visiting campuses and communities throughout Canada and the US. With over fifty groups in over forty cities, they’ll speak on carbon trading, carbon offsets, the effects of climate change and current international campaigns to keep the fossil fuels in the ground and affect meaningful change.

Check out the complete list of tour dates.

UPDATED: There are still a handful of dates open if you want the speaking tour to come to your town. We’re still booking the east coast and the midwest for late February and early March! Contact falsesolutions AT risingtidenorthamerica DOT org to host a talk.

Continue reading ‘Members of Durban Group For Climate Justice on Carbon Trading Speaking Tour this Winter’

In particular, the speech delivered by Karmila Karapassi from Indonesia has struck me. Her words were delivered with such strength and compassion that there was not a competing noise in the room. When Karmila said to the plenary “youth around the world are rising to the challenge,” all of the youth stood from their chairs with their hand raised, filling the room with their presence. Young people of all ages from all over the world stood together in silence, our eyes fixed on the negotiators whose decisions we would inherent.

Seeing viscerally, for the first time, the size of our dynamic youth movement filled me with a hope and a faith.

I have hope because countries like Canada, who neglect the Kyoto Process and the international community, have also catalyzed the emergence of a strong, mobilized, and powerful international youth community.

I have faith because the scope of the issue is so enormous that it forces us to rethink the way we live, and this gives us an opportunity.

As one youth said to a room full of negotiators, the climate emergency is our best, and possibly last, opportunity to create a global consciousness.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali has ended with a deal signed recognizing that deep cuts in CO2 emissions are needed, a plan to tackle deforestation, and measures to assist developing countries in dealing with climate change. But there are no mandatory emission targets included in this agreement – targets which are needed in order to avert the most devastating impacts of climate change. Al Gore’s powerful speech reminded us of the increasing rate of change in our natural ecosystems. Scientists now predict that the summer Arctic ice could be gone within 5 to 7 years – decades ahead of the worst case scenarios spelled out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. By not taking the lead, countries like Canada, the US and Japan are bringing the rest of the world down with them. Canada’s refusal to act is a crime of unprecedented proportions in the history of human civilization. But Canadian youth demonstrated in Bali that they are not prepared to let their government squander our chance of a better future.

Continue reading ‘This Will Follow You Home: Reflections from the Canadian Youth Experience in Bali’