Global Youth Mobilizing to Demand Survival
by Richard Graves - Dec 11th, 2008
Poznan, Poland – Over 500 young people from 54 countries have descended on the UN climate talks here to demand strong action from government delegates to safeguard their future. Even though young people from developed nations outnumber counterparts with more at stake from Least Developed Countries and from Small Island States, they are making common cause to call for one principle: Survival.
I interviewed Harlan Watson, lead climate negotiator for the Bush administration who didn't think the UN climate process officially demands the survival of every sovereign nation and people as an outcome.
That would mean, for example, taking responsibility to prevent small island nations, sovereign under the UN process but weak politically and economically, from slipping beneath the waves. The only way to do that would be to require large emissions cuts, on the order of 350 ppm that campaigners are calling for, and provide significant resources for adaptation. Germany has committed 30% of carbon auction proceeds to go to international uses, such as technology development, transfer, and adaptation, but there seems to be little appetite for it from the outgoing US administration.
How do
these young people plan to shift the global political agenda? How can they get countries to commit to both large, rapid emissions cuts and funding for developing countries to allow them to pursue clean development? The UN's top climate
official, Yvo de Boer, has made it clear: an unfair deal won't stick, and still nobody in the official climate process seems to know where the political will can come from.
Except, perhaps the young people here. There's talk of a mass mobilization unlike anything the world has seen. In empty conference rooms, cafes, and couches, young people are making plans: an overland convergence on the next global climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, direct action in Washington DC in February, and online mobilization to open the closed door sessions to the world with partners like Avaaz.org.
"Over the last fourteen years, governments have shown astonishing negligence in dealing with climate change," said Kartikeya Singh, 24, of the Indian Youth Delegation.
"Young people are uniting around the shared vision that the world so
desperately needs."
Over
the last three years a global youth movement has emerged. It has grown from a handful of people from developed countries going to the UN climate conference in Montreal to a global network spanning the developed and developing world. They have come equipped with policies, arguments, and even put on suits. They know that the decisions will be made over the next year and positions crafted long before negotiators meet next year.
"These negotiations began when I was four years old. We've been coming here year after year, and I'm tired of trying to convince the negotiators to take climate change seriously. Time is running out, and I'm here to tell my leaders that my future is not negotiable." said Liz McDowell, 23, a youth delegate from the UK.
Now, emboldened by the election of a US president on the back of youth volunteers and their energy, they seem to be reaching for the world. It is their future at stake and this coming year they will be demanding: Survival.
Richard Graves is the founder of Fired Up Media, editor of It's Getting Hot in Here - dispatches from the youth climate movement, and associate producer for LinkTV's Earth Focus.
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Votes of young people are humbly requested
I want to at least try to gain your quick help. I'm not sure if you've heard, but earlier this week the "AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population" submitted an idea for how we think the Obama Administration could change America. It's called "Ideas for Change in America."
I've submitted an idea and wanted to see if you could vote for it. The title is: Accepting human limits and Earth's limitations. You can read and vote for the idea by clicking on the following link:
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/accepting_human_limits_and_earths_limit...
The top 10 ideas are going to be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day and will be supported by a national lobbying campaign run by Change.org, MySpace, and more than a dozen leading nonprofits after the Inauguration. So each idea has a real chance at becoming policy.
About 500 votes are needed. Ten votes have already been cast. If it pleases you to do so, vote.
Thanks.
Sincerely yours,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population, established 2001 http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
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