Today, I had a debrief with SustainUS to reflect on personal and organizational experiences in Copenhagen. At one point, I was asked why I went to Copenhagen and if I had specific goals for my involvement there.
I was able to answer the question, but not as eloquently as I would have liked. It is often easier for me to answer questions by telling someone else’s story. During the debrief I was also asked why the China-US Youth Forum on Climate Change that SustainUS helped organize was a highlight of my time in Copenhagen; I couldn’t find the words to explain why or how the event moved me, so I said, “watch the film I put together.” Sometimes I find that even someone else’s creation conveys my feelings better than I can: just this morning, I told friends on Facebook that this video from the UK youth explains my experience in Copenhagen better than I’ve been able to so far.
But my friend Morgan’s post on It’s Getting Hot in Here today reminded me of the importance of being able to tell my own story (and not just through video, though I find that method important in its own right). Ironically, this concept of sharing our personal stories – between US and Chinese youth and then back to our home communities about the power of doing so – is probably what made the China-US Youth Forum so special to me.
So while I take some time to find the words to tell my story, my question to you is, what is your story? Why are you involved? When did it all start? What drives you? What initially sparked you and what renews your spirit in the movement? Why are you a climateer?
Many of us who were at the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen from December 7-19 went through a period of hibernation in week following the conference. I, for one, slept for more than 32 hours in the 48 hours that began at 12:00 p.m. on December 20th. I’d been burning the midnight oil for fifteen straight days at that point, constantly jumping from one task to the next throughout the 18-hour workdays. It was actually no great hardship to sustain such working hours during the conference; the bubble that we lived in – that of the UN conference and, more so, that of our own international youth climate movement within the conference – was teeming with energy. We fed off the energy, passion, intellect and creativity of one another to make up for lack of sleep or caloric intake.
Youth Energy Reverb during COP Prep
This is nothing new. Our movement and social movements in general have acquired great strength from the way inspiration bounces around from activist to activist, sparking or re-igniting motivation. But to experience this at COP-15 in a tiny microcosm of the greater movement was eye-opening for me, particularly in the final hours as we walked away from the negotiations without the fair, ambitious, and legally binding treaty that we’d been pushing so hard for.
A fitting and galvanizing quotation just came through on my Twitterfeed: “Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged people who kept on working.”
While I believe it to be true that we can trudge through the lowest of lows and achieve great highs, I know it is a difficult task. Some of the farewell conversations I had with brilliant, effective young activists in Copenhagen were filled with a such a preponderance of negative emotion that, at least in the initial shock of the blow taken at the end of the negotiations, these new friends seemed to be leaving with a debilitating sense of defeat.
We are all working hard for a sustainable future, but how do we move forward using our own energy sustainably? How do we make sure we aren’t losing power as people fall out of the movement as they become too tired or too discouraged?
In the wake of COP-15, there are many facets of the international climate movement that need to be re-examined, strengthened or freshly innovated, and manygreatideas have already been put forth. As we power back on after Copenhagen, let us take this opportunity to consider not just how to grow this movement but how to do so healthfully. The strategy to cultivate a healthy movement will provide the foundation for our strategies to deliver what the world needs on the US Senate floor, in Mexico City, and on the ground in communities around the world.
Generally in my blogs, I throw a set of bullet-points in right about here with my thoughts on the next steps. To be honest, I’m still a little lost and I don’t have a strong background in organizational psychology to make up for it. So let’s make a deal: I put in my 2 cents and you respond with some more ideas in the comments. Consider this a brainstorming session about some things we might want to reflect on as we burst into 2010.
Let’s be vocal in giving one another encouragement. The day-in-day-out fight for climate justice has its darker days (and not just in Copenhagen in December!). We not only need to highlight positivity through messaging around solutions and encouraging our leaders who are taking the right steps as Phil Aroneanu and Meg Boyle suggested, but we also must remember to share heartening words with each other. Look at the hundreds who came out of the woodwork to voice their support of the youth sit-in at the Bella Center on December 16. Showing one another that kind of love on a regular basis, after triumphs of all sizes, lifts the souls of the participants and organizers of each action. This indeed lifts the collective soul of the movement.
Let’s continue to recognize that everyone in the movement, whether they’ve attended one local 350.org action or three COPs, is an important player. Not everyone in the climate movement can dedicate his/her whole life to climate work. Not everyone concerned by climate change is even part of the climate movement (yet). These current and future members of the movement, however, should not just be numbers to be counted on one-off days of action, online petitions, or small fundraising drives. Our movement relies on our energy and inclusiveness; our work is not for minority rights but for the rights of all people and all life on this planet. We need to reach out, embrace the fresh ideas and engage the capacity of everyone who shares our concern for the climate.
Let’s remember to take care of ourselves. As COP15 prep ramped up this fall, I found myself shedding other commitments and hobbies and putting most of the rest of my life on hold until January. With the urgency of the need for global action on climate change weighing over us, it is easy to feel like climate work must always take priority. But hey, there’s still going to be work to be done after Mexico City, no matter how great the outcome. Diversity of interests and activities is healthy, and healthy members make a healthy movement. Plus, participating in other activities and taking up new hobbies opens us up to new networks (see “future members” referenced in 2). Win-win… and third win.
After writing it all out, all of these things strike me as fairly obvious, but clearly sometimes I forget to take note of them. If that’s the case for you, I hope these points were welcome reminders; if not, I hope to read your ideas on how to foster a healthy movement in 2010 in the comments.
Some initial, relatively raw thoughts of where I stand in the International Youth Climate Movement after COP-15, followed by a lil video of the head shave.
It is hard coming out of the bubble of COP-15. It is strange to not be surrounded by inspiring young activists 24/7 anymore. It is stranger to try to comprehend that Christmas is not about climate change, that friendships and school and the rest of the life I’ve been building in Berlin will still be there when I get back, and that they will not all be based around the international youth climate movement.
My understanding of time is also severely screwed up. My birthday, just 11 days ago, feels like at least a month ago, if not two. I cannot yet comprehend how I will manage time when I get back. I feel a time pressure that is perhaps even stronger than the pressure I felt during my 18-hour days in Copenhagen.
I worry I may not be as effective as I need to be while living in Berlin. In terms of my personal capacity and also the comparative potential (and need) for change, I think I’d be better suited continuing my work Stateside. I will need to do some serious reflection and strategizing on how to be more effective from Berlin.
In less than an hour, I’ve got to head down to central Copenhagen to catch my train back to Germany. I’m going to welcome the rails after the bumpy ride on the emotional rollercoaster that my time in Copenhagen turned out to be.
I go through stages of fright, in which I fear we won’t be able to make the changes we need to make in time. But then I also know we have the power and the passion to do it. And I swing back and forth, hitting all kinds of other highs and lows on the way.
But I am thankful for the opportunity to meet such committed people and to see their inspiring work. And on top of it all, these people are also just straight up awesome – even when you disregard their amazing work in the youth climate movement.
So that’s it, time to put the last pieces of stuff into my overpacked bags and get on my way. I leave with a cold head from the failure of COP-15, but with a warm heart from the relationships and new networks formed in the IYCM.
I spent months helping prepare policy briefs on adaptation, plan how the SustainUS communications team would interface with policy and actions, and set up a framework for the international youth communications and media production teams to work within at COP. My personal (unaffiliated) involvement in yesterday’s unapproved sit-in inside the Bella Center was a transition into a new activist life outside of the COP-15 conference center.
In the end, we held our sit-in for nine hours. At around 2am, we walked away voluntarily (in some senses of the word), because the UNFCCC Secretariat and the security guards communicated an ultimatum to us: if they had to physically remove us, all 300 NGO observers (reduced from 7,000 allowed in on Tuesday and Wednesday) would be banned from entry. Three hundred is a paltry sum compared to the total number of accredited NGO observers (around 20,000), but it is far better than zero.
We were concerned about the silencing of civil society voices, and considered being arrested to show this concern. However, we agreed that to silence our voices further would hurt, not help the chances for a fair, ambitious, and legally binding deal. We were holding our sit-in to share this ask, signed by over 12 million people now, with negotiators and press in the Bella Center. We were therefore not willing to further reduce the already small chances for success in achieving this real deal in Copenhagen by allowing the UNFCCC to use our sit-in as an excuse to shut out civil society completely.
Our procession out of the Bella Center was bittersweet, mostly bitter. The sit-in had been a great success in some ways: gaining tons of media attention, engendering more smiles and thumbs up than we’d seen in the last 10 days in the Bella Center combined, and giving all of us an uplifting feeling as we realized we were not only supporting something we believed in but were also concurrently supported by millions of people including friends in the youth climate movement back in the US, official country delegates, and of course John Kerry. But as we left, we knew our impact inside the Bella Center was over, and with stalled negotiations over unacceptable texts, it felt like we hadn’t achieved enough.
But today was a new day. I woke up rejuvenated after five and a half ours of sleep (I’ve been averaging around six hours/night – better than I’d expected). This movement is still growing. Although we’re closer to tripping over climate tipping points with each delay of a binding, science-based treaty, this movement is going to continue. With added urgency to mitigate climate change and added need to help affected communities adapt to changes we can no longer avoid, the undercurrent I’m feeling among (my mostly new) friends here is that it is time to bring this movement to a new level. International Youth Climate Movement version 2.0.
Today, I fasted in solidarity with three Climate Justice Fasters who are now on day 42 (!!!) of a water-only fast. This cleanse is also a symbolic clearing of my system as I prepare for a new kind of involvement in an improved movement.
Tomorrow, I will continue (that is, unless I chicken out) down this path of a symbolic restart by shaving my head with a group of other activists in front of the Bella Center. Other things shaving my head could possibly end up symbolizing include: the ugly negotiating process, the bad decisions made by negotiators, or the catastrophic changes that unabated climate change could bring about. Those are risks I’m willing to take, though, because if the shave does turn out horribly, it will be, as the Climate Justice Fast was explained to me, a form of penance for being a part of the problem and not effective enough as part of the solution til now. At the same time, though, my shaved head will provide a promise of new growth – personally, in the movement, and for the world – to help us rise up above the challenges we have created for ourselves.
Life goes on and we will not let it pass us by. We won’t just sit and wait for a fair, ambitious, and legally binding deal. We will make it happen.
Hello! I am one of about 20 youth currently in our fifth hour of a sit-in in the Bella Center at the UN Climate Change negotiations in Copenhagen. Check out our preliminary video from when we had about 50 youth – some were dragged away and one was kicked out.
At one point, someone came by and said “thank you for all that you’re doing” and I looked up and it was Senator John Kerry. I reached out my hand and said “thank YOU!” and he continued down the rest of the line of us shaking everyone’s hand.
Later, we saw Dessima Williams, the Chair of AOSIS from Grenada. She told us that in 1998 she took part in an 8-day sit-in at the Commission on Social Development to call for reductions in military spending right here in the Bella Center!
I’ll sign out for now – check It’s Getting Hot in Here for live-blogging from our awesome support crew sitting at the tables behind us!
Helicopters. Danish Police. UN Security. EVERYWHERE.
Most of the SustainUS delegation are currently inside the Bella Center, where the UN climate change negotiations, COP-15, have been taking place despite increasing limits on civil society involvement at the talks.
Outside, the Reclaim Power march reportedly has 5,000 or so marchers headed towards the Bella Center. Accredited NGOs Friends of the Earth, AVAAZ, and TckTckTck have had their accreditation suspended and were removed from the Bella Center. This may be related to a peaceful demonstration that was carried out in the Bella Center yesterday without the approval of the UNFCCC Secretariat, but the details are unclear.
Meanwhile, some folks leaving the Bella Center reportedly have been arrested pre-emptively in case they are planing to join the Reclaim Power protest. And there’s rumor that the Youth Convergence space, a workspace for accredited youth outside of the Bella Center, has been visited/raided/??? by the Danish Police. What!?
I don’t know what is going on, but this is all ridiculous.
I just wanted to blog this photo. I was sleeping in (until 8:30) for my birthday, so sadly I missed this fun SustainUS-organized event. “Don’t leave us out in the cold,” yelled US youth as delegates and others waited in security lines to get into the Bella Center. We need science-based targets – ahem 350ppm – for survival of all the world’s peoples and for a habitable planet for future generations.
Time is flying here in Copenhagen. The question is, are we flying in a private jet or gracefully soaring like an eagle? Are we headed towards an outcome in Copenhagen that will continue to support a dirty energy economy that pollutes greenhouse gases without thought of its grave impacts on the ecological systems and habitability of this earth or one that will give us, and future generations, a chance at a beautiful, sustainable future.
This pointed question is at the middle of today’s activities in the Bella Center. This year, global youth at the UNFCCC acquired a more formal status, that of a “constituency”. Constituency status, initially just given to “BINGOs” (Business and Industry NGOs) and “ENGOs” (Environmental NGOs), allows NGOs falling under particular umbrellas to have greater access to the UNFCCC Secretariat by way of funneling shared issues and requests through one or two representatives or “focal points”.
To celebrate the addition of YOUNGOs to the list of constituencies to the UNFCCC, today, December 10, we’re hosting Young and Future Generations Day in cooperation with the Secretariat. We have 1,000 youth running around the convention center with bright orange t-shirts asking negotiators, NGO leaders and press, “how old will you be in 2050″ and demanding that negotiations “don’t bracket our future”. We’re also handing out 1,000 orange scarves to our supporters in country delegations and leading international NGOs.
I’m currently sitting in a Side Event (where NGO observers have a chance to speak on various issues related to the COP-15 negotiations) presented by SustainUS on Youth Voices on REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). The opportunity to hold events such as this forest side event with its quiet, academic tone is a necessary part of youth involvement at COP alongside our other actions.
credit: Robert vanWaarden
Sometimes our loud, media-grabbing actions such as supporting Tuvalu’s call for new, transparent discussions for a legal treaty yesterday outside of the Plenary hall or crashing an Americans for Prosperity live telecast event held outside of COP (yes, this is the one where Lord Monckton repeatedly calls us Nazis and Hitler Youth) paint youth involvement into a corner – one where it can be difficult to see our deep understanding of the climate policy and ecological science.
Yesterday, Lord Monckton called us “Hitler Youth who know nothing about climate science” but the bright minds in this forests side event, and the young people from the world over whom I’ve talked to around the entire convention center, disprove him time after time.
We are a force to be reckoned with, not just because of our numbers or our energy, but also because of our knowledge climate science and our understanding of what is at stake. Our compassion for one another, for the small island states and the world’s poorest communities, and for future generations is overwhelming and contagious.
I’m so energized to keep working in this movement, and to keep appreciating the importance and the power of youth even as I get older. Today is my birthday and I’m now 24. On December 10, 2050, I’ll have just turned 65. By that point in time, official retirement age will probably be over 70, but even it if it isn’t, I’ll probably still be hard at work managing environmental issues.
P.S. Haven’t gotten me a birthday present yet? Consider donating to my Copenhagen Fund. A $5 donation helps me buy a meal at the Bella Center (where food is subsidized, thank goodness) or a bit of tap water in the city of Copenhagen… And hey, it’s tax deductible!
As 27 of my fellow SustainUSers are in Copenhagen are attending plenary sessions and planning actions with international youth from around the world, I’m holding down the fort in Washington, DC by bridging the news from Denmark to actions at home.
A friend of mine earnestly remarked today that he thought grassroots and youth organizing for COP15 was a lost cause because the real negotiating at Copenhagen, and that legislative change in the U.S. Senate happens behind closed doors between high-level decisionmakers and powerful lobbyists; that protests, petitions, and rallies are tiny blips on the political radar. And I suppose he has a point – the COP15 outcome depends highly upon decisions of key leaders, and the deep pocketbooks of special interest groups and corporations resonate at higher decibels than kids with hand-painted banners and street actions.
But he’s wrong to conclude that it’s a waste of our time. After a brief afternoon existential crisis of the importance of our collective work, I stopped to look around at all the inspiring work coming from delegates in Copenhagen and my friends all over the country. It’s easy to become apathetic or discouraged, but it takes a lot more to keep fighting the fight.
Don’t underestimate the value of expressing your two cents to your leaders – it’s money well spent! We’ve already seen a positive change in political climate from our tireless campaigns – from Obama’s willingness to engage with youth climate leaders to the growing support for 350 ppm as our new global CO2 stabilization target – and though our gains may seem incremental, they are certainly pointing in clear direction: forward.
“I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world,” writes poet Adrienne Rich. We may not have money or extraordinary power on our side, but we have our youth, creativity, energy, enthusiasm, and dedication, and no astroturf effort can buy that kind of genuine passion. Sure, even a visible Ark on the National Mall isn’t alone going to convince my Senator to vote for the Climate Bill, but it’s the combined effect of all sorts of actions happening worldwide that show our collective force.
As youth delegate Caroline points out in her dispatch from Copenhagen, it’s important for us at home to build on the momentum from our friends in Denmark to push for domestic action. Join a rapid response team! Call your senators to voice your support for the Climate Bill! Talk to your friends and neighbors to raise awareness about these issues to people who might not otherwise know about them! Attend a 12/12 candlelight vigil!
Tomorrow, youth activists in Copenhagen are holding a Bed-In to commemorate the assassination of John Lennon by singing a climate-adapted version of “Give Peace a Chance.” The message? Give youth a chance.
