theClimateers

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?

Cross-posted at It’s Getting Hot In Here

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.

Cross posted from It’s Getting Hot in Here

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.

Dear President Obama,

The science on climate change is overwhelming, and the momentum from the climate movement is at full speed. Don’t resign to postponing climate action just yet! We’re not just asking you to attend Copenhagen in person, we’re asking you to be at Copenhagen with all the dedication, energy, and diplomatic grace that you have demonstrated so many times before.  We want to see you come home  having made progress — real progress! — on climate negotiations, not pat yourselves on the backs and say, ‘The timing wasn’t right, but let’s certainly do this again later.’

Time is running out! It’s true; we may not feel the repercussions of unabated climate change in the same way we feel the backlash of this economic recession right now, but we have already made irreversible damages to our earth and it is imperative that we act now to prevent too many more from happening.

In solidarity,

Your friendly, neighborhood Climateers

____________________________________________

Dear all,

Most of us are not as lucky as Valida and hundreds of other youth to be able to voice our opinions at Copenhagen in person, so here are a few things we can do at home to make sure we let President Obama and the Senate know we don’t intend to let them off the hook on this one.

1. CALL YOUR SENATORS! You have two of them, and while sometimes it might not seem like it, they work for YOU, so let ‘em know what you want!

2. Attend a climate justice action on November 30: http://www.actforclimatejustice.org/ – happening all over!

3. If you are in DC, help 1Sky and CCAN deliver art to the White House on Dec. 4!

4. It’s not all petitions and protests! Think of something creative! Valida and I wrote 350 songs; Berlin held a silent climate parade; DC released dozens of beautiful, floating lanterns at the White House during Obama’s trip to China — what can you come up with?

5. Send Obama a message or sign a petition – no worries about sending two, or three, or four! The larger the volume the better!

http://www.whitehouse.gov/live |  www.itsgametimeobama.org |  www.climatecountdown.org

Here’s a possible list of things to ask him to do:

- Attend Copenhagen in person

- Put pressure on the Senate to pass a strong climate bill — no watery bills wanted

- Meet with the youth leaders who have been working so hard at the grassroots level on environmental issues

- Address the country with a public, televised speech on the importance of climate and energy legislation so to tell the world that this is a top priority on his agenda

Louise

It’s an interesting time to be living as a student in Berlin, though certainly not as interesting as it was 20 years ago today when the Berlin Wall was suddenly opened. The various retrospectives and anniversary events all around the city celebrate not just the end of Communism, but also the beginning of a new era of economic and social interconnectedness. This interconnectedness that has evolved since 1989 does not stop at Berlin’s city limits or at Germany’s borders.

The Berlin Wall was the first of many obstacles to be torn down between peoples of this world. The rise of globalization in the economy, in civil society networks and in ideological groups engendered a host of new transnational issues that reshaped the security landscape. No longer could national leaders focus security efforts only on threats from other nation-states.

A new conceptualization of security began to underscore the importance of human security – the safety and well-being of people within states – as a major shaper of national security. Low standards of safety and well-being in a particular country or region can lead to instability. This instability is today perceived as an international threat to security, because of its capability, even tendency, to cross borders through increased participation in international terrorism and drastically amplified migration flows.

Today, twenty years after the fall of the wall that sparked this paradigm shift, the biggest threat to human security, and thus to national security, is climate change.

Heat-trapping gases from fossil-fuel-driven economies are leading to an unnaturally fast rise in average global temperature. If we don’t change course immediately, it’s not a hotter world alone that we have to worry about (in fact, some regions would see dramatic drops in average temperature), but rather disruptive changes in the flow of water around the globe as a result of warmer ocean currents.

Subsequent increases in frequency and intensity of natural disasters, changes in arable land and potable water distribution, and rising sea-levels swamping coastal cities would create pockets of instability that threaten to erupt into mass migration, armed conflicts, and public health calamities – all potentially grave security concerns.

It is hard to predict the exact timing and placement of such changes, in part because of complex feedback loops. This uncertainty, however, does not detract from the threat to security, but rather amplifies it as it makes specific threats harder to anticipate.

Due to its overarching nature and potential catastrophic effects on international social, political, and economic structures, climate change has been noted as one of the greatest threats to American security by the Pentagon, the State Department and eleven retired three- and four-star admirals and generals.

The risk is real and the time for action is now. World leaders will be meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December to negotiate greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets and funding for adaptation to climate change impacts that are already threatening the well-being of people around the world. In the next year, the agreement reached in Copenhagen will have to be fleshed out into a legally binding treaty to minimize the impacts of climate change in the most just manner.

In the case of the fall of the Berlin Wall, international negotiations and political leadership were major players, but the heavy Iron Curtain could not have been pushed down without the pressure from citizens on all sides. Everyday people like you and me have a responsibility to future generations to hold our leaders accountable by keeping international focus on the most fundamental issue of our time.

A short exchange I had with Louise over GChat on Tuesday about more or less ignoring my school work in my masters of environmental management program here in Berlin:

Me: November = Climate Activism Month
Louise: I know, but really, every month is climate activism month.
Me: Yea, but theres a million things to do before COP. There’s no time for other stuff. This is it.
Louise: Yea.

It’s November. The pressure is on. It’s on all of the negotiators in Barcelona. It’s on US Senators. It’s just all around on. I keep seeing countdowns and hearing tcktcktck in my head. With all this pressure, I’ve been feeling pressed for time. I started logging my time, to make sure I am spending an appropriate amount of time on any one area (be it socializing, doing school work, writing blogs/op-eds, or filming/editing climate videos). Time is definitely on my mind… all the time.

So I wanted to carve out just a tiny bit of time to reflect on some important time/timing aspects influencing climate change negotiations. Let’s break it down into past, present, and future.

Past

The most important timing factor to consider here is the length of time that industrialized have been pumping man-made greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. About seventy percent of the current stocks of greenhouse gases can be attributed to historical emissions from industrialized countries. China took the title for the greatest yearly emissions about two years now when it surpassed the US. But if we look at cumulative emissions over time (or per-capita emissions), the US is still a clear leader (U-S-A, U-S-A). Sadly this is nothing to cheer about; but it is something to rally around. I’m reminded of my years of playing soccer: everyone put their hands in the middle and we chanted, “Be Agressive, B-E Aggressive, Got to B-E A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E, Aggressive, Let’s go!”

Present

That leads me to present time. It is now time for all of us – in the sense of countries or individuals – to come together, to put our hands in the middle, and be aggressive. Countries have got to be aggressive in Copenhagen to get a bold, binding, and just climate deal (even if it is first finalized in the year after COP-15). While leaders in the Senate and around the world have pushed off the time pressure, it is still time time for us, as individuals or collectively as civil society, to be aggressive in relentlessly hounding our politicians to go for the fair and binding treaty. We can lament that a legally binding deal likely won’t come out of Copenhagen, or we can look beyond COP, and see that now we just have more time to keep building pressure. We’ve been working to build that pressure in the US for the past few years, but we’ve got to keep working to make sure that everyone knows that, given our past, it’s time for the US (again, both as a state and as individuals within that state) to step up as true leaders, as the team captain leading the rallying cry to be aggressive. We’ve got to be aggressive if we’re to eek out a win for the future of our world.

Future

To pull in a cliché here, we could say children are our future – that we’ve got to be aggressive for the sake of our children. Beyond new generations, it’s hard to say what the future will bring. One thing is fairly certain, though: what we do today affects the kind of future we will one day see and the future, past our own lifetimes, that we will never see. Our actions today affect the future of the world ecologically, our future socially as a human race, our economic future, and beyond. That’s why we can’t set a fixed discount rate to determine whether climate change mitigation action is economically worthwhile. Rather, we’ve got to move on the science-defined risks and on an ethical belief that we can’t put the world at such a high level of risk, even if we ourselves will no longer be around to see the potential, dreaded outcomes of inaction or insufficient action.

As Lord Nicholas Stern said at the Technical University of Berlin yesterday, we can’t wait ten or twenty years until today’s students, who Stern called “better educated” on climate change issues, are the world’s policy-makers. We just don’t have the time to put off securing our future against dramatic climate change.

*buzzer*

And so our little time-out has expired. To tackle climate change, we’ve got to

• diffuse the threats we can already foresee by providing adequate funding for adaptation (with concrete commitments of at least 50 billion USD/year starting by 2015 and at least 100 billion USD by 2020);
• take control of the game by setting binding targets;
• create a system to transfer technology, know-how, and funding (another 100 billion USD/year by 2020) to make sure that developing countries are also valued players in the team’s mitigation efforts.

Just because world leaders (ahem, US) are pushing off a legally binding climate treaty to 2010, does not mean that our work in Copenhagen (once again, referring here both to state delegates and to youth and other climate activists) is any less important. Now it is time to carry this game plan into the last minutes of the fourth quarter to ensure we’ve got the momentum and plans necessary to secure an overtime win in 2010 for the home team – for our home, the earth.

Ready, break!

Today, apart from going to a planning meeting for 350 October 24th Day of Action event in Berlin and preparing this post for Blog Action Day 2009, I also bought my ticket to Copenhagen. This has been a long time coming, as I’ve been considering the dual implications of my travel to COP-15 on climate change and on my pocketbook.

Image credit: http://www.magic-mural-factory.com/

Knowing that flying accounts for 2-3% of global CO2 emissions, I’ve been rather anti-flying in recent years.  To get to Germany, of course, I had no other choice (smuggling myself onto a freight boat or getting up to Alaska and then taking the trans-Siberian train across two continents weren’t really feasible… and molecular transport does not yet exist). Once I got here and had a bit of vacation time, though, I reverted to my anti-flying ways and I decided not to fly to visit a friend in Bosnia, but to carpool to Poland for a short trip instead.  Carpooling with a guy who was going to drive from Berlin to Krakow no matter what was fine:  I was just cutting out a share of his emissions.

Last week, in planning my trip up to Copenhagen for COP-15, I wanted to undertake some more serious analysis of my travel options since there seemed to be no easy answer regarding the best way to get to COP.

Here’s the dilemma:

• I wanted to spend as little money as possible;
• I wanted to minimize my CO2 footprint, as always, with a little added fervor since I’m going to Copenhagen for just that reason; it would be rather self-contradictory to not consider the greenhouse gas emissions of my travel.

This of course mirrors pretty much all problems we have with transitioning away from our dirty energy economy: $$$ vs. Environment/Ethics.  I wish I could always go with the option that made me feel the best, but alas, I too live in a world limited by the money I possess. (Side note: hopefully someday in my lifetime, solar flying is real and affordable.)

From Berlin, Copenhagen is just about 300 miles away or so, depending on the route you take. My options for getting from Berlin to Copenhagen (and back) with initial time & cost estimates were

1. Carpooling, 6-8 hours, $60-100 (In Germany, you can search for “carpool opportunities” online and then pay the driver a fee to ride with him/her to your final or intermediate destination.)
2. Flying, 3 hours (incl. transport to airport & check-in time etc.), $80-100 (incl. checked bag fee)
3. Training – 7 hours, $200-350
4. Busing – 7.5 hours, $60-95
5. Hitchhiking – 8-10+ hours, $0
6. Biking – unfortunately I’m not that fit and couldn’t miss any more days of class before the 4th of December

To be honest, when I was preparing this post last week by beginning to calculate CO2 costs, I was hoping that the math would help me justify a cheap, fast plane trip, or at least fortify my commitment to not flying with some hard numbers.

Luckily, today I found a great deal on a train ticket, just $128.44 at today’s exchange rate. This saved me from dealing with the “fuzzy math” of trying to adding up the global warming potential of radiative forcing from NOx and vapor trails from flying or the full CO2e emissions of charter buses compared to personal cars. I’m quite pleased with this outcome; train travel is widely heralded as the best form of rapid transit when it comes to environmental and climate friendliness. I don’t have to feel bad about my rather unnecessary carbon emissions from flying 300 miles and I don’t have to feel bad about not having any money for food in the world’s third most expensive city. A win for cost-consciousness and environmental-consciousness! Not to mention train travel is far more comfortable than any other form of travel that I’m familiar with.

P.S. In my search for comparative GHG emissions data for the various forms of transport, I found this great website, www.ecopassenger.org.  (Unfortunately it is only really handy for trips within Europe at this time.) Here is the info they gave me regarding energy resource consumption and CO2, particulate matter, NOx, and non-methane hydrocarbon emissions.

The graphs above assume European average number of fill seats on European train and plane trips and two passengers in the car; if I up the number of passengers to three, the CO2 and Energy Consumption figures of car travel begin to be more comparable with train travel and become smaller than train travel at four or more passengers. 30 miles of ferry travel is not included in the car mileage, helping make this car trip a bit more competitive with train travel than on other routes.

Really big side note on additionality

The question here is, if I select one of these options, will the CO2 emissions from the other choices disappear? Or would my travel with those options not really be “additional” – that is, if I chose not to travel with any of the above choices, will those same CO2 emissions still exist?

Whether I fly, hitchhike, train, or bus, these people are going to be sending their vehicles off to Copenhagen no matter what and the CO2 of all options will almost certainly exist whether I’m there or not (carpool being the only possible exception). At first glance, I should not be too concerned with my CO2 impact. Sadly, it’s not so simple. I also have to consider if my choice to take (or not to take) one form of transport will increase or decrease future emissions. It’s all conjecture, but I think my decision probably has a larger impact on commercial firms (airlines, trains) than on someone who picks up a hitchhiker spontaneously. Actually, those who are driving regular carpools as a profit-seeking endeavor are likely the most affected by my decision. Since they are smaller operations, one rider makes a bigger difference; they might not make a trip at all if they don’t get a carpooler (me).

Still, you might not think that my one decision can really make a difference in cutting carbon emissions. If I don’t fly, the plane will still go to Copenhagen and still pollute approximately the same amount (very slightly less without the weight of my body and bags). When I excitedly told people yesterday about having purchased my train ticket at a price almost comparable with flying, several people asked my why I didn’t just fly, since it was still cheaper. Their reaction was based on a belief that my impact, the purchase of one seat on a train instead of one seat on a plane, wouldn’t really make a difference in the grand scheme of climate change. So why not fly and reduce the pro capita emissions? Well, I’d be giving my money (as little as it is, grr!) to the commercial airline, helping them continue to profit off of highly polluting practices. If we all say, “screw it, the plane is flying, so am I,” we find ourselves faced with a tragedy of the commons.

From the opposite perspective – the the bright side, collective action implies that if enough of us take our environmental ethics to heart and steer clear of short flights, we could perhaps reduce the demand enough to economically stimulate the airline to cut down from two Berlin-Copenhagen flights a day to just one. Such a 50% reduction in supply might raise the price of a flight to something more fitting with the amount of pollution it produces. This would likely further cut the demand as consumers look more towards other means of transport, this time out of cost-consciousness rather than environmental-consciousness. And that, dear friends, is why I chose not to fly to Copenhagen.