theClimateers

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.

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.

News of US President Barack Obama being chosen by the Norwegian Nobel Committee as the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize has certainly been raising eyebrows around the world. In my little social networking world, I’ve seen a nice mix of congratulatory, questioning, and just plain funny status messages and tweets.

In the award announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee states that it

“endorses Obama’s appeal that ‘Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.’”

I can only imagine how much fun the communications team had in picking out an Obama quotation to throw right back at him.

The Nobel Committee is forcing Obama to live up to expectations – both those of the Prize and of the people who voted for him and the people around the world who celebrated his election.

One key expectation is action on climate change.

Obama’s work “to improve the international climate… to strengthen international bodies such as the UN” is lauded both in the initial award announcement and again during the press conference. Of course creating a new international climate is mostly intended to praise Obama’s general diplomatic work (read: to diss Bush), but I do believe throwing the words “climate” and “UN” very close to one another on more than one occasion is also a clear call to Obama to be at COP-15 in Copenhagen. And when I say “be at COP-15″ I don’t just mean showing his face; no, I mean bringin’ it to Copenhagen.

Onward to Copenhagen!

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”

Perhaps the Committee would have been better served to give this award to Obama retroactively, for the year 2008, when he actually garnered said hope. But while hope for change (read: world public opinion poll numbers on Obama’s favorability) might have fallen in recent months, we still have hope in our small window of opportunity to enact a bold, binding, and just treaty on climate change mitigation and adaptation in December in Copenhagen.

Obama said he will accept the award as a “call to action.” Let’s make sure that in accepting, he is hearing the call in the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s statement to meet “the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.”  You can add your voice to this call to action by signing the Climate Countdown Petition.

To accept the Peace Prize on December 10 in Oslo, Obama will have to fly to Scandinavia in December anyway; he might as well make the most of those greenhouse gas emissions by spending two weeks in Copenhagen!