Across the globe, yesterday, church bell towers chimed 350 times in a mass call for COP15 negotiators to achieve a fair, aggressive and binding (FAB) climate agreement. As the bell tolled, key environmental organizations were being locked out of the negotiations building (despite being accredited to enter) and a group of young climate activists sat down in the middle of the negotiating hall in a call for a FAB deal as they began reading the names of 11,000,000+ people, from around the globe, who have signed up supporting a FAB goal.
Sympathy sit-ins are beginning to appear.
Today, a group of climate activists staged a sit-in at the US Department of State.
“So far, the talks have been mired by conflict and low ambition from the United States and other countries. We welcome today’s announcement from Secretary Clinton to a global fund of $100bn in climate finance – but the US still has huge distance to travel on other areas, especially our short-term emissions reductions,” said Julie Erickson, one of the activists in the State Department.
It took less than 20 minutes before they were all detained …
At the Department of State, today, the bells tolled for us in the voices of these climate activists …
Here is an extensive extract from an open letter from Meg Boyle, one of those youth climate leaders, to President Barack Obama:
About those so-called “youth leaders,” better just called “leaders:” I regret that what is truly unprecedented political savvy and policy smarts on the part of so many young leaders is sometimes discounted because for whatever reason their deliberate idealism is still not seen as a serious strategy. But in truth, youth disappointment with the United States’ position here in Copenhagen is far from a symptom of some growth process from starry-eyed naivety to mature political pragmatism. These youth understand the U.S. political context only too well. They have read the draft legislation and watched committee markups, talked to constituents in districts across the country, and lobbied in the halls of Congress and even here at the negotiations. These youth come from the rust belt and the Bible belt, from inner cities and from farms. Some come from families that have lost their livelihoods in the latest economic crisis. Some plan to run for elected office; some are already in office. They have knocked on countless doors in communities across the nation to get out the vote for clean energy and climate justice champions. In 2008, they knocked on those doors for you.
These youth understand only too well the politics of U.S climate action in international context. Here in Copenhagen, they have heard appeals on the basis of the Senate vote count and the way the American public just does not get it, been warned of the specter of Chinese emissions run amok, heard the cautionary tale of Kyoto, and been told that after eight years of inaction, your administration is simply limited in what it can accomplish so soon.
These youth have cried together in the hallways of the negotiations over the last week and a half. No small number of their allies on country delegations and in the “adult” civil society community who have labored in this process for years and decades have been crying, too. In a moving speech on the floor of the negotiations last week, a delegate from the threatened island nation of Tuvalu spoke of his own tears. I wonder what it is like for him to know the day is likely coming when his family can never go home again. I wonder what it is like, in the face of current global geopolitics, to be effectively powerless to stop it—or even pressured not to speak up.
I wonder at the fact that here in Copenhagen, Tuvalu and the Maldives and countries across Africa and beyond are speaking up and demanding to be heard all the same. There is quite a difference between understanding and acquiescing, between a moment of despair and the moment of defeat. We understand the politics, Mr. President. We simply refuse to accept that they must be so.