Poland Debrief – reposted!

Hello all!

It’s been hard for me to come up with an easy answer when people ask me “How was Poland?” There are so many answers that picking one has been incredibly difficult. The default has become, “I’ll send you an e-mail.” So I’ve decided that I would send this mass e-mail (sorry it’s so impersonal) so everyone can hear a report back and so I can start to reflect on the amazing journey that I had. PLEASE DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO READ IT ALL — I DIDN’T ANTICIPATE IT BEING THIS LONG!!! I apologize in advance for the extensive use of acronyms.

Just so everyone’s on the same page, I just returned from two weeks in Poznan, Poland at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 14th Conference of Parties (aka the UNFCCC COP14, or the UN Climate Change Conference). I attended the conference as a part of SustainUS, a small, American youth NGO dedicated towards influencing the UN on matters of sustainable development. SustainUS sends groups tagged “agents of change” to the UNFCCC meetings which happen yearly, in addition to the annual UN Commision on Sustainable Development (CSD) and the annual UN Commission on Social Development (CSocD) meetings in New York. SustainUS is completely run by young people who recognize that the decisions impacting the future that we’re inheriting are being made by those who will not be around to feel the ramifications. Around 20 of us came from the US to Poznan as a part of SustainUS’ Agents of Change delegation, aged 19-27 and hailing from all parts of the country and all walks of life.

In Poznan, we were a part of the International Youth Delegation (IYD), which consisted of 400+ young people from 54 countries who all descended on COP14 with the common message that we need bold, just climate action now to ensure a safe future for us to live in. This group of incredible young people included representatives from all parts of the globe including sizeable delegations from the US, Canada, India, the UK, and Australia, but also featuring youth from countries such as Fiji, Belarus, Senegal, Sweden, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cyprus, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Haiti, and a whole host of others. We were all moved by our common concern for the state of the present negotiations and the implications they have on the not-so-distant future.

I guess I should try and say what exactly I was doing in Poland, because most people (including myself) tend to be a little confused about this. In the three or four months preceding our departure for Poland, the SustainUS delegation held weekly (and then bi-weekly, and then tri-weekly) conference calls to organize ourselves. We also had a magnificently helpful two-day orientation and organization “retreat” in DC in late September. These calls and meetings helped us figure out what needed to be done, who was going to do it, and how. We divided ourselves up into a few sub-groups: policy, grassroots, funding, and communications. I started out as a contributor to both the policy group and the communications group. As part of policy, I (along with incredible help from many others) took on the challenge of addressing the current state of American climate policy (surprise surprise, there’s not much going on there!) and trying to answer the question of what sort of domestic action would be needed if the US were going to re-engage in the international climate process as a leader. I also looked into potential policies proposed to address the climate equity issue (basically how we can get the historical emitters to pay for a large part of the mitigation and adaptation efforts while ensuring the safety of the most vulnerable parts of the world). This involved reading what I have tagged as “my favorite PDF ever,” quite a statement in this technological age, the “Greenhouse Development Rights Framework: The Right to Develop in a Climate Constrained World.” If you are even the least bit interested, I urge you to look here and download the document – it has the potential to be a truly important part of our future. Second, as part of the communications working group, I helped come up with SustainUS’ specific messaging strategy, define some media targets and goals, and began to get our story out to the press before heading to Poland.

My first day in Poznan was spent at the Conference of Youth (COY), a two-day event organized by a few young people to get all the youth attending COP together to strategize as a complete entity. As SustainUS’ on-the-ground media and communications coordinator, I became a part of the IYD’s Communications working group. Together, we set some goals including drafting some youth-wide messaging points, outlining our media strategy for the whole two weeks, delegating different roles and responsibilities. Of course, this also involved a lot of socializing and goofing around. Active participants in the Comms working group throughout the two weeks included Liz and Mal from the UK, Lauren, Nic, and Rosa from Canada, Shadia from the US (who was in Poznan as a part of a youth media outlet, Fired Up! Media), Maren from Germany, Wilson from Singapore, Ruchi from India, Jamie from the US (a Middlebury graduate who was in Poznan as a part of 350.org), Binetou from Senegal, Wendy and Amanda from Australia, and Brianna from the US (who works for the Energy Action Coalition, the main organizer of the American youth climate movement, and was an unbelievable and tremendous help as the essential co-coordinator of the SustainUS media team). I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but that’s just who I’m struck by off the top of my head. Together, we made some great progress at securing interviews, writing some all-star press releases and media advisories, and helping out the rest of the IYD in all their endeavors. Day-to-day, what we were doing was highly responsive to the goings-on in the conference and each individual’s participation varied depending on their responsibilities to their own national delegation. If you’re interested at all in the communications work we did, I’m going to offer you a glimpse into the world of international youth climate organizing by directing you to our comms team wiki. For examples of some of the press coverage we got, check out this, this, or this. These are just a few examples of the successes we had.

I’m going to spare you all the dirty, day-to-day details from the whole two weeks at COP. If you are really, really curious, please feel free to call me (202 316 6364) and you know that I’ll go on and on and on about everything that happened. What I do want to do, however, is highlight some of the most exciting things that I took part in while in Poznan.

1. Project Survival. As talks were going in circles and the typical obstructionist nations were stalling progress, I had the opportunity to attend a side event hosted by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), the International Institute for Environment and Development (iied), and a couple other organizations about their initiative called Many Strong Voices. Many Strong Voices links together the communities and nations that are most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis including Arctic peoples and residents of Small Island Developing States (SIDS). One of the speakers at this side event was Dr. Ronny Jumeau, the Minister for Environment and Natural Resources of the Republic of Seychelles, an archipelago nation of 115 islands located northeast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, as well as the Permanent Representative to the UN for Seychelles. The Seychelles, like many other SIDS and other members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), are literally drowning due to sea level rise caused by anthropogenic warming of the planet and the resulting melt of glaciers. Already, the Seychelles are having to dredge the ocean floor and deposit what they gather on their islands in order to stay above the oceans. This is a shoddy solution that destroys the islands’ coral reefs, but it’s all the islanders can do to stay afloat. Because of the challenges they’re facing, AOSIS and the SIDS, along with the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), are among the strongest advocates for strong climate action now. Dr. Jumeau is one of the most incredible speakers I’ve ever heard, as well as one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever had the opportunity to meet. A few quotes from Dr. Jumeau really struck the international youth delegation in a strong way. “Like the Amazon rainforest is the “lung of the world,” Dr. Jumeau said, “AOSIS and SIDS are the “conscience of the world, and like a good conscience should, we will not stop pricking you, until the water rises above our heads and we have to sim. And, by the way, we’re good swimmers.” He followed, “We will not roll over and die. We will not roll over and play dog because we are not dogs. We are alive.” These quotes, and others, lead the international youth delegation to come up with the idea of “Project Survival.”

One of the goals of the Poznan conference was to come up with a “shared vision for long-term cooperative action” regarding a climate treaty. This “shared vision” will serve as the goal for any policy detail worked out and as a target to strive towards while fighting climate change. While this might seem like a relatively simple feat, I can assure you, nothing is simple at the UN. The International Youth Delegation (IYD) recognized that we had the ability to direct the talks by trying to influence the shared vision document. After being inspired by Dr. Jumeau, the IYD realized that a central tenet of the shared vision must be to “safeguard the survival of all countries and peoples.” If we can’t all agree that the point of combating climate change is to ensure the survival of all peoples and countries, it’s hard to believe we can agree on anything. While survival is a very vague term, it carries connotations that it is unacceptable to sacrifice anyone in our efforts to combat the climate crisis. For the IYD, survival means that carbon equivalents stabilize in the atmosphere at 350 parts per million and that global temperature rises are held as far below 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible (sorry for that wonkiness). Project Survival was the mobilization effort that the IYD took on to get inclusion of the “survival principle” into the final shared vision document.

I believe our project launched on the last Wednesday of the conference. We created placards that read “Survival.” and were placed by many delegates next to their country’s placard at their desks. We printed up a petition that read: I, the undersigned, commit my delegation to a global climate treaty that: safeguards the survival of all countries and peoples. Remarkably, through our own hard work and hustle in the hallways, we got over 90 countries to agree to the survival principle in only two days. This included countries from every continent, from every level of development, and from every sort of culture. Many countries mentioned the theme of “survival” in their official addresses, and, completely unsuspected by the IYD, Australian Climate Minister Penny Wong referenced the international youth and our efforts in her endorsement of the survival principle in her official address. This statement, coming from a developed country that has yet to commit to any sort of climate action deemed applause-worthy, is an incredible success for the vulnerable people of the planet. After Al Gore’s address on Friday afternoon, the international youth held an impromptu demonstration in the middle of the main conference center building reminding attendees that “survival is not negotiable” and that “yes we can” ensure the survival of all countries and peoples – an event that earned much praise from LDCs and AOSIS, as well as the international press and many NGOs. (I am proud to say I helped organize this event). You can watch a video here. look for me at the left edge of the red “survival” banner. The UN police were less than pleased, but it was important to us that the international community recognize just how off track these talks had gotten and how the moral underpinnings of the fight to combat this crisis are being ignored.

Well sure enough, by the end of the conference, the “Report on the informal ministerial round table on a shared vision for long-term cooperative action,” one of the few official documents that came out of the Poznan conference, included this statement: “Participants at the round table expressed the need for international solidarity in embarking on a low emissions path that safeguards the developmental aspirations and survival of the most vulnerable countries and people.” This statement paves the way for the youth, along with AOSIS, the SIDS, and the LDCs, to advocate for the targets and policies that we feel are required to safeguard the survival.

And in case you were wondering, the United States did not agree to sign the survival pledge.

(A complete list of who did can be found here. Also important to note, world thinkers such as Lord Nicholas Stern and Nobel Peace Prize winners Dr. Rajendra Pachouri and Wangari Maathai signed on to the survival principle.)

2. Interacting with Americans at COP. Some of the experiences I had at COP that were most exciting to me were the ones that surrounded US climate policy, a subject that I feel much more comfortable discussing when compared to international climate policy. While Barack Obama did not attend the conference, and did not send a particular staffer to be his representative, many important and influential Americans were in attendance, and I had the opportunity to meet with and discuss policy with many of them.

First, I was able to attend a meeting that Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) had with NGOs. Mr. Sensenbrenner is the ranking Republican on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, and is also one of the most prominent climate deniers in American politics today. While it seems he has softened his stance that climate science is a straight up fallacy, he is still in the pocket of big business and is stuck in an outdated view of climate policy in which climate solutions destroy the global economy, ruin America, and are basically the anti-Christ (or some such nonsense). The meeting was pretty interesting, seeing that of the twenty-five people there, about 15 were representatives of business and industry NGOs, 3 or 4 were from environmental NGOs like WWF and USCAN, and 4 or 5 were American youth. Rep. Sensenbrenner provided the usual schtick, insisting that he was unsure there would be any “real and verifiable environmental benefits” from a cap-and-trade policy and that any sort of international agreement in which the developed nations take on a significant amount of the mitigation burden is not within the realm of “political reality.” While he managed a evade most of the questions that the youth threw at him during the meeting, I still think it was a productive moment for me because it gave me an opportunity to see what it was like to confront “the opposition” and I saw how to approach an elected official in a reasonable way face-to-face. Plus, for a political dork like me, it was exciting to be chatting with a Congressman as if it was no big deal.

Second, we had a couple meetings with the United States’ official delegation at the conference, a group of negotiators from both the State Department and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Headed by Dr. Harlan Watson, a former lobbyist for the industry-funded American Petroleum Institute, this group of individuals have been the backwards-thinking obstructionists employed by the Bush Administration over the last eight years to ensure that nothing too serious manages to get through these UN discussions. The delegation consists of both political appointees, like Harlan Watson and Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, and State Department careerists like Dr. Dan Reifsnyder (potentially Obama’s pick for chief negotiator, which would be bad) and others. While in the hallways the relationship between the US youth and the US delegation is friendly enough, in meetings we had with Dr. Watson, the dynamic was a bit more contentious. My personal favorite was when Brianna asked Dr. Watson if he had any regrets in his eight years as a negotiator and she was met with an emphatic “No!” from the man himself. In smaller meetings with Dr. Reifsnyder and others, the conversation was still tense, but nothing that blocked the road for some reconciliation between the youth and the delegation at some point in the near future. In fact, some of our SustainUS delegation members managed to forge relationships with some of the younger reps of the State Department delegation, so hopefully we’ll be able to work through State Department employees like Clare and Kate and create a more friendly and sociable relationship in the years to come.

Third, some of our most constructive discussions were had with members of the Congressional Delegation (aka CoDel) that were in attendance at the COP. This group of people consists of staffers from major players in Congress and the Senate who will have a large stake in the future of American domestic climate policy ad have an interest in maintaining good relationships with us, the voters. Some of the people we met that were particularly helpful were staffers from Sen. Boxer, Sen. Lugar, Sen. Snowe,, and Sen. Sanders’ offices, as well as from Rep. Waxman’s office. The staffer from Sen. James Inhofe, the body behind the famous “global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on humankind” quote, was surprisingly friendly, although I think he sensed he had no choice as he was in the lion’s den. We had some very constructive discussions about where the youth voice can be heard loudest in the US and how to ensure a safe climate future through becoming advocates for particular domestic climate policies. A frustrating thing that came out of these meetings, however, was the staffers’ reluctance to commit to a deadline for passage of climate legislation, merely implying that “serious progress” would be taken on domestic climate legislation by December 2009, when the next COP will be held in Copenhagen. While in Poznan, I often got the feeling that the international community was waiting for the Americans to act while the Americans were waiting for an international framework in which to base their action. This is a deadly circle that the US must be mature enough to break out of. I have high hopes that President-elect Obama will recognize this dangerous trap and step up and act.

3. Meeting with other delegations. A project that the US Youth set up that never really took off, but was fun while it was happening involved American young people meeting with the official delegations of other countries. The idea that we “represent the voice of Americans who spoke through the ballot box in November” so we should start some productive bilateral talks between Americans and other delegations now started (I think) as a sort of media gimmick, but ended up being really fun and useful. It offered a completely unique opportunity for us to here candidly what other players in the international arena were hoping from a re-engaged America and how they thought the US needed to fit into an international framework. Plus, how often do you get to say, “Oh, so I was sitting down with the Sri Lankan Environment and Natural Resources Minister and he asked up to get in a picture with him!” Like I said, it was pretty cool.

Now that you’ve got the basics (haha), it’s time to address the initial question, “How was Poland?” The first word is “amazing.” It was truly a great experience and I met some of the most awesome people that I’ve ever chanced upon, as well as some of the most inspiring and the most organized. I am completely humbled by the fact that so many young people all around the world are such stellar organizers with such incredible ideas and the fact that I got to witness this exchange of brilliance is really good fortune. The second word I would use is “frustrating” because time and time again it felt like I was doing everything I could to make sure that we come to a solution to this massive crisis and no matter how hard I tried, nothing I was going to do would make a real difference. It is incredibly disheartening to feel that there is a problem that has so much bearing on the rest of my life and the lives of those in my generation, yet no one is consulting us on how to fix the problem. The last word that I’ll offer up, borrowed from my buddy Barack, is “hope,” because I am incredibly hopeful and optimistic that the international youth will sincerely kick ass on this issue in the weeks, months, and years to come. We are too committed, too organized, too powerful, and too loud not to succeed. I am so excited for what the future holds and so ready to be a part of one of the biggest transformations in modern politics.

I’ve decided to tag my time in Poland as a “life moment.” This trip has prompted really great introspection and lots of reshuffling of thoughts and thought processes in my mind. I can’t really verbalize what I mean by this, but it just feels like one of those experiences that will alter something in my life’s journey – and for that I am utterly grateful. I think the ramifications will only be realized as time goes on and I continue to deconstruct exactly what went on (after all, I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in three weeks). Now more than ever, I am sure that I am willing to work day and night, tooth and nail to take on this crisis and work as hard as I can to try and make the best of this terrible situation we’ve managed to get ourselves in.

If you want to check out a cool little video montage of youth action in Poznan, check this out:

Thanks,
Peace,
Ben

The Citizen’s Guide to Climate Policy

Hi All,

It’s been a long time since I last blogged, but I wanted to fill everyone in on a new document that my friend Lois and I just put out, entitled “The Citizen’s Guide to Climate Policy.”

Here’s our press release:

July 10th, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Ben Wessel, (202)-316-6364, ben.wessel@sustainus.org

New “Citizen’s Guide to Climate Policy” Aims To Help Climate Advocates

Washington, DC – Two college students released “The Citizen’s Guide to Climate Policy” today, a short booklet aimed at helping climate change advocates and activists engage with their elected officials on energy and climate policy. Lois Parshley and Ben Wessel, students at Middlebury College in Middlebury, VT, analyze and explain the policy debate over crucial elements of climate legislation in the 44-page guide in order to help concerned citizens gain a voice in the legislative debate. The guide features a forward by environmentalist and author Bill McKibben and focuses heavily on the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, the climate bill that just passed the House of Representatives last month.

The guide is released as many environmentalists around the country are examining the Waxman-Markey bill and move to strengthen the bill in the Senate. “Now is the time for people all across the country to get active on climate legislation,” says Wessel, “Our guide will help engaged citizens join the debate without having to wade through the wonky policy talk of Washington.”

The guide goes in depth on specific issues that have been sticking points in the debate over legislation so far, including pollution permit auction and allocation, emissions reductions targets, and carbon offsets. It also has a chapter on the intersection of American domestic policy and the international climate negotiations that will culminate in December at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. “We wanted to help expand the climate movement’s power in Washington by making citizens more informed,” says Parshley, “By explaining the major elements of the bill and putting forth reasons to support or reject them, we feel we’ve done that.”

Most importantly, the guide is action-oriented and urges interested readers to get engaged and help secure strong, science-based climate policy. In his forward to the Citizen’s Guide, Bill McKibben writes, “This booklet…is a scorecard. But not for passively sitting by and watching the game. It’s an invitation to get in the game, to become passionately involved while there’s still some hope of affecting the outcome.”

Power Past Coal!

In November 2008, a diverse group of community leaders, environmental activists, former coal miners, indigenous peoples, and determined citizens gathered in Charleston, WV to figure out how to tackle one of the biggest justice issues facing America today: coal. The result is an inspiring new collaboration between climate and coalfield organizers: the Power Past Coal project. Power Past Coal (www.powerpastcoal.org) is planning 100 Days of Action to coincide with the first 100 days of the new Obama. Each day from January 21^st to April 30^th, communities will take action, demanding solutions to a broad spectrum of coal-based problems.

We are standing up to let everyone know: Coal is dirty and deadly, from cradle to grave. From mountaintop removal in West Virginia to dirty coal emissions in cities to the recent toxic coal sludge spill in Tennessee, communities nationwide are impacted by coal every day. American citizens are tired of dirty energy sources and the economic, environmental, and health problems they create. Power Past Coal’s 100 Days of Action will show voters, politicians, and business leaders that coal is a problem we must address.

Power Past Coal will bring together hundreds of independent actions from all over the country to showing how coal impacts each and every one of us and to demand a transition to a more clean and just energy future. Communities in Appalachia will demand an end to the mountain top removal that’s ruining their homeland. Navajo leaders will protest the strip mines and coal plants polluting their drinking water. Thousands will descend on Washington and take direct action on the coal-fired power plant that powers Congress, calling for strong climate change legislation now. We will share our stories and make our demands heard.

Our movement is growing larger and larger every day. Just this week, David Freeman, former head of the Tennessee Valley Authority (which operates the coal plant that flooded over 300 acres with toxic waste last month) said “It’s time that we outlawed new coal-fired plants and start systematically by age, shutting down the old ones.” Urban and rural, Democrat and Republican, black and white: Americans demand a future that powers past coal.

To plan your own action, sign up at www.powerpastcoal.org. No matter how you are linked to coal, we want to hear from you and deliver your message to our new leaders.

Take action. Tell your story. Join the movement.

A Poland Debrief

Hello all!

It’s been hard for me to come up with an easy answer when people ask me “How was Poland?” There are so many answers that picking one has been incredibly difficult. The default has become, “I’ll send you an e-mail.” So I’ve decided that I would send this mass e-mail (sorry it’s so impersonal) so everyone can hear a report back and so I can start to reflect on the amazing journey that I had. PLEASE DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO READ IT ALL — I DIDN’T ANTICIPATE IT BEING THIS LONG!!! I apologize in advance for the extensive use of acronyms.

Just so everyone’s on the same page, I just returned from two weeks in Poznan, Poland at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 14th Conference of Parties (aka the UNFCCC COP14, or the UN Climate Change Conference). I attended the conference as a part of SustainUS, a small, American youth NGO dedicated towards influencing the UN on matters of sustainable development. SustainUS sends groups tagged “agents of change” to the UNFCCC meetings which happen yearly, in addition to the annual UN Commision on Sustainable Development (CSD) and the annual UN Commission on Social Development (CSocD) meetings in New York. SustainUS is completely run by young people who recognize that the decisions impacting the future that we’re inheriting are being made by those who will not be around to feel the ramifications. Around 20 of us came from the US to Poznan as a part of SustainUS’ Agents of Change delegation, aged 19-27 and hailing from all parts of the country and all walks of life.

In Poznan, we were a part of the International Youth Delegation (IYD), which consisted of 400+ young people from 54 countries who all descended on COP14 with the common message that we need bold, just climate action now to ensure a safe future for us to live in. This group of incredible young people included representatives from all parts of the globe including sizeable delegations from the US, Canada, India, the UK, and Australia, but also featuring youth from countries such as Fiji, Belarus, Senegal, Sweden, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cyprus, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Haiti, and a whole host of others. We were all moved by our common concern for the state of the present negotiations and the implications they have on the not-so-distant future.

I guess I should try and say what exactly I was doing in Poland, because most people (including myself) tend to be a little confused about this. In the three or four months preceding our departure for Poland, the SustainUS delegation held weekly (and then bi-weekly, and then tri-weekly) conference calls to organize ourselves. We also had a magnificently helpful two-day orientation and organization “retreat” in DC in late September. These calls and meetings helped us figure out what needed to be done, who was going to do it, and how. We divided ourselves up into a few sub-groups: policy, grassroots, funding, and communications. I started out as a contributor to both the policy group and the communications group. As part of policy, I (along with incredible help from many others) took on the challenge of addressing the current state of American climate policy (surprise surprise, there’s not much going on there!) and trying to answer the question of what sort of domestic action would be needed if the US were going to re-engage in the international climate process as a leader. I also looked into potential policies proposed to address the climate equity issue (basically how we can get the historical emitters to pay for a large part of the mitigation and adaptation efforts while ensuring the safety of the most vulnerable parts of the world). This involved reading what I have tagged as “my favorite PDF ever,” quite a statement in this technological age, the “Greenhouse Development Rights Framework: The Right to Develop in a Climate Constrained World.” If you are even the least bit interested, I urge you to look here and download the document – it has the potential to be a truly important part of our future. Second, as part of the communications working group, I helped come up with SustainUS’ specific messaging strategy, define some media targets and goals, and began to get our story out to the press before heading to Poland.

My first day in Poznan was spent at the Conference of Youth (COY), a two-day event organized by a few young people to get all the youth attending COP together to strategize as a complete entity. As SustainUS’ on-the-ground media and communications coordinator, I became a part of the IYD’s Communications working group. Together, we set some goals including drafting some youth-wide messaging points, outlining our media strategy for the whole two weeks, delegating different roles and responsibilities. Of course, this also involved a lot of socializing and goofing around. Active participants in the Comms working group throughout the two weeks included Liz and Mal from the UK, Lauren, Nic, and Rosa from Canada, Shadia from the US (who was in Poznan as a part of a youth media outlet, Fired Up! Media), Maren from Germany, Wilson from Singapore, Ruchi from India, Jamie from the US (a Middlebury graduate who was in Poznan as a part of 350.org), Binetou from Senegal, Wendy and Amanda from Australia, and Brianna from the US (who works for the Energy Action Coalition, the main organizer of the American youth climate movement, and was an unbelievable and tremendous help as the essential co-coordinator of the SustainUS media team). I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but that’s just who I’m struck by off the top of my head. Together, we made some great progress at securing interviews, writing some all-star press releases and media advisories, and helping out the rest of the IYD in all their endeavors. Day-to-day, what we were doing was highly responsive to the goings-on in the conference and each individual’s participation varied depending on their responsibilities to their own national delegation. If you’re interested at all in the communications work we did, I’m going to offer you a glimpse into the world of international youth climate organizing by directing you to our comms team wiki. For examples of some of the press coverage we got, check out this, this, or this. These are just a few examples of the successes we had.

I’m going to spare you all the dirty, day-to-day details from the whole two weeks at COP. If you are really, really curious, please feel free to call me (202 316 6364) and you know that I’ll go on and on and on about everything that happened. What I do want to do, however, is highlight some of the most exciting things that I took part in while in Poznan.

1. Project Survival. As talks were going in circles and the typical obstructionist nations were stalling progress, I had the opportunity to attend a side event hosted by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), the International Institute for Environment and Development (iied), and a couple other organizations about their initiative called Many Strong Voices. Many Strong Voices links together the communities and nations that are most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis including Arctic peoples and residents of Small Island Developing States (SIDS). One of the speakers at this side event was Dr. Ronny Jumeau, the Minister for Environment and Natural Resources of the Republic of Seychelles, an archipelago nation of 115 islands located northeast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, as well as the Permanent Representative to the UN for Seychelles. The Seychelles, like many other SIDS and other members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), are literally drowning due to sea level rise caused by anthropogenic warming of the planet and the resulting melt of glaciers. Already, the Seychelles are having to dredge the ocean floor and deposit what they gather on their islands in order to stay above the oceans.  This is a shoddy solution that destroys the islands’ coral reefs, but it’s all the islanders can do to stay afloat. Because of the challenges they’re facing, AOSIS and the SIDS, along with the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), are among the strongest advocates for strong climate action now. Dr. Jumeau is one of the most incredible speakers I’ve ever heard, as well as one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever had the opportunity to meet. A few quotes from Dr. Jumeau really struck the international youth delegation in a strong way. “Like the Amazon rainforest is the “lung of the world,” Dr. Jumeau said, “AOSIS and SIDS are the “conscience of the world, and like a good conscience should, we will not stop pricking you, until the water rises above our heads and we have to sim. And, by the way, we’re good swimmers.” He followed, “We will not roll over and die. We will not roll over and play dog because we are not dogs. We are alive.” These quotes, and others, lead the international youth delegation to come up with the idea of “Project Survival.”

One of the goals of the Poznan conference was to come up with a “shared vision for long-term cooperative action” regarding a climate treaty. This “shared vision” will serve as the goal for any policy detail worked out and as a target to strive towards while fighting climate change. While this might seem like a relatively simple feat, I can assure you, nothing is simple at the UN. The International Youth Delegation (IYD) recognized that we had the ability to direct the talks by trying to influence the shared vision document. After being inspired by Dr. Jumeau, the IYD realized that a central tenet of the shared vision must be to “safeguard the survival of all countries and peoples.” If we can’t all agree that the point of combating climate change is to ensure the survival of all peoples and countries, it’s hard to believe we can agree on anything. While survival is a very vague term, it carries connotations that it is unacceptable to sacrifice anyone in our efforts to combat the climate crisis. For the IYD, survival means that carbon equivalents stabilize in the atmosphere at 350 parts per million and that global temperature rises are held as far below 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible (sorry for that wonkiness). Project Survival was the mobilization effort that the IYD took on to get inclusion of the “survival principle” into the final shared vision document.

I believe our project launched on the last Wednesday of the conference. We created placards that read “Survival.” and were placed by many delegates next to their country’s placard at their desks. We printed up a petition that read: I, the undersigned, commit my delegation to a global climate treaty that: safeguards the survival of all countries and peoples. Remarkably, through our own hard work and hustle in the hallways, we got over 90 countries to agree to the survival principle in only two days. This included countries from every continent, from every level of development, and from every sort of culture. Many countries mentioned the theme of “survival” in their official addresses, and, completely unsuspected by the IYD, Australian Climate Minister Penny Wong referenced the international youth and our efforts in her endorsement of the survival principle in her official address. This statement, coming from a developed country that has yet to commit to any sort of climate action deemed applause-worthy, is an incredible success for the vulnerable people of the planet. After Al Gore’s address on Friday afternoon, the international youth held an impromptu demonstration in the middle of the main conference center building reminding attendees that “survival is not negotiable” and that “yes we can” ensure the survival of all countries and peoples – an event that earned much praise from LDCs and AOSIS, as well as the international press and many NGOs. (I am proud to say I helped organize this event). You can watch a video here. look for me at the left edge of the red “survival” banner. The UN police were less than pleased, but it was important to us that the international community recognize just how off track these talks had gotten and how the moral underpinnings of the fight to combat this crisis are being ignored.

Well sure enough, by the end of the conference, the “Report on the informal ministerial round table on a shared vision for long-term cooperative action,” one of the few official documents that came out of the Poznan conference, included this statement: “Participants at the round table expressed the need for international solidarity in embarking on a low emissions path that safeguards the developmental aspirations and survival of the most vulnerable countries and people.” This statement paves the way for the youth, along with AOSIS, the SIDS, and the LDCs, to advocate for the targets and policies that we feel are required to safeguard the survival.

And in case you were wondering, the United States did not agree to sign the survival pledge.

(A complete list of who did can be found here. Also important to note, world thinkers such as Lord Nicholas Stern and Nobel Peace Prize winners Dr. Rajendra Pachouri and Wangari Maathai signed on to the survival principle.)

2. Interacting with Americans at COP. Some of the experiences I had at COP that were most exciting to me were the ones that surrounded US climate policy, a subject that I feel much more comfortable discussing when compared to international climate policy. While Barack Obama did not attend the conference, and did not send a particular staffer to be his representative, many important and influential Americans were in attendance, and I had the opportunity to meet with and discuss policy with many of them.

First, I was able to attend a meeting that Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) had with NGOs. Mr. Sensenbrenner is the ranking Republican on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, and is also one of the most prominent climate deniers in American politics today. While it seems he has softened his stance that climate science is a straight up fallacy, he is still in the pocket of big business and is stuck in an outdated view of climate policy in which climate solutions destroy the global economy, ruin America, and are basically the anti-Christ (or some such nonsense). The meeting was pretty interesting, seeing that of the twenty-five people there, about 15 were representatives of business and industry NGOs, 3 or 4 were from environmental NGOs like WWF and USCAN, and 4 or 5 were American youth. Rep. Sensenbrenner provided the usual schtick, insisting that he was unsure there would be any “real and verifiable environmental benefits” from a cap-and-trade policy and that any sort of international agreement in which the developed nations take on a significant amount of the mitigation burden is not within the realm of “political reality.” While he managed a evade most of the questions that the youth threw at him during the meeting, I still think it was a productive moment for me because it gave me an opportunity to see what it was like to confront “the opposition” and I saw how to approach an elected official in a reasonable way face-to-face. Plus, for a political dork like me, it was exciting to be chatting with a Congressman as if it was no big deal.

Second, we had a couple meetings with the United States’ official delegation at the conference, a group of negotiators from both the State Department and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Headed by Dr. Harlan Watson, a former lobbyist for the industry-funded American Petroleum Institute, this group of individuals have been the backwards-thinking obstructionists employed by the Bush Administration over the last eight years to ensure that nothing too serious manages to get through these UN discussions. The delegation consists of both political appointees, like Harlan Watson and Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, and State Department careerists like Dr. Dan Reifsnyder (potentially Obama’s pick for chief negotiator, which would be bad) and others. While in the hallways the relationship between the US youth and the US delegation is friendly enough, in meetings we had with Dr. Watson, the dynamic was a bit more contentious. My personal favorite was when Brianna asked Dr. Watson if he had any regrets in his eight years as a negotiator and she was met with an emphatic “No!” from the man himself. In smaller meetings with Dr. Reifsnyder and others, the conversation was still tense, but nothing that blocked the road for some reconciliation between the youth and the delegation at some point in the near future. In fact, some of our SustainUS delegation members managed to forge relationships with some of the younger reps of the State Department delegation, so hopefully we’ll be able to work through State Department employees like Clare and Kate and create a more friendly and sociable relationship in the years to come.

Third, some of our most constructive discussions were had with members of the Congressional Delegation (aka CoDel) that were in attendance at the COP. This group of people consists of staffers from major players in Congress and the Senate who will have a large stake in the future of American domestic climate policy ad have an interest in maintaining good relationships with us, the voters. Some of the people we met that were particularly helpful were staffers from Sen. Boxer, Sen. Lugar, Sen. Snowe,, and Sen. Sanders’ offices, as well as from Rep. Waxman’s office. The staffer from Sen. James Inhofe, the body behind the famous “global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on humankind” quote, was surprisingly friendly, although I think he sensed he had no choice as he was in the lion’s den. We had some very constructive discussions about where the youth voice can be heard loudest in the US and how to ensure a safe climate future through becoming advocates for particular domestic climate policies. A frustrating thing that came out of these meetings, however, was the staffers’ reluctance to commit to a deadline for passage of climate legislation, merely implying that “serious progress” would be taken on domestic climate legislation by December 2009, when the next COP will be held in Copenhagen. While in Poznan, I often got the feeling that the international community was waiting for the Americans to act while the Americans were waiting for an international framework in which to base their action. This is a deadly circle that the US must be mature enough to break out of. I have high hopes that President-elect Obama will recognize this dangerous trap and step up and act.

3. Meeting with other delegations. A project that the US Youth set up that never really took off, but was fun while it was happening involved American young people meeting with the official delegations of other countries. The idea that we “represent the voice of Americans who spoke through the ballot box in November” so we should start some productive bilateral talks between Americans and other delegations now started (I think) as a sort of media gimmick, but ended up being really fun and useful. It offered a completely unique opportunity for us to here candidly what other players in the international arena were hoping from a re-engaged America and how they thought the US needed to fit into an international framework. Plus, how often do you get to say, “Oh, so I was sitting down with the Sri Lankan Environment and Natural Resources Minister and he asked up to get in a picture with him!” Like I said, it was pretty cool.

Now that you’ve got the basics (haha), it’s time to address the initial question, “How was Poland?” The first word is “amazing.” It was truly a great experience and I met some of the most awesome people that I’ve ever chanced upon, as well as some of the most inspiring and the most organized. I am completely humbled by the fact that so many young people all around the world are such stellar organizers with such incredible ideas and the fact that I got to witness this exchange of brilliance is really good fortune. The second word I would use is “frustrating” because time and time again it felt like I was doing everything I could to make sure that we come to a solution to this massive crisis and no matter how hard I tried, nothing I was going to do would make a real difference. It is incredibly disheartening to feel that there is a problem that has so much bearing on the rest of my life and the lives of those in my generation, yet no one is consulting us on how to fix the problem. The last word that I’ll offer up, borrowed from my buddy Barack, is “hope,” because I am incredibly hopeful and optimistic that the international youth will sincerely kick ass on this issue in the weeks, months, and years to come. We are too committed, too organized, too powerful, and too loud not to succeed. I am so excited for what the future holds and so ready to be a part of one of the biggest transformations in modern politics.

I’ve decided to tag my time in Poland as a “life moment.” This trip has prompted really great introspection and lots of reshuffling of thoughts and thought processes in my mind. I can’t really verbalize what I mean by this, but it just feels like one of those experiences that will alter something in my life’s journey – and for that I am utterly grateful. I think the ramifications will only be realized as time goes on and I continue to deconstruct exactly what went on (after all, I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in three weeks). Now more than ever, I am sure that I am willing to work day and night, tooth and nail to take on this crisis and work as hard as I can to try and make the best of this terrible situation we’ve managed to get ourselves in.

If you want to check out a cool little video montage of youth action in Poznan, go here.

Thanks,
Peace,
Ben

New GREEN FINGER website

Hey everyone,

CHECK OUT OUR NEW GREEN FINGER WEBSITE @ www.mygreenfinger.org
Also, get ready to check this blog while i’m in POLAND for the UN CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE from DECEMBER 1 – DECEMBER 12!

Thanks,

Ben

Wednesday, September 3rd

Hey all!

I forgot to add yesterday that I wrote a travel piece for the Wall Street Journal about Svalbard! Check it out here!

Thanks

Ben

Tuesday, September 2nd

Hello all,

Sorry I’ve been so bad at maintaining this blog. I hope to revive it as a way of keeping myself sane and organized for the next few months before I head to Poznan for COP14. Anyway, here’s a piece I wrote for the 1Sky blog today.

Enjoy!
Ben

Day 61: Friday, August 9th 12:21am

Hey all–

Just a quick update so you don’t forget to check my blog every now and then. Today I went down to the friendly folks at the US Green Building Council (USGBC) and filmed a really fun Green Finger video. Here it is:

Expect a longer post at some time in the near future!

Thanks!

Day 50: Monday, July 28th 12:40pm

Hello all!

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted on the good ol’ blog, I was isolated in Southern Virginia where there was internet censorship and I wasn’t able to access any blogs or discussion forums of any sort. No worries, however, that just means that this blog post will be super spectacular as it contains two weeks worth of climate battling news!

Primarily, the whole world has been abuzz with news of Al Gore’s magnificent speech given in DC on the future of American efforts to combat climate change and his ambitious goals of having the United States’ electricity grid be 100% FOSSIL FUEL FREE in ten years. There is already so much debate about this speech in the blogosphere, so if you want to hear about it you should check out Grist.org, Envirowonk.com, the NY Times’ DotEarth blog, or any other of the plethora of people who write about this sort of stuff on the internet. It’s truly interesting stuff.

I myself was not able to go to see Al Gore give his speech because I was at summer camp! Thankfully, my two weeks as a counselor at Riverview Camp in Virginia were not devoid of climate activism and I managed to film a really fun Green FInger video with some of my campers! Check it out (I hope it works, I’ve been having major YouTube issues…)

Also, some of my campers made postcards for the 350.org Postcards Project, so hopefully they will be up on 350.org sooner or later for you guys to see the hard work of some of the youngest climateers out there!

Another highlight of the past two weeks has been 1Sky’s decision to post a little piece I wrote about my Voyage for the Future trip and the implications strong American climate policy would have on the Arctic and international climate treaty discussions. If you want to read what I wrote, just click here! I hope to do more work with 1Sky in the next few days, weeks, months, years, etc. They are such a great group of people and have managed to blaze a name for themselves really rapidly since their launch in November.

Our work towards creating a more cohesive Green Finger Project is still at the drawing board and I am now realizing how hard it is to coordinate so many people across so many different continents, etc. I am sure, though, that we will have our own website soon which will be relatively easy to use and will enable people to see that their actions can make a difference in the world. Already, we’ve been getting some big names to make vids…albeit mostly from Norway. Here’s a video made by Maria, Karl Oskar, and WWF Norway (again, I hope this works for you…)

Alright, well, I’ll be in touch later when I figure out more of how I’m going to be spending my August fighting climate change! Thanks!

Day 33: Friday, July 11th 6:01pm

Hey everyone, just a quick update that I thought you should see. Maria uploaded this video of our Arctic swimming adventure…enjoy!