Day 9 — COP17, Durban: Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Today belongs to the youth delegations, some of whose members I have been interviewing this week. Indeed, the most moving and inspirational conversations I have had have tended to be with youth from all over the world, including the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Uganda, Nepal, Lebanon, and elsewhere. On Wednesday, six Canadian youth delegates (youth is an official UN category for non-governmental organizations to be accredited here, and collectively they are known as YOUNGOs) turned their back on Canada’s minister of the environment as he gave a press conference, wearing t-shirts that said “Turn Your Backs on Canada,” for its openly antagonistic attitude toward making a just and binding climate treaty anytime before 2020.
In honor of the incredible eloquence, courage, and vitality of the young people I have met here, I turn this day’s report over to Cameron Fenton, member of the Canadian Youth Delegation here. The following words are from his post of December 9, and they refer also to events that took place on Thursday, December 8, when a young American delegate, Abigail Borah, made her own statement of protest at a press briefing by Todd Stern, the head of the U.S. delegation:
“I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot. The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to wait. We need an urgent path to a fair ambitious and legally binding treaty.
You must take responsibility to act now, or you will threaten the lives of youth and the world’s most vulnerable.
You must set aside partisan politics and let science dictate decisions. You must pledge ambitious targets to lower emissions not expectations. Citizens across the world are being held hostage by stillborn negotiations.
We need leaders who will commit to real change, not empty rhetoric. Keep your promises. Keep our hope alive. 2020 is too late to wait.”
Ironically, I had been scheduled to interview her at 7:45 a.m. the same day, only to get a text from her that she couldn’t make it that morning! After interrupting his opening statement, she was escorted out of the building and barred from entering it again. Other young activists with whom I have spoken here tell of being watched closely because they had engaged in direct actions at Cancun in 2010, of being expelled here on flimsy pretexts (also on Thursday), having their cameras confiscated, and more.
The youth are rising to the occasion magnificently…
Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Durban
Posted on December 9, 2011 ·
by Cameron Fenton
http://canadianyouthdelegation.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/abandon-all-hope-ye-who-enter-durban/
“The wealthiest, most polluting nations on the globe have hung a sign over Durban’s International Convention Center.
It stares in the face of delegates from around the globe at every turn, promising the world untold devastation.
The sign reads “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here”.
Here at COP17 the world’s biggest emitters, being led by the United States, are telling the rest of the world that right now is the time to wait. They have begun a pushto delay a legally binding, international agreement to address climate change until 2020 – five years after the time scientists from around globe have idenitifedas the red line to peak global emissions.
We are standing upon a continent literally being cooked by climate change. Across Africa the impact of climate change is not defined by future climate modeling scenarios or imagined through the lens of Hollywood special effects flooding Manhattan. Here climate change is simplified: it means water shortage, famine, increasing and expanding ranges of some of our world’s deadliest diseases, disappearing shorelines and forests, and the list goes on – all in a continent already ravaged by centuries of colonization, war, poverty and the greed of western nations.
Yet, as this happens the message from the leaders of the Western world is: “Wait, help is coming… eventually.”
It is not simply a piece of paper or a commitment at stake here in Durban. As COP17 draws nearer to a close we face a very real fight to save hope.
This is not the false, corporate banner of hope that Coca-Colasponsoredacross the Copenhagen talks in 2009. Rather, this is the fire in the bellies of all those people from across the globe here in Durban to build a just and sustainable future. Those countries and interests pushing for a delay in progress until 2020 under the banner of political realism are asking the unreasonable of the rest of the world. They are asking those already suffering to give up hope.
During the civil rights movement, young organizers across the southern United States often referred to the fight to desegregate the South as battle for the soul of America. Here in Durban, the fight for climate justice is the fight for the hope and imagination of our entire generation. The stand being taken by our nations is not simply a death sentence for thousands around the globe, but a clear declaration that they are not negotiating on behalf of the interests of our generation.
On Wednesday, six young people from Canada stood up in defense of hope. Today they were joined by a young woman from the United States. All of them were thrown out of the United Nations climate talks, not because they did not believe in the process, but because they believe so fiercely in the necessity of its success.
Youth have joined in the United Nations process in good faith since Severn Suzuki’s impassioned pleato the globe at Rio in 1992. We have placed our future in the hands of politicians, business, and a global process that has promised results, only to deliver half measures and false victories. And yet we continue to return, not because we are gluttons for punishment, but because we know that without global action our future hangs in the balance.
Despite our leaders, we will keep hope alive. For our future and for our sisters and brothers around the globe who are watching their world burn, 2020 is too late.
We will not be silent. We are your guilty conscience.”