Big Bali of trouble

It's time to throw down on the home court

Posted by Youth Movement (Guest Contributor) at 5:16 PM on 14 Dec 2007

Read more about: Bali 07 | climate | politics | international politics

Post by Richard Graves and Erin Condit-Bergren, U.S. youth delegation.

Nusa Dua, Bali. We have been sitting outside the closed conference rooms where delegates from around the world engage in the grueling process of working out an international climate policy, line by line. Campaigners, delegates, and journalists mill about, trading rumors and whispering strategy. Everyone has been working nonstop for two whole weeks, and it all has come down to this one long session.

The milling crowd reflects nothing of the nuance of the international negotiations, which will determine the future of international climate change policy. Instead, the din reveals the clanking of glasses and the milling hubbub of various national representatives, sound and fury, signifying nothing. The air may be charged, but what exactly are we all waiting for? Everyone is as edgy and nervous as an expectant father banished from the maternity room, yet there will be no agreement born today. At the moment, all we hope for is a plan to negotiate another plan.

Why on earth are we here at 2:00 a.m.? We know that in the end, despite all our efforts at the conference and over the last year, the White House delegates will ignore the will of the American people and even the plight of their own children. The sad truth is that while we have done so much over the last year and won so many victories, when we try to get our own government to represent us it is like we are the nagging conscience they have grown comfortable ignoring.

Earlier, before the negotiations dragged into the wee hours, we moved the assembled delegates to tears with our plea and call for action. We shamed the U.S. delegation for lying to us before the world. We told the stories of young people losing their homes, their livelihoods, and their human rights; how we felt betrayed by those that refused to protect us when we needed them. Finally, we simply, quietly, begged them to act.

The U.S. delegates only smiled and continued on. They are blithely acting as if our collective future, the very fate of our society, is nothing but another diplomatic chessboard to advance the narrow economic issues of one industrial sector. It is no longer shameful, it is beyond embarrassing, it is a moral outrage.

It is time for accountability. We cannot trust this generation of "leaders" to safeguard our future. We have no choice, but to rise to the challenge ourselves.

At this conference, we have talked about building a global youth climate movement and how it could help our regional or national organizations coordinate. But we can no longer think just in terms of organizational development -- we must galvanize our generation. We must communicate, in as stark terms as possible, the two paths that lie before us.

Down one path lies a world where we have overcome the shame of global poverty, the terror of rising conflict, and embraces sustainability to uplift humanity. The other is almost too terrible to contemplate, where nations war over declining resources, the world's most vulnerable pay the terrible cost of inaction, and we play Russian roulette with our very future.

With the choices so clear, our duty is even clearer: we are the ones that must act. We must act to make this generation, which represents almost half the population of the Earth, the one that rises to the climate challenge. We have but one chance, one future, and one climate.

For story: Big Bali of trouble
4 Comments | Post a Comment

Youthful spirit

As a Canadian member of parliament (and for the first time considering apologies for my nationality due to my gov'ts shameful conduct) the youth delegations were a true highlight for me at this conference.

Rather than worrying about scoring vague diplomatic points the young participants were able to focus on the ethical obligations of this crisis. If we are confirmed that this is of global crisis proportions the assembled politicians are clearly unable to act as such. If such a meeting were held about an on-coming war or international terrorist threat the leadership would point to the outcome necessary and turn to their bureaucrats and order it done.

The more young people holding the leadership of the world to account the better.

by Nathan Cullen at 8:20 PM on 14 Dec 2007

Which "act" is that?

A note on my background:
I started to be involved in youth activism in about 1990, when I was 12 years old. Since then, I have finished two Ph.D.s (by age 26), and am struggling to find ways to work in the field and arena of sustainability while making some sort of living...
So, naturally, I love the spirit of the post (although it is, as oftentimes gets mentioned, too bad that we are still at this same point).

At the same time, I have to wonder what is meant by a call to act:
To go on with the theatrical act of activism, or to (also - those are not necessarily exclusive) act in our own private and social lives, work to live and work differently and show that there is better, higher value and different values to sustainability-oriented living.

And yes, I'll be the first to admit that I'm struggling with such issues myself; I'll hopefully get around to work on it more (IRL and writing online) shortly.

Dr. Gerald Schmidt Positive Ecology Project www.positive-ecology.org

by GSchmidt at 2:45 AM on 15 Dec 2007

Can I call you Gerry?

Sir,

I was once in the Bobby Seal Riots in New Haven and saw it go from peaceful bliss to riot to near war in a mater of days and hours. I too was 12 years old, with my dad and a doctor from Yale New Haven as our paramedic. It was very impressionable.

Did it do any good? I have to think about that, but the peaceful part was I thought very cool. People were listening to rock in the Yale quads and talking about solutions and possibilities ... and OK, smoking a ton of reefer, new for a 12-year old to sense or smell in the air. It was hard to tell if the reefer smoke or pepper gas was worse!

But I would preach peace, peaceful assembly, and peaceful demonstrations. Even a 12-years old knows that when 6-foot fluorescent tubes started flying at the National Guard, that was not a good sign. When Molotov cocktails started being hurled, dad said it was time to boogie. Don't run he said, you'll only breathe more pepper gas.

But today I am as baffled and confused as you are my friends ... does the theatrics really work? Until it is more than a few hippies in a quad listening to some really good music, I think not. But if it's a Carl Sagan Moment with "millions of billions," maybe ... maybe a paradigm shift as Kuhn would say?

Onward through the fog

by Sam Wells at 8:58 PM on 15 Dec 2007

A little esoteric, but here goes

Paradigm shift? Absolutely. Strange though it seems, even to me, I've begun to take heart a bit because (and this is the strange part) of what feels like an intense culmination of lots of "bad stuff" happening. From weather disasters to financial and credit crises, rising energy and food costs to impacts of climate change on the here-and-now (the connections now being made which were ignored just a year ago) - there's so much going on that screams we've overshot basically everything, and it's impossible to ignore. Things will have to change, on the ground, where we live, regardless of any progress or not in Bali. The more "ordinary" people are impacted, the more they understand that there is little they can do on their own to keep "normal life" going as they have come to know it, the more quickly we'll see the chnages necessary. I believe there will be a paradigm shift because of the massive amounts of energy in the system and the chaotic nature of it. The more aware of what's going on we are, the more we work with it (rather than being swept along), the sooner the shift occurs. So much for my two cents on this cold, snowy day in Maine - where the power still flows despite snow and sleet all day, but I imagine what it will be like some day when that is not the case and we have to figure something else out.

by SMLowry at 4:48 PM on 16 Dec 2007

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