I come from the energy world. If you’ve ever been to an energy conference — particularly one revolving around fossil fuels — the first thing you’ll notice is that the scene is dominated by old, white males. Depending on the renewable energy conference, the crowd gets much more diverse in age and ethnicity.

The COP climate conference is a whole different scene. Of course, it’s an international UN sponsored event, so it’s inherently diverse. What’s unique is the large number of young people in attendance.

It’s easy to get bogged down by the fact that the international negotiations are slow moving and, despite the last-minute deal brokered in Durban, still haven’t gotten us to close to where we need to be scientifically.

I remember one young woman in a background briefing with American negotiators last week saying “you’ve been negotiating this issue my entire life.”

If you’re still feeling down by the pace of action, one thing should give you hope about the process: the active presence of younger generations at these conferences — tracking negotiations, asking pointed questions, setting up meetings with diplomats, organizing protests, and doing anything they can to get youth voices heard.

I know this isn’t particularly new. Youth delegations have been coming to these meetings in greater numbers each year. But as a newcomer to the climate negotiation scene, it’s been pretty remarkable for me to see.

Two of these young adults particularly struck me: 24-year old American Ellie Johnston and 22-year old Chinese Songquio Yao, who went to Durban to “build bridges” and do what so many negotiators were unable to do for years. Johnston was part of a 14-member delegation representing SustainUS, a national youth coalition devoted to sustainability issues. And Yao was with a 13-member delegation from the China Youth Climate Action Network.

The Chinese and American youth delegations both met with their respective negotiators to express their passion for the issues.

Read more

Anjali Appadurai spoke on behalf of the world’s youth at COP17, the UN climate summit in Durban, South Africa, using the people’s mic to say, “Get it done!” Appadurai, a student at the College of the Atlantic in Maine, gave the final address to the delegates before what was supposed to be the concluding session. Instead, negotiators have struggled through Friday and Saturday with the harsh conflict between urgent scientific necessity and political possibility.

Appadurai challenged the delegates to remember that Africa is on the “frontlines of climate change.” She accused the assembled nations of betraying her generation, saying we are living in “an era in which narrow self-interest prevailed over science, reason and common compassion”:

The most stark betrayal of your generation’s responsibility to ours is that you call this “ambition.” Where is the courage in these rooms? Now is not the time for incremental action. In the long run, these will be seen as the defining moments of an era in which narrow self-interest prevailed over science, reason and common compassion.

Watch it:

“On a purely personal note, I wonder why we let not speak half of the world’s population first in this conference, but only last,” acting COP president Artur Runge-Metzger, chair of the European negotiating team, mused after Appadurai spoke.

Transcript: Read more

Read all the ThinkProgress coverage from the Durban climate talks.

The delegates assembled in Durban, South Africa to tackle the civilizational challenge of manmade climate destruction burst into sustained applause on Thursday when a young American interrupted the proceedings to speak on behalf of the United States people. Abigail Borah, a 21-year-old student from Middlebury College and member of the youth climate delegation, spoke out in the plenary hall as US climate envoy Todd Stern prepared to address the assembled environmental ministers. “I am scared for my future,” she said, because of the “obstructionist Congress” and the “empty rhetoric” of President Obama:

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. We need leaders who will commit to real change, not empty rhetoric. Keep your promises. Keep our hope alive.

Watch her speak, from Democracy Now:

Read more

by Eban Goodstein

Events of the past year have starkly revealed the limits of an outside lobbying strategy to impact climate policy in Washington. Given the changed political landscape, and with climate change impacts accelerating, we need new strategies.

C2C Fellows is a new national network for young people aspiring to sustainability leadership in politics and business.

C2C Fellows will engage 300 students and recent graduates each year in intensive leadership training. We will challenge young people to consider: What skills and experiences are needed to become people of power, people with the ability to affect the future, within five to ten years? C2C will then support the Fellows to gain these skills.

Read more

Our guest blogger is Bonnie Frye Hemphill, who organizes Business Leaders for Climate Solutions, a program of the northwest nonprofit Climate Solutions.

Hey climate movement, you know what I missed about us that Power Shift pumped right back into me last week?

The awesome.

Yeah, flashmobs, pranks, swiftly organized warroom tweetups, late-night dance parties of 15,000. Remember that rebellious side of us, that “we won’t take the past for an answer” side of us? Remember that “join us because this is awesome and you’re invited” side of us?

Politics is personal identity built into popular movements. The Tea Party is powerful because it ready-makes an identity for those who feel left behind by the 21st Century. It’s a safe space in a post-9/11, post financial collapse, peak-global-hegemony America. And the Tea Party’s done well wiping up a messy identity crisis by defining what they’re afraid of.

We’re also proud to define ourselves as what we’re not: we are cooler than the fossil forces of the past. They rail on chalkboards; we rally with giant puppets in the streets. They are talking heads for septuagenarians; we are sneaking into shareholder meetings and embarrassing giant fossil fuel companies. They are snarking about crosshairs on Facebook from defensive compounds in Wasilla. We are 10,000 lithe young people fighting for our future while a crotchety old pitbull like Tom Donohue screams to get off of his front yard at the US Chamber of Commerce. We are in the West Wing interrupting the President of the United States of America to remind him that energy shouldn’t kill.

But the past is where we leave the comparison. Those fearful forces haven’t got much vision for the future, and we sure do: we are identity awesome. We are the people not afraid to build something better than the assumptions handed to us.

Other American generations have staked their identities on propositions equally grand – rebelling from tyranny, beating back fascism, defending the world from communism. Our generation is staking its identity as the people responsible enough to face climate science for what it means, and political corruption for what it is. To build a cleaner, leaner, more durable and more prosperous way of life on our full tide of vibrant energy. The people smart enough to put our moral muscle to work.

But we need to remember how to have a blast doing it. Where’s the rebelliousness, the youthful energy pulling more pranks to call out our opposition? Remember when the Yes Men and the Avaaz Action Factory staged a mock press conference on the US Chamber’s “sudden” climate action? Remember when Tim DeChristopher tied on his bandanna and marched into the fray of a corrupt shareholder process? Remember when young people lay down on the train tracks against tremendous new coal facilities? (That hasn’t happened yet, but it should.)

We mustn’t abandon tried-and-true organizing tactics, nor our hard-earned insider game. And if we do rebel our way into a better world, we do so on the shoulders of giants: after all, we’re now defending the Clean Air Act that our foremothers first passed, celebrating Earth Day last week because our forefathers founded the first four decades ago. And we need the scientific white papers still, because after all, we’re fighting for a political reality that keeps pace with the chemical reality of the atmosphere. This is a movement of the young and young at heart – if you are awesome, you are in.

Last Monday, union leader Richard Trumka joined thousands of youth climate activists to challenge the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s pollution of our nation’s politics. The chamber is the largest lobbying group in the country, promoting a right-wing corporate agenda that denies the threat of global warming pollution and promotes sending American jobs overseas. The activists, coming from the the Power Shift 2011 conference, were joined by the AFL-CIO president in a rally before the chamber’s headquarters on Lafayette Park, facing the White House. Students, like all of America’s workers, are facing the prospect of a terrible job market that rewards speculation and profiteering instead of clean-energy innovation. Trumka thanked the students and young Americans for “moving our national conversation where it has to go” by “fighting on the front lines”:

I don’t have to tell you that too many politicians and their corporate friends in Washington and state capitals across the country don’t care about jobs. They don’t care about the environment. They don’t care about our future. You see, they’re hell bent on pushing a destructive corporate political agenda. And that’s why what you’re doing is so critically important.

“You’re building power,” Trumka concluded to deafening cheers, “and you’re building political will to force our elected officials to consider the quality of the air we breathe, the food that we eat, the jobs that we have, the future we need for ourselves and our children.”

Coming out of Power Shift: the Briefcase Brigades are challenging Congress to help young people find work on April 27, and 350 is mobilizing businesses to tell everyone that “The Chamber Doesn’t Speak For Me.”

Transcript: Read more

Our guest blogger is Jeff Mann, online director of the Energy Action Coalition.

Today at the White House, President Obama met with twelve young leaders from across the country that are in town for Power Shift 2011, the youth clean energy and climate summit being attended by over 10,000 people.

The young leaders described the meeting as positive and expressed excitement about working with the Administration to transition America to 100 percent clean energy and protect the Clean Air Act. Courtney Hight, co-director of the Energy Action Coalition thanked the president for fighting to “save the Clean Air Act”:

It was a real testament to President Obama’s commitment to young people that he met with youth clean energy leaders today. We are thankful he fought to save the Clean Air Act. That’s the man we elected and we need him to stand strong and stand up to big polluters and safeguard America’s public health.

The young people expressed concerns with aspects of Obama’s energy policy, particularly ongoing reliance on dirty energy sources like coal, nuclear, and natural gas. The young leaders also voiced concerns about continued subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.

The President reminded the young leaders that they have the power to change this country. Grassroots organizing in communities and states will help move our nation on energy and climate.

“We’re conducting the largest grassroots organizing training in history, to prepare young leaders to go back to their communities and lead, and we’re calling on President Obama and Congress to join us in standing up to Big Polluters and creating a clean energy economy,” said Maura Cowley, Energy Action Coalition’s other co-director. “Young people know we need a clean energy policy not based on things that kill people, whether it’s dirty coal or dangerous nuclear,” Cowley added.

Follow @PowerShift11 and @EnergyAction for updates.