Environmentalists really like conferences. Apparently, they also like having conferences to talk about planning more conferences.
World leaders have just announced that they do not intend to actually sign a treaty on climate change in Copenhagen this December, a conference that has widely been referred to as “the most important meeting in history.”
The leaders of the world were supposed to gather in Copenhagen to draft a comprehensive, equitable treaty on climate change that would take the place of the Kyoto Protocol once it expires in 2012.
Instead, these leaders will be coming together to plan the next meeting where they supposedly will actually draft something.
I can’t criticize them too much, as I’m also guilty of the environmental conference syndrome.
Since my first year at Whitman I have been to eight environmental conferences and I’m planning on attending the conference in Copenhagen this December. I say this not to brag but rather to reflect on the value of all of these conferences.
In the age of widespread video and audio technology capable of perfectly good virtual conferences, why are environmentalist spending exorbitant amounts of time, money and carbon constantly meeting with each other?
Although I can’t directly ask world diplomats why they keep meeting over this climate change thing, I have a pretty good idea of why I and 43 other Whitman students recently decided to skip a weekend of partying and studying in favor of three days of climate workshops, panels and speakers at the Powershift West ’09 conference in Eugene, Ore.
It had to do less with the content of the conference than it did with the general sentiment the conference gave us. While the “How to Plan an Effective Meeting” workshop gave us a unique skill in organizing, the fact that we were surrounded by 500 other youth all interested in the same issue gave us the motivation to keep going.
Peer pressure is generally underestimated. While I might not jump off a bridge if everyone else does it, I’ll probably jump on board the youth climate activist movement if I see that cool people around me are doing it.
So back to Copenhagen: If the leaders of the world have decided that they aren’t going to get anything signed, why am I still going?
For the past three months I have been barraged by a swarm of conference calls and e-mails with other U.S. youth delegates asking that very question. We’ve been planning a series of actions to pressure our leaders into at least agreeing to a concrete plan.
We’re planning everything from wearing green hard hats and talking about the unemployed U.S. youth who need green jobs, to standing outside the conference in our bathing suits holding signs saying “Don’t Leave Us Out in the Cold.”
As fun as it might be to have virtual people standing in the snows of Copenhagen in bathing suits, I have a feeling that the real thing is going to be a whole lot better.
