Young Friends of the Earth Climate Tour: The Countdown to Poz’n’Hagen

Joe Thwaites

Annoying fish‘n’chip abbreviations aside, the Friends of the Earth Climate Tour is living up to its epic movie-style title. I was among (roughly) 50 young people aged between (roughly) 18 and 30, from 26 different countries who were chosen from a (probably not very) rigorous selection process to participate in a climate change tour spanning 15 months, 3 countries, 2 United Nations Climate Change Conferences and 1 bitterly cold week of camping.

For those of you whose memories stretch far enough back to December 2007, you may remember UN Bali Conference, where they agreed to agree on a new international agreement to tackle climate change in Copenhagen in 2009. Yes that’s right, all the tears and booing was to agree to have an agreement 2 years later. Such is the wonderful world of international relations.

Basically, the Kyoto Protocol has a best before end date: 2012. Because of the time it takes to ratify international treaties, any post-Kyoto agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions and avert well dodgy climate change (that’s a technical term) must be decided in the next few years.

There are UN Climate Change Conferences every December, and as a group, we will be going to this year’s conference in Poznan, Poland and then Copenhagen next year.

We’re organised into 3 groups, all concentrating on a different aspect of campaigning.

There’s the direct action group. These guys are armed with hundreds of metres of fabric, megaphones and snowballs. They’re loud and unhinged.

Then there’s the lobbying group, which I’m in. We’re armed with peer-reviewed science and will use our intellect, charm and power-suits to schmooze the official delegates.

Finally there’s the media group, who are adamant that they’re not just spending the entire time on Facebook, and are going to make climate change really hit the headlines.

We’ve formulated 3 key demands which we will be putting to delegates with the hope that they will be included in the key decisions – worldwide emissions cuts of 30% by 2020 and 90% by 2050; consideration of climate justice (things like the right to development and avoiding false solutions) and an important technical change to the way CO2 emissions are measured which will help further highlight the inequalities between developed and developing countries.

But we can’t do this on our own, no matter how amazing and talented we are.

Lobbying in Poland will only be effective if it’s backed up by actions all around the world showing that citizens everywhere are watching their country’s delegation make the right decisions. That’s why you should get involved with the global day of action on 6th December.

Or come to Poznan…

But you won’t get in…

Because you’re not cool enough.


To find out more, see: www.globalclimatecampaign.org.
To see what you’re missing on our climate tour, check out: www.youthclimatetour.eu