My friend Bill Becker, the Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, has asked that I post this blog for him on our site:
"From 'Cope' to 'Hope': Twitter to the Rescue"
by Bill Becker
Can Twitter Save Civilization? We are about to find out.
As
the clock winds down on the big climate negotiation in Copenhagen this December
(formally known as the 15th Conference of the Parties, or COP-15), the
future of the planet and its inhabitants may be in the hands of tweeters, especially
tots, teens and twenty-somethings.
That’s
because our diplomats and political leaders appear to be defaulting on their
responsibility to act against global climate change. Rather than busting barriers and forcing breakthroughs on the
most complicated and critical challenge of all time, key government leaders are
retreating into the rhetoric of low expectations.
Majority
Leader Harry
Reid hints the Senate is too busy to take up a climate bill this year – a
delay that Jim
Rogers of Duke Energy predicts could mean that no climate bill will clear
Congress until 2011, after next year’s congressional election. The rest of the world, which has been waiting for U.S.
leadership, is witnessing an impotent democracy.
In
New York last week, where world leaders gathered at the United Nations for
another round of speeches on climate change, expectations ran high that
President Obama and China’s President Hu Jintao might offer commitments that
would break the international impasse on a global deal.
That
didn’t happen. President Obama called for action by all nations, but
offered nothing that will inspire the Senate to expedite a climate bill. President
Jintao broke modest new ground by pledging that China would reduce its carbon
intensity by 2020, but he gave no concrete targets for emission reductions by the
world’s biggest carbon polluter. If he had, he might have ended the impasse in
which politicians in the U.S. are reluctant to sign a deal that does not
include hard carbon-cutting targets from the big emerging economies.
Meantime,
Yvo
De Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC), delivered the disappointing news that it’s already too
late to craft an international climate treaty by December. De Boer now hopes COP-15
will achieve a “basic political understanding” on essential issues. Since the framework convention was
created 17 years ago, it would seem nations have already had ample time to
reach “basic political understandings” on the issue.
From
the NGO community, Elliott Diringer, the resident climate expert at the Pew
Center on Global Climate Change, agrees that a treaty is unlikely in
Copenhagen. “With the days quickly
ticking away,” Diringer wrote
last week, “it is becoming clearer to all that the time is too short, and the
odds of a final, ratifiable deal by the time the clock hits zero appear
virtually nil.”
The
best we can hope for now, he wrote, is that delegates will agree on a
provisional framework for an international treaty – not a final deal or even
the specifics of a final deal, but an agreement on the broad terms of a final
deal.
So
COP-15 is shaping up as a cop-out that will produce little more than procrastination
we cannot afford. As Achim Steiner, the executive director of the UN’s
Environment Programme, told the Washington
Post:
With every day that passes, the underlying trends that science has
provided (are) of such a dramatic nature that shying away from a major
agreement in Copenhagen will probably be unforgivable if you look back in
history at this moment.
Some
of us, however, are not ready to concede defeat. That brings us back to Twitter,
FaceBook, MySpace, You Tube, FlickR, text messaging and the potential power of
the PDA Nation. Several groups are attempting to mobilize a worldwide mandate
for action in Copenhagen, calling for boots to hit streets and thumbs to hit keyboards.
One
of my favorites (in part because I’ve been a sometime advisor on it) is a campaign
called Hopenhagen,
launched last week during “climate week” in New York City. At the request of the United Nations,
the International Advertising Association is applying its creative powers to a
viral effort in which young people will petition for a “definitive, equitable
and effective” climate agreement at COP-15.
Led
by the global communications powerhouse Ogilvy & Mather, the campaign urges
young people to become citizens of a Hopenhagen community, complete with a
virtual passport. With help from corporate giants Coca Cola, Siemens and SAP,
and with support from a growing list of “Friends of Hopenhagen” who range from
Reader’s Digest and the Wall Street Journal to Mother Jones magazine, Ogilvy
will deploy media and billboards in major cities to promote the power of the
grassroots.
Rather
than complaining about an infringement on its name, the City of Copenhagen has
agreed enthusiastically to rename itself “Hopenhagen” in December, replacing Cs
with Hs where the city’s name appears at the airport and on highway signs
leading to COP-15.
Hopenhagen
is one of several current opportunities for youth to help shape the future they
will inherit, and for old-timers like me to improve the future we will pass
along. Here are some of the others:
Tck Tck Tck: Organized
by the Global Campaign for Climate Action, Tck
Tck Tck is an alliance of civil society organizations, trade unions, faith
groups and individuals using social media and the internet to demand a “fair,
ambitious and binding” climate treaty.
Partners include the World Wildlife Fund, Oxfam and Amnesty
International, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the World Council of Churches
and the Global Campaign Against Poverty, among others.
International Day of Climate Action –
Oct. 24, 2009: 350.org
is a coalition of more than 200 organizations encouraging local people to hold
thousands of events around the world on Oct. 24 to “show our world and its
decision-makers just how big, beautiful and unified the climate movement really
is”. The group’s web site offers a
tool kit to help local activists organize their events.
So
far, 1,578 events are scheduled in 125 countries. The goal is to push for a
global agreement that reduces atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases to
a maximum of 350 parts per million – the ambitious emissions reduction target advocated
by Dr. James Hansen, the outspoken chief climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard
Institute for Space Studies.
1Sky: Back
in the United States, the meta-group 1Sky is
mobilizing people to shower Senators with telephone calls in call for action on
a climate bill this year. 1Sky has set up a system that makes it easy to let your fingers to do the marching straight
into the offices of your Senators.
Raise Your Voice: The
Danish government, YouTube and Google have created a
web site for people to post their own videos and “raise their voices” about
global climate change. The best of the videos will be featured Dec. 15 during a
CNN/YouTube “debate” at Copenhagen and on an Earth Globe at the conference.
Focus the Nation: FTN has created a network to help climate activists
communicate about their plans and to join groups working on climate campaigns
this fall. FTN also helps local
groups organize Clean Energy Forums.
Apollo
Alliance: The Apollo Alliance is working with Ceres, the Clean Economy Network
and others to help businesses lobby the Senate Oct. 6-7 for clean energy and
climate legislation. (To point out that businesses have a stake in climate
action is a vast understatement. Converting the world to clean energy
technologies is likely to be the biggest market opportunity in the history of
commerce.) For more information, go to www.wecanlead.org.
Power Shift 2009: A
project of the Energy Action Coalition, Power Shift has organized tens
of thousands of young people to march in Washington, D.C. in the past. This
fall, it is organizing regional summits – 11 so far -- to “exercise the
political power of young voters and ask President Obama and Congress to pass a
clean energy jobs plan by December to rebuild our economy, end our dependence
on dirty energy, and bring America lasting security.”
To
veterans of the Vietnam era like me, social networking seems less impressive
than taking to the streets. For my generation, social commitment meant braving enlistment
in a war, or a concussion and jail time to protest the war. Some old-fashioned protest still is
underway today in acts of civil disobedience, lately against coal mining and
coal power plants. Ask Jim Hansen, who is one of several people facing jail
time for a protest against mountain top removal in Appalachia.
When
I asked a friend of mine – a young mother with pre-teen children – why more of today’s
youth aren’t marching in the old way, she replied: “Kids today don’t march.
They network.” Clearly, we need both.
To
us wonks and wags emerged in climate policy, a campaign like Hopenhagen may
seem light on substance. I think
we’ll be surprised. Boiling global warming’s esoterica into a simple but true
choice between “hope” and “cope” might be the key to engaging the masses.
So,
if you want to make a difference by forcing leaders to lead, here’s what you
can do:
- Sign up for one of
the mobilizations above. Better yet, sign up for all of them;
- In a response to
this post, alert us to other mobilization opportunities;
- Help these efforts
go viral by alerting your social networks;
- Follow emerging
developments as we approach COP-15, including more opportunities to raise
your voice. One source of information is the COP-15 web site .
With
our leaders back-peddling and opponents of action arguing for a status quo that
cannot be sustained, it apparently will take a planetary village to deal with
climate change.
For more information: Hopenhagen Site
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