Wrap it up! Woohoo.

It’s been a really crazy ten days.  A pretty intense time of lobbying, press releases, meetings, film making, actions, speech writing, banner making amongst other activities. What did we all do on Friday? Our wrap up action, that’s what.

In preparation we painted, we sew, we practised, we inflated, we printed and by 9.30 we were ready (if a little cold). There was a crowd of international media gathering and we got everything in place for the arrival of the European politicians.

Who showed up?  There was a selection of  ministers from around Europe including from Germany, The U.K, Lithuania, Norway and The Netherlands. Want to see pictures too?

We displayed our beautiful huge banners of the individual messages with pride and showed the ministers around, followed by a presentation of one individual message (with a copy of our demands of course).
The media agency Reuters liked the action so much that they wanted to spread details of us and our action across the world’s media.

With the negotiations continuing here in Poland, hopefully ministers will think of us (and you young people) when they are discussing the international climate deal.

Come on guys, wrap it up!

Busy, busy bees

…and breathe.

The Countdown group has been really buzzing recently. We have been meeting country’s delegates and presenting our demands and urging actions. We want a strong climate deal in Copenhagen to include:

• 40% Greenhouse emission reductions by 2020 for developed countries (Annex I)
• 100% Greenhouse emission reductions by 2050 for developed countries (Annex II)
• The issue of climate justice to be addressed

Members of the group have discussed the issues and policies with their national delegations, but is has not all been lobbying though. We got together with 350.org and look at what we did!

Aerial photo in Freedom Square, Poznan, Poland

Global Day of Action – Image Gallery

Global Day of Action

“Political leaders:  Stop clowning around!” Hundreds of youth from all around the world filled the streets of Poznan on the Global Day of Action demaning climate justice and urging the politicians to get serious about climate change.

We as Young Friends of the Earth Europe joined the colourful demonstration:

You can find pictures here too!

the EU package…

and so to action…

“Countdowners” and other EU youth came together at The UN climate change talks on Friday to display their feeling about the EU’s climate policies. With the EU showing a lack of leadership and backtracking on some of their climate positions, young people from EU member states showed how it could be done.

See here for the video of the action.

We made our own energy and climate package, showing the EU the way ahead. Conference delegates, assorted media and other young people watched us inside the conference centre. We called for 40% emissions reductions, all from inside the EU and a serious adaption and mitigation fund for developing countries. Will the EU deliver?

Parallel to this, we sent a letter direct to the MEP’s urging them to give us the climate and energy package that we deserve. You lucky people, you can even watch a video copy too!

Come on, now is the time to act EU.

Wrap It Up – Video

We as “Young Friends of the Earth Europe” produced this video for the Climate Conference (COP14) in Poznan, and action afterwards.  We want to convince as many delegates as possible in order that our demands will be singned in Copenhagen (COP15) next year. The international change have been negotiations on the climate in hibernation so we campaign for an effective international agreement on climate change which has to start now.

A Common Day at COP

A short overview …

Meetings over meetings to meet again in a meeting to split up in groups for an additional meeting to make a briefing with the entire group afterwards. Isn’t that weird? That’s COP! It’s awesome! Well, but now hurry up, next meeting is already taking place! You didn’t read the latest mails in your inbox yet? C’mon!  You had enough spare time in the last meeting.  Yes, that’s also seems to be COP. People are working on notebooks allday long – hopefully on the famous white ones –  while others have a speech they participate in or play act.

… to  brief you what is it all about.

In the swing of things in Poland

The “Countdown” group has really gotten into the swing of things here in Poland.  It took a day or so to really get to grips with all the ins and outs of the Conference and how the United Nations likes to run things.  It’s been a crash course in international climate politics but everyone is all systems go now!

The Countdown group has been working with other Young people from all over the world and today is our first action, to be held inside the conference centre itself. It’s a great feeling to know that we can work together to turn a little idea into a full action with props, press release and speeches in such a short amount of time. I won’t give away too much but we will focus on the European Union’s policies, which will have a massive impact on the international negotiations here. If you would like to add your voice please visit: http://www.timetolead.eu/

Stay tuned for a post-action report.

Other members of the group have met delegates here to discuss their policies and present our own. As young people we can have big impact on the delegates, as we can urge ”it is our future, tackle this problem”.  Delegates have been met in the corridors, outside meetings and in more formal situations, we have been putting ourselves about!

Next stop, action….

First Day At COP

I guess almost all guys of our group feel like I do at the moment: really exhausted and overwhelmed by all these new impressions we get on our first COP-day. There are so many people, so many conferences and meetings you can join and so few time to hang around and just relax. But nevertheless it’s interesting to see how it all works. Every person that is accreditated for the conference has to wear a sign with his|her photo, full name and organisation or country. Delegates, press people, business or industry lobbyists and NGOs are marked by different sign colours. There are several meetings to coordinate activities of NGOs and young people like the european youth meeting, the International Youth meetings divided in different working groups or the FOE International meeting. At the same time you can get information to almost all topics that are related to climate change policy. REED, Earth obeservation from space, global solar fund and so on…

Warming up for Poland in Berlin

The group is now physically together in Berlin, after two months of electronic messages, calls and conferences. There has been a weekend of planning, excitement and even a little action!

We warmed up for the upcoming events in Poland with a ‘wrap it up’ action at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. After invitation we were amazed to find that Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Sigmar Gabriel (German environment minister) all decided to join us in calling in action on climate change.

We unveiled our huge ‘wrap it up’ banners with cloth messages from young people from around Europe. All were asking politicians of every country to take action now and wrap up climate change.

Okay, I admit it wasn’t the real Barack, Angela or Sigmar!

Next for the Countdown group is Poznan. Watch this space for reports of our activities and information from COP 14 in Poland.