A group of fifty young men and women from the far reaches of Canada gathered at Trinity College’s Munk Centre for International Studies on September 8 to begin work on a coalition addressing climate change. For the duration of the weekend, representatives from 45 youth environmental organizations drafted a declaration to represent their new Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, a document they hope will eventually reach Stephen Harper’s desk.
“We wanted to have people here…to start to create a coordinated youth presence in the debate on climate change,” said Jeca Glor-Bell, the representative from the Sierra Youth Coalition and one of the summit’s organizers. “So far, young people aren’t really here. We’re not on the agenda, our voices aren’t being heard. We’re not making the decisions that are affecting not only our national policy but that are going to affect the rest of our lives.”
Real political action on climate change, the group argues, has come to a standstill since the Harper government came into power. The Green Plan II, for example, tiptoes around the issue of climate change while one young biologist and environmentalist witnesses his northern home experience damaging weather abnormalities.
“As a youth, I personally feel ripped off by the current climate change policy, or lack thereof,” said Kristen Courtney, a representative from U of T’s Environmental Law Club. “It’s [we] who are going to have to deal with the effects of this, not the 55-year-olds or 60-year-olds who are making these policies.”
Delegates are already making differences in their own communities. Calling from the Northwest Territories to Halifax, each representative has an impressive list of achievements behind them, but the coalition demands even more. They want a cooperative youth action that will lead to Canadian policy not only on cutting commercial emissions, but clean energy production and reduced energy demands.
Jordan Dunlop, one of the three U of T delegates in attendance, represented the Environmental Student Union, whose projects include implementing green-bin systems for all campuses and hooking up a solar panel to St. George’s main energy grid. For her, a large part of the politicians’ inaction surrounds the semantics of climate change and the lack of forceful words.
“Some people think of [climate change] as a good thing,” Dunlop argues. “People who aren’t really educated about it think, ‘Oh, I would like it to be a little warmer. It’s a little cold.'”
Vig Krishnamurthy, a representative from the University of Toronto Environmental Resource Network, argued that the political power game surrounding climate change might work to the coalition’s advantage if they are successful in engaging youth.
“If we make climate change a youth issue…something that all youth can get on the side of…it creates political clout, it creates something for the politicians to pay attention to,” said Krishnamurthy.
“Youth are on the cusp of making a whole bunch of bad decisions that are going to really shape the next 20 or 30 years,” said Krishnamurthy. “I think it’s very important to engage youth before they make those big life decisions to buy a home, buy a car, and set us down another 20 years of energy inefficiency and carbon dependency.”
