Some of you may have noticed a bit of a hiatus in blog posts in the past few days–but not without reason…
A delegation from the 350.org coordinating team has been traveling to Poznan, Poland for the annual UN Talks on Climate Change. Representing the USA, Hungary, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, we’ve hit the ground running–setting up interactive art projects, twittering, issuing press releases, creating a mini-version of the website for conference-goers, organizing large-scale public actions, and joining 300 youth from around the world to come up with a shared vision and an action plan.
Representatives from over 190 countries (9000+ people in all!) are getting together to hash out our collective future through the excruciatingly complex UN Negotations. The nations of the world will figure out the most difficult public policy problem of our time–through consensus. I may be understating the magnitude of the task at hand when I say that this will probably not be easy. To make matters all the more urgent (as if the science of 350 alone doesn’t light a fire under the delegates seats), Poland marks the 1-year countdown to the Copenhagen meeting, when the world needs to settle on a binding global agreement. Will it meet the latest science? Will it provide equitable solutions to the developing world and impacted communities? Not unless the the world–that’s you–holds our leaders accountable.
A lot to be done, so little time. Perhaps that explains why at 4:36 in the morning, I’m sitting in the kitchen of a youth hostel in downtown Poland, just finishing up my work for the day. Given the late hour (negotiations start up again in 5 hours…ouch) I’m hoping you’ll forgive the brevity and enjoy the links above. In the coming days, we’ll be blogging up a storm so stay tuned. We’ll do our best to represent all of you.