Robert Friedman is the Youth Engagement Coordinator for the Nation Resources Defense Council. He was featured in an MTV story in 2007 when he started a greening initiative in his high school. This is his story about why he’s joining tens of thousands of people in New York on Sunday for the People’s Climate March.
“It’s 10:30 p.m. on December 17, 2009, and I’m standing under a giant wind turbine with dozens of other youth activists just outside of downtown Copenhagen, Denmark. Snow is falling and we’re holding a vigil in honor of the lives that have already been lost to climate change. The mood could not be more somber.
At the time, I was junior in college and a youth delegate attending the annual United Nations climate negotiations, which were spiraling out of control as delegates failed to reach any meaningful agreement on limiting global emissions. We were there to convince world leaders to stand up for climate justice and our futures. Many of us were leaving the next morning, heading back to school, back to work, back to our normal lives. Some of us would also be leaving the climate justice fight forever. Despair is easy to come by when you’re literally fighting for our future on this planet.
The entire subject just felt too dark and impossible.
Fast forward to a few months later. I am in Tanzania on my semester abroad from college. I arrived in Tanzania committed to not spending much time studying the climate issue. Following my experiences in Copenhagen the entire subject just felt too dark and impossible. As part of my studies, I had to conduct an extended research project and despite my protests, my advisor somehow convinced me to study perceptions of climate change in a rural fishing village right on the Indian Ocean. I spent my days interviewing fishermen about their firsthand experiences with this global crisis, learning about impacts like shrinking catch sizes, widespread droughts and flooding. Most fishermen were more than willing to speak with me, to dive in deep about their changing lives and local economy. However, there was one elderly man who refused my requests for an interview.
Finally, after a month on the coast and significant badgering, he gave in. As I was asking my first question he cut me off and said the following, paraphrased for brevity: ‘Mzungu [that means white person in Kiswahili], I don’t know why you are here, or why you want to talk to me about this issue of climate change, but let me tell you this. I listen to the radio a lot, and I just heard a report about this conference somewhere far away, where leaders were talking about this issue you are asking about; they couldn’t agree on anything. But there were these young people, about your age, that were also there. They were there pressuring these leaders to act.’
You have the power to create change, to convince world leaders to take action.
My jaw dropped. In a rural fishing village so far away from home, this elderly man was talking about me and the hundreds of other young people that had been at the Copenhagen negotiations. He continued, ‘I live in this altered world created by pollution from elsewhere. My family didn’t cause this problem. I don’t know why you are here, or why you want to ask me these questions, but all I ask is that you go back home, and remember my family, my community. You have the power to create change, to convince world leaders to take action.’
In that moment, everything changed for me, and I have not looked back since. Only months before I had decided to stop working to fight the climate crisis. This man put into perspective that, yes, climate change is seemingly insurmountable, but at the end of the day, we’re talking about real human lives that are on the line. Further inaction spells doom for millions. Many have already been lost, where I live in New York City, and across the globe.
Climate change is deeply upsetting. It’s dark and personal. It pushes us to rethink almost our entire fossil fuel-based economic system. But it is something that we must solve. For far away communities and those here at home. Everyone has a stake in this issue.
As world leaders gather next week at the United Nations to once again discuss how to deal with this growing threat, thousands will be meeting them in the streets to demonstrate that we demand climate justice now. On Sunday, I will be participating in the People’s Climate March with my direct experiences with climate injustice on my mind. I will be reflecting upon the lives that have already been lost to this insanity, as well as those that will be continue to be lost if global inaction continues.
I will be marching for those that have yet to come, the next generation.
And finally, I will be marching for those that have yet to come, the next generation. I hope that you will join me and thousands of others, in New York and around the word, at the People’s Climate March, to change the course of history.”
What can you do? You can make your voice heard and join the 100,000 marchers expected in New York for the People’s Climate March on Sunday. And if you can’t make it, click here to find out what you can do in your area to make a difference.
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