The Student Climate Forum
In response to the UN-Climate Summit, which is taking place in Copenhagen in December 2009, Energy Crossroads and the University of Copenhagen will be launching an interactive climate discussion forum for university students around the world. We call this The EC/KU Student Climate Forum.
Why a Student Climate Forum?
Energy Crossroads and the University of Copenhagen acknowledge the inheriting generation’s great responsibility to seriously deal with the climate change which faces our planet. We believe that in order to live up to this responsibility we cannot wait until we are the decision makers - we need to act today! One way to do this, we believe, is to get students around the world more actively involved in the decisions made today. After all, the resulting consequences will affect the generations to come more than anybody else.
The vital challenge facing world leaders today is how to renew the Kyoto Protocol. This decision will be made in Copenhagen in December 2009. We do not wish to claim our rights to get a saying in this. Rather we will create our own international discussions merely for students to participate. These discussions will not only be a good exercise and experience for us, but also so qualified, that they will not only benefit us, but also the decision makers when they take on their negotiations in December 2009.
Two interlocked motives therefore lay behind our decision to make this Student Climate Forum. We wish to:
- Foster the interest and involvement of the students around the world, regarding the global decisions to reduce world CO2 emissions.
- Enable students to interact with each other across national borders to discuss the global climate challenges of the future.
Ultimately we hope this will result in:
- A heightening of students´ level of knowledge and interest regarding climate change and the attempts to deal herewith.
- Greater cross-national understanding and collaboration between students around the world regarding the climate challenges of the future.
A virtual answer to an actual problem
The obvious way to host an event like this would simply be to copy the structure of the UN-Climate Summit, and fly in participants from all the nations of the world to work out a deal over a certain number of days. One evident and inescapable problem herewith, a problem we in EC and KU simply can and will not ignore, is the enormous amount of CO2 the participants would emit by flying to and from Copenhagen. Not only can we not justify such an emission, we strongly believe that there are other ways of hosting a meaningful and successful event like this. Energy Crossroads and the University of Copenhagen want to prove this with our Student Climate Forum.
Therefore, we will avoid air travel. Everything, whether it is the discussions or the promotion of the event, it will take place virtually. Only the actual signing by the nations of the final manifest will have a physical character. But again, this will be done in the respective countries thus without the need for travelling.