Headed to the COP16

Hello.

I'm writing to let you know that I'm headed to the U.N.'s international climate change negotiations in Cancun, Mexico at the end of the month and I'll be using this blog to share the experience with people who live in the place where I have spent the vast majority of my life (Statesboro born and raised).

I'm headed to the negotiations with SustainUS, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of young people advancing sustainable development and youth empowerment in the United States. Through proactive education, research, and advocacy at the policy-making and grassroots levels, we are building a future in which all people recognize the inherent equality and interdependence of social, economic, and environmental sustainability. So that's the copy/paste of it.

All of the items I post on this blog will be cross-posted from this one: http://climegeist.blogspot.com. I will be posting photos and coverage of the UNFCCC process in accessible and grammatically correct English (thank you Mrs. Brannen), and I would love to publish in the Herald, but I would appreciate it if I am asked first.

Well how did someone who was born above that empty lot off of Donehoo Street where the old hospital used to be get interested in this, you might be asking yourself, if you are still reading this. Well, I left town for my college education and studied abroad in India, where, among other things, I studied environmental economics. Demographics + Peak Oil + Climate Change + experiencing pervasive poverty for the first time convinced me that the future I would live and that the future my kids (they're not here yet) would live in does not look good numbers and science-wise. After I finished up school I went back to India to work for two solar energy companies. There I met some young people who were launching the India Youth Climate Movement that happened to become the first real pan-India (it's a big place) environmental organization. I started volunteering with them because it was inspiring to watch an organization grow from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand, and it was pretty cool when Thomas Friedman wrote an article about them the same day that I had scheduled a business meeting with them on how we could work together to promote solar energy and advertise the solar energy magazine I helped to produce. Through them I got engaged in working towards sensible climate change and energy policies for the good of our generation, which was a cool way to connect with people halfway across the world. And so now after all that solar experience and living in New Delhi for a year and a half, I'm about to head to the international climate negotiations to see a few of them again and work towards similar goals by pressing our American leaders to work out sensible climate policies.

Last year there were more world leaders present at the negotiations than there have been at any meeting since the signing of the Treaty of Versailles that ended WWI. Nobody anticipates that it will be as big this year, but I am still immensely looking forward to participating in a U.N. conference as an official constituent of youth NGOs.

So anyway, I'll be writing about the lead-up to Cancun and the experience of being there on this blog, and I hope that you'll be reading it.