On Saturday, November 12 – a week after the 27th UN Climate Conference (COP27) started in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh – several hundred protesters gathered within the conference center, sounding off at world leaders about the climate crisis. A year ago, tens of thousands of demonstrators thronged the streets of Glasgow, Scotland, where COP26 was held. Where did they all go? The fact that COP is being hosted in Egypt, where protesting is largely banned – and that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will be next year’s host – sends a clear signal to demonstrators around the world: stay away. Thousands already have.
This year’s turnout at COP27, which ended Nov. 19, was largely a series of pop-up protests, with that Saturday the biggest of the week. It’s encouraging to see that these activists were brave enough and determined enough to show up. But the number that chose to stay away was eye-popping. Major voices of dissent were absent, most notably 19-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. In October, at a London launch of her Climate Book, she was quoted in The Guardian saying: “I’m not going to Cop27 for many reasons, but the space for civil society this year is extremely limited.” Fumbling forward
Stifling dissent is never good for public confidence because it corrodes accountability. Last year there were already indications that COP leadership had no intention of suffering another year of youths manning microphones to dress them down – what happened in September 2019 at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York. That’s when Thunberg lobbed her infamous “how dare you” speech” at the diplomats and leaders arrayed before her.
Two years later, in 2021 at COP26 – banished from the summit’s main stage – Thunberg took to the streets of Glasgow with tens of thousands of other activists. Those activists, shooed to the summit's sidelines by policy makers fumbling with the Planet’s future, are the same youths inheriting our growing climate calamities. As things stand, it looks like the primary goal of the 2015 Paris agreement – to keep the lid on global warming to no more than 1.5°C– is doomed. For two weeks, COP27 delegates discussed, again, ways to improve decarbonization and adaptation, how to manage water and agriculture, protect biodiversity, and figure out who's going to foot the bill. There can be no long-term solution to the climate crisis without the millions of youth activists fighting for our planet and our future. Although COP held a special day-long session for the youth on Nov. 10 – Youth and Future Generations Day – leaders must continue to make way for the “unrullies” – the throngs of uninvited guests who brandish bullhorns, chant, shout, and raise those big, colorful signs that proclaim uncomfortable truths like, “You will die of old age, we will die of climate change.”
It's unlikely that COP leaders want this to happen. But it’s not clear what it will take to make them prevent it. At the opening ceremony of the Madrid conference, UN Secretary-General António Guterres asked his peers: “Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that buried its head in the sand, that fiddled while the planet burned?” At the same summit, then-presiding Italian PM Mario Draghi also raised a proverbial fist in the air when he addressed the assembled youth: “We need to be whipped into action. Your mobilization has been powerful, and rest assured: we are listening.”
This doesn’t seem to be the case now, considering that COP leadership agreed to a venue that effectively shut the protest platform down. And it’s looking equally grim for next year’s venue. This matters because these COP climate extravaganzas are the one publicly obvious place for youth activists and others to focus the world’s collective attention for a few days a year on these dire truths.
A relatively small proportion of the world’s population even knows what Conference for the Parties (COP) is or stands for. But most people do watch the news. So when tens of thousands of demonstrators show up to challenge world leaders about their records on climate change, cameras roll and the event becomes news. Youth protesters bring the surreal nature of this sprawling crisis back to the reality that our planet is ailing and our children will be left to handle the fallout . “Without pressure from the people, our leaders can get away with not doing anything!” Thunberg shouted to the crowd. For world leaders, this may feel uncomfortable. And it may trigger the impulse to turn parental. But for everyone’s future, it’s essential that they listen.
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