As I write this, Powershift '09 is invading Washington, D.C., and boy do I wish I was there!
http://powershift09.org/
The event has brought 12,000 youth leaders from around the US and world to participate in a weekend of solidarity and direct lobbying of government representatives around the issue of climate change. That's a pretty big number, and its so far looking to be pretty effective:
Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1C7vMNQv2g
Ken Salazar, Department of the Interior
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L2-U0Sxh-U&feature=channel
Van Jones, Green for All
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7T9w82-l9k&feature=channel
Inspirational speeches all, and they certainly lend credence to Margaret Mead's famous quote:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
Of course, this is just one event, but one that, in my opinion, symbolizes the importance of community and the importance of youth in the struggle to save our planet.
There's something about youth that makes decision-makers listen - as Norm often said last term (when discussing public relations around risk and emergency management) 'its all about the children'. Rational or not, using the argument of "saving the earth for our children" is usually well-received and can be agreed upon by almost everyone (as can pretty much any other similarly-worded statement involving kids). Thus, we - the smart and motivated youth - can use this to our advantage to help motivate policy changes that may not have otherwise happened. It only makes sense, too, that we who would inherit the earth should have some say in how its handed over to us.
I am therefore a big supporter of youth involvement in politics and global events. While I have not had the fortune of participating in any of these things myself (due both to my generally anti-social nature as well as my complete lack of money for the necessary flights to the far-away meeting destinations), from what I can tell, these events serve as an excellent gathering of like-minded leaders in the youth community and help to build their (bonding, bridging, and vertical) social capital. From here, youth can take their connections and new-found knowledge back to their local communities and motivate others to take action.
When it comes to the issues of the environment - our life support system for the next 70ish years of our life - we need every youth we can get fighting hard for change, as the status quo is a difficult thing to overcome in this case. This is what worries me most - while 12,000 youth in one place at one time is pretty awesome, these types of events aren't happening nearly often enough or with nearly enough people.
This isn't just me talking either. For example, 1) the UN Programme on Youth admits to being a "very small part of the United Nations" (http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unyin/mandate.htm), 2) Canada, and many other nations, currently have no youth representation at the General Assembly (http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unyin/youthrep.htm) (Interestingly, we had one in 2005, but it was gone by 2006 - no surprise there... As well, when I emailed our Foreign Affairs ministry about this, they gave a wishy-washy answer and will likely not be bringing it back anytime soon), 3) Only 21 countries have signed up with the UN/ILO/World Bank's "Youth Employment Network - Lead Country" initiative (http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/yen/whatwedo/projects/lead.htm), which supports meaningful youth employment (and these 21 are mostly African nations that the average North American hick hasn't even heard of)
Instead, the vast majority of my generation has fallen victim to the many distractions (e.g. t.v., cell phones, music, shopping, video games {of which I was a victim for much of my youth - time I will never get back}, etc.) created by our decision-makers to keep us out of trouble and in our comfortable status quo bubble. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but it doesn't take a genius to see that widespread youth apathy and disengagement from political processes largely favours the rich conservatives rather than the more future-friendly liberal-progressives. I continually despair over the vast amount of young talent being lost into the system, with many people my age completely ignorant of the huge problems that our lifestyle poses to our future.
So what can be done? This is a difficult question to answer, but I can draw on my own experiences to attempt it. As I alluded to, I was not always the active and passionate person I am now. In fact, up until a year or two ago, I was your average lazy kid who played a helluva lot of video games and wanted nothing more than to have a steady job in a lab or doing outdoor work. I had no idea of the existence of any of this United Nations stuff or any of this youth activist rubbish - quite frankly, I thought active youth were all nuts and used to joke derogatorily how so-and-so "was one those types who's single-handedly cured AIDS in Africa". Luckily, I grew up a bit and expanded my world view, but it certainly didn't happen easily. As I went and continue to go through my growth and metamorphosis phase, I have found very little in the way of readily available support networks or youth leader communities. I read about these elusive youth off giving speeches at Poznan or what-have-you, but can't for the life of me find them anywhere or get involved in any of their work. (For example - I have attempted to contact the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition on several occasions to help out, yet no one has ever gotten back to me - likely all being 'too busy'). This is discouragement that I'm sure has turned many-a-youth back to their apathetic ways and has tempted me to as well. To answer my original question then, it seems that in order to combat youth apathy and build strong youth communities like that at Powershift, we need a much greater dialogue between the "enlightened" and the "unenlightened", so to speak.
This is an aspect of communities that can work to our disadvantage - their very nature is exclusionary, and, by being in one community, you are inherently not in others or have less time for others. In this case for example, these youth leaders are part of the youth leader community and likely spend much of their time together, liaising with important people and making their voices heard. However, by doing this, they're essentially shooting themselves in the foot, as they then have less or no time to spend doing the far less glamorous task of recruiting apathetic youth, who vastly outnumber youth leaders and who could therefore be a powerful voting force if mobilized. In the era of climate change though, this is not good enough - we cannot afford to have a self-limiting youth community in this time when we are needed more than ever to harass our decision-makers to save our planet. As Ryunosuke Satoro said, "individually we are one drop, together we are an ocean", and only by condensing more drops out of the mist of apathy can we create a tidal wave of positive change! (Forgive the cheesy metaphor, but I had to go for it!)
Moral of the story - get out there and start talking to all those people you consider as idiots (for lack of a better term). It may be painful and unglamorous, but it will do more good for the earth than any amount of ivory tower work that any of us can do in a lifetime. (Just don't ask me what to say, that's not my department!)
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