And Here We Are!

So this morning, Emma and I met a team from WWF to hand in the ‘Get On Board’ campaign.

Despite standing before the most famous front door in the country, it didn’t quite seem real! We did a bit of filming (even a costume change!!), took quite a few photographs – where i kept putting Emma off by looking incredibly serious and making bad jokes, and eventually handed in the box containing over 8,300 signatures.

People kept popping in and out of the building, often when I was doing ‘the knocking’ scene again for camera :) It felt quite ridiculous. I’m glad our trusty video camera expert Janine was on hand to keep us in check and make sure the planes overhead didn’t ruin our shot!

I just hope MPs and the government listen to what science is telling us is necessary. Feel free to email yours asking them to make sure this Climate Change Bill includes an 80%, not 60% cut.

:)

Number 10 Downing Street

UPDATE: Here’s the video of us in action!

Today at 10am, Emma and I are going to deliver WWF’s Get On Board petition to Number 10.

The campaign is about ensuring that the Climate Change Bill does what is supposed to – avoiding dangerous Climate Change. That means ensuring that international aviation and shipping are included – and cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. No excuses.

We’ll look a little like this…

This group of 11-18 year olds are Defra’s Climate Change Champions… more on that later :)

Government Says ‘Act Now’

The UK Youth Climate Coalition

Coming back from a unique experience, like I had in the Arctic, always makes you look at your own life anew. During the voyage, I definitely had the feeling that I wanted to step up to what I really could do – to go beyond what I’d been doing before.

Having followed blogs from various young people involved in the fight against Climate Change, and realising that we need to reach out to all sorts of people to tackle this – not just environmentalists and those interested in politics – I’m beginning to see the threat of dangerous Climate Change as an enemy we need to face, much like a war.

So Emma and I sat down to set up the UK Youth Climate Coalition.

The YCC will unite young people from diverse organisations (environmental groups, student unions, drama clubs, swim teams etc etc) to voice our generational concern on Climate Change. We want to make sure that the government and negotiators at international conferences know that the young people of this country will not accept failure.

The Copenhagen meeting in December 2009 is where the follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol is decided on. We must ensure that those in power know that we will not stand for any more delays or excuses. They are toying with our future.

That is why Emma and I are now beginning to reach out to the large number of allies we have, those who we can learn from and work with, and begin to put this together. We’re proud of the start we’ve made, and ready for the task ahead.

If you have any advice, questions, stories to share – please let me know!

Here’s Emma telling you a bit more about it all :)

MTV Switch

MTV has always been the measure of ‘cool’ for most US teens. So, its good to see that they’ve picked up on the environment…

Check out the very cool website here.

Ozzy Kids

What happens when you let Australian kids aged 11-17 loose in a hip-hop studio with their own song on Climate Change…?

Love the angry red-head boy rapping. Brilliant!

Poster Power

Art has such an important role to play in social movements, so its always cool to see some insightful graphics…

Check out some other nice ones here.

Bond, Ionic Bond.

I gave my first little presentation about the Arctic trip last night to a local Friends of the Earth meeting. It went pretty well! It felt strange to be talking about the scientific aspects of Climate Change – never thought I’d be doing that.

Yesterday, I found myself drawing the chemical compositions of methane, carbon dioxide etc and remembering awful Chemistry videos at school…

Coventry Telegraph

I wasn’t sure how much UK press interest there would be in the Voyage, because Climate Change is a well-covered issue, and going to the Arctic is not exactly new (Amundsen, Frænkel, Cameron). And indeed, the coverage so far has been on local radio and in local press.

We’ve just heard some great news after I spoke to the new Environment Reporter at the Coventry Telegraph (welcome to Coventry Mary!), who is going to write a full diary of what we did while we were in the Arctic! The Coventry Telegraph has launched a Go Green campaign, with a weekly double spread and a quarterly 32-page section on the environment. Go Coventry!

The Green Finger