Green Generation preparing for COP23
The ashes rained down from the sky in northern california last week, laying a grey blanket over the land. Houses, lively hoods, and many families displaced. Fires worse than ever before. And all I can say is, it’s only going to worse. Toxic air filling the lungs of the earth, the fires eat everything, with never ending hunger they devour. And what can I do? I’m 16, and it’s easy to feel powerless. As I watch my future ripped out of my hands and shoved into the inferno. But I will not let this happen. I may be 16, but I am and empowered. I am demanding a chance, claiming my voice and fighting for my future. This past week thousands of people have lost their homes from forest fires in the state of california. I have many friends who live in Sonoma county, a town that was directly affected by the fires. Almost the entire town was evacuated, including many of my friends. I know people who lost their homes to the fires. The fires in the american west are getting worse every year. The fire season is now two and a half months longer than it was forty years ago. Wildfires are now fourteen times more common. Wildfires now burn so hot that they can burn the soil of the forest. If this happens it can take up to a thousand years for the forest to grow back. By 2050 half of all the forest in the american west are expected to be burnt by wildfires. These tragic facts are a reality. This is why it is so imperative for our world leaders to act on combating climate change. The time to act has never been better. It’s easy to blame the past and complain about how more people should have taken extreme actions to fight anthropogenic climate change years ago. But where does that get us? Definitely not any closer to solving this problem. I commonly find many people get hung up on this when talking about climate change. We pass the blame off to mysterious corporate powers, when we should be confronting our own habits and lifestyles. Of course changing your lifestyle to become “greener” isn’t going to save humanity, but it is the best place to start. Being a student at the Bali Greenschool it doesn’t take much work to become an engaged climate activist. Almost all of the classes offered in the high school have a connection to climate change, and many of them are directly related to either climate change science, climate activism or even studying climate change denial.
Being a young person who will be inheriting this planet and passing it off to the future generations I feel it is my responsibility to act on climate change. That is why I am going to the COP 23 (conference of parties) this year in Germany. I believe this is the reason most of my fellow student activist are going to the COP. We all have a lot of drive and many diverse passions. I feel proud to be part of this year’s Greenschool student COP delegation.
This past week we have been preparing our performance, presentation, art installation and workshop, along with planning logistics for our trip. I have spent the majority of my time with a few other students and a teacher writing the script for our performance. I have not been part of any sort of performance since middle school and do not have much experienceor confidence in this area at all. We finally finished our script on friday after a week of writing and stress but we did it! It has not been easy for me. I started the week with very little confidence in my ability create a play, and by wednesday I was ready to give up. But then with the help of one of our teachers it all started to come together. The performance still needs a name, but for now we are calling it “Dark Oreo’s Revenge”. The play is just as weird as this name. It’s about conflict palm oil and the effects it has on the environment and people. In the past the performances that we have brought to the COP have been dramatic and emotional, this year we wanted to do something different, so we decided to create a comedy. It’s definitely strange, bizarre and mind bogglingly wired, I’m hoping to god that people will think it’s funny. We all definitely do, and just reading through the script to myself I can’t but suppress giggles. The character I will be playing is the Dark Lord Oreo. I am the mind controlling palm oil product that rules over a corrupt CEO of a palm oil company who is also a father of a rebellious teenager who will find empowerment through discovering what his father’s company is really doing. The play is very metaphorical and full of dark humor but it is about a very serious and real problem that affects millions of people worldwide. It is about both conflict palm oil and youth empowerment. The main character is a teenage boy, who faces problems similar to those that many of the students who created the play have faced. We chose raising awareness about conflict palm oil as our main mission in our performance because it is such a huge problem in Indonesia, and it affects the entire world. The COP is a great place for us to bring a performance like this because it is a hub for like minded activist and change makers. It is a place that doing this performance has the ability to create conversation that can lead to real change. Although the performance is pretty weird, I feel proud to be a part of it and I can’t wait to see people’s reactions to us performing.
Every student in our delegation has been working hard on preparing for our trip and we are all super excited to go to germany. We are excited for many reasons, partly because we get to go to another country but also because we get a chance to share our voices as youth activist in the conversation on climate change. We get to learn from knowledgeable and experienced activist and elders who will also be at the conference and have the ability to make connections with other young people who are engaged in climate activism. It is so important that young people are part of these conferences and that our voices get heard. All of the students in Greenschool’s delegation feel very lucky to have the opportunity to go to Bonn Germany for the COP23, and we can’t wait to perform “Dark Oreo’s Revenge”.
