Voices of Climate Change
Green Generation is a group of student activists from Green School Bali.
Today, everyone in the world is affected by a common issue: climate change. The solution is to take action, to start a conversation whether that’s on a small or a global scale. As youth who will be inheriting this earth, it is our responsibility to make sure that our voices and concerns are heard.
Green Generation was in Marrakech, Morocco this past November participating in the COP 22 and the COY 12. Our mission was to spread sustainable education to others at the world’s largest climate change convention. During our planning sessions, we were inspired by a podcast episode of This American Life which introduced a unique telephone booth in Japan called the ‘wind telephone.’
The phone is owned by 70 year old gardener, Itaru Sasaki, who bought the telephone booth after his cousin died. To him, his phone was a way to express his love to the dead. In 2011 an earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, causing many families to devastatingly lose their loved ones. When word spread of the ‘wind telephone,’ people traveled from all over Japan to use the telephone for a chance to correspond with their loved ones. Similar to the phone booth in Japan, we created a platform for people from all over to express their feelings towards climate change.
Inspired by Green School’s bamboo architecture, we designed an easy-to-set-up bamboo structure to act as our communication area. In this booth, pictures of the detriments and losses of climate change, along with quotes from fellow youth activists, surrounded visitors. When people entered, they were prompted to share their feelings on climate change by speaking into a recorder. Discussion points for these visitors could include sharing their personal connections to climate change, messages they have for future generations, or their feelings on participating in the conference.
As we came back to Bali, we decided to use these recordings as inspiration to launch a podcast series, Voices of Climate Change. Our intention is to hold a space where we can discuss Climate Change from the perspective of high school students. Our first episode reflects on our group’s inception, our goals and motivations, and what it was like being youth activists at COP22. Please follow the link below to our SoundCloud account and subscribe to our Podcast.
