COP27: Without Greta, activists make waves at climate summit
Young people are a more powerful force than ever in the UN climate summit, the UN's youngest climate advisor tells BBC News in Egypt.
"Young people are definitely shaping outcomes here at COP27," Sophia Kianni says.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg has skipped the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting, calling it a forum for "greenwashing".
But young people from countries at high risk from climate change say they are "calling it out" from inside.
Young people are not of course, "a more powerful force than ever in the UN climate summit". Neither are they there as UN climate advisors, not in the sense that they actually give advice to senior UN functionaries.
Young people are there as window dressing, to convince other young people that it is cool to allow devious bureaucrats to ruin their world in pursuit of totalitarian politics. They are there because ugly old schemers don't create the best impression on a global stage.
4 comments:
"ugly old schemers"
Sums up the whole shebang, and the other stuff in (Indonesia(?).
It's a funny sort of youth rebellion. Reading about science when you have no aptitude for it; caring for future generations; agreeing with elderly blokes; behaving "responsibly". It doesn't sound much like fun. A bit like young Conservatives in the 1960s. No wonder they go around throwing soup over paintings - It's the only excitement they get.
I've argued before that we are in the interregnum between the Old Elite and the New Elite. The Old Elite are trying to hang on, and the New Elite are trying to take over, and like all elites through history they will use whatever and whoever as their minions.
The question is whether the Climate Change Minions are the supporters of the Old Elite or the New. There's a distinct possibility that the Minions started out as the tools of the Old Elite but have mutated into the tools of the New. Good Gravy, we're stuffed.
Scrobs - yes, it's a circus isn't it?
Sam - no it doesn't sound much like fun and maybe the majority of young people see it as worthy but dull and best avoided. As you say, rather young Conservatives in the 1960s. Even those throwing soup don't manage to look cool and radical.
DJ - it's hard to define a dividing line between the Old Elite and the New Elite. COP27 comes across as strangely tired and old hat, as if something is changing.
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