International Climate Champions

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5.-18. Dezember 2009 - Stimmen aus Kopenhagen
Auszüge aus dem blog der Climate Champions (Englisch)

Soenke Schmidt: Some hopefull demonstrations in “hopenhagen”
I was so hopefull, that cop15 would be sucessfull, because there were all these people fighting for the climate. Unbelievable, that the conference misscarried. Here some pictures of demonstrations in Copenhagen.

Fiona Tokple:
Archbishop Desmond Tutu underlines the aspect of Climate Justice
After I had returned from the big demonstration on Saturday the 12th I was able to listen to a speech of Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Bella Center. His speech took place on a court outside. Without my jacket, which I had left at our booth, I was freezing and struggling with my thoughts whether I should stay or go back inside. Then Desmond Tutu arrived, with a candle in the hand like all the people who were surrounding him. During his speech, which was touching, full of passion and just honest, I forgot the cold.

Here an extract:
“(…)I want to say thank you to all of you. Especially to you beautiful young ones. We oldies have made something of a mess out of the world. And we want to say to the leaders: "Look in the eyes of your grandchildren. Climate change is already a serious crisis today. And we can do something about it!"

If we don´t, if we don´t…?! There will be no world that we will leave for you. This generation, you, won´t have a world. You will be drowning. You will be burning in droughts. There will be no food. There will be floods.(…) If you are responsible for most of a mess, than you are responsible for getting rid of that mess. That´s justice, that´s justice!(…)!”
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Fiona Tokple:
Experiences: Working with the media during COP15
Working with the media plays an important role within our work as Climate Champions. We have to inform and educate the wider public about the issue of climate change, as well as to let them (especially young people) know, what youth is doing against the global threat of climate change worldwide.

During my participation in COP15 I was able to create several contacts to media, particularly German media.

For 4 days a TV Crew from “ZDF” accompanied me during COP15. (Because of my further commitment in a TV project, which focused on climate change and the environment policies of the main German parties, the contact to ZDF already existed at that moment.)

In a 40-minutes report we, the International Climate Champions, appeared in the TV Program “ZDF Environment” on the 13th of December. You can watch it on the ZDF website.
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Franka Stöhling:
My travelogue of COP15
Saturday, 12th of December
I started my journey to the COP15 on Friday evening, only half an hour later the train was controlled by the police. After sleeping very comfortless I finally arrived in Copenhagen at the main station at 10 o’clock. After having some problems with the tickets for the Metro, I arrive at the Bella Center.

Unfortunately, I had to wait there for (only, we get to know later) one and a half hours, so I missed the climate march, which took place at the same time in Copenhagen. As I walked through the Bella Center, I saw, by luck, the German secretary of environment Norbert Röttgen, who was giving an interview to a German television channel. With some other ICCs, I listened later to the speech from Desmond Tutu, who is very impressive and humorous. In the evening, there is an NGO-Party.

Sunday, 13th of December
At ten o’clock there was a briefing of the British Council in the College. Afterwards we did some group work. I was part of the Media group, which had afterwards a meeting. The UN has recognised that there are too many NGO’s in the Bella Center, as a result it invented secondary badges to limit the entrance of NGO’s. So we have to pass on the secondary badges, which are available. And we have to look for events in the Bella Center, which are important for us, to make a list, when we would like to go into the Bella Center. In the late afternoon a cinema show took place, but we got lost and it took some time until we could find the right place.

The world premiere of “One degree matters” is really out of the ordinary, after we watched the film, we got a noble dinner there and met the Ex president of Costa Rica, who is very nice. After dinner, films of the history of people, who are impacted the most by climate change or who fight against it, were shown.
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