First impressions of Peru, Lima and the COP 20 venue.

Our plane touched down jarringly at about 1:30 AM this morning. None of us had a real idea of what things might look like beyond the confines of the aluminum tube that had brought us across seas, deserts, mountain ranges and at last, to the humid Lima airport, four thousand miles from home. We negotiated customs with relative ease and learned that the beagle, in all its ferocity, is Peru’s canine of choice at the airport for keeping unwanted produce and food items from entering the country. We were finally ushered into a cab and the cab driver, with the assistance of Mr. Johnson, bested the trunk and our bags in a life size game of Tetris, slammed the truck triumphantly, and we were off.

Quickly we were plunged into a vivid, humid subequatorial city. I rolled the window down to better appreciate what Lima had to offer from an olfactory and auditory standpoint as well as a visual one. Nostrils were flooded at first by the industrial soup of diesel and gasoline exhaust that, due to the thick wet air, were made all the more pungent. The hydrocarbon stew eventually gave way to fresh sea air. The sound of the surf and the smell of ocean air was extremely reviving after 8 hours in a tube. The further we drove the more agreeable the sights and sounds became. We found ourselves coming out of a web of houses to face an enormous wall of blackness that the driver informed us was the Pacific ocean. The cabby brought the car up to higher speeds as the road grew long, straight and free of speed bumps, the smells grew less intense, and the world outside the car began to fly by. We arrived at the hotel at approximately 2:10 AM and after fighting through a slight language barrier to get checked in, we were in bed sleeping like rocks.

The morning began with a simple hotel breakfast and a quick preparation for our trip to the conference center. The bus ride was a breeze and the sights of an average day in Lima began to bombard us as we rode the bus through the city. Lima is a much less mysterious and much more colorful place during the day. After passing through a few check points chalked full of  Peruvian policemen we were in and out of the conference center, fancy new credentials in hand, within ten minutes.

 After the bus ride back to the area we were staying in, we followed the advice of a local and dined at an very refined yet inexpensive restaurant named Panchita. After eating as if we were hedge fund managers for the price of your average toaster we traversed the fourteen blocks to the hotel on foot. On our way back we happened across an art show set up on the sidewalk. Beautiful paintings of the sea, of farmers in  their fields and everything in between occupied an entire block. This however was by no means the most interesting aspect of our walk. We came upon a park called John F. Kennedy Park. While the park is named after the American president, it had less to do with JFK than it had to do with cats. Everywhere in this park cats abounded, sleeping in piles amongst the flower beds, sprawled out in rag doll like fashion in the middle the grass. Dozens of cats all called this park home.

A few hours later, after we returned to the hotel and rested a while, we went out again to explore the area. We went to the local mall which is built into the side of a cliff overlooking the bay. After a short walk through the mall we went on a hunt for iconic things to photograph and a smoothie stand. Both were discovered with ease and our mission was complete. Now after a long day spent getting our bearings and adjusting to South America and all its vivid characteristics we are eagerly anticipating jumping into the melting pot of COP 20 tomorrow morning Wish us luck and good night all.

Significant problem, Extraordinary opportunity

“The significant problems that we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

-Albert Einstein

Here I sit, in a classroom plastered with posters of the Great Lake Wetlands, immersed in my normal world of essays on environmental management, running in the regional park system after school, and Caribou Coffee visits with friends. Nine days from now, I will be boarding a plane for Lima, Peru, a country, continent, and hemisphere that has never felt my footprints or been the subject of a picture on my iPhone. In this completely foreign land, we will be immersed in one of the most pressing conferences the world has ever seen.

It must have been a year ago that I first heard of this opportunity, visiting a foreign country to immerse oneself in the culture, stay with a host family, and attend one of the most influential conferences in the world. Being a lifelong climate change believer and activist, it seemed like a natural fit. Yet no matter how many documentaries I watched or how many articles I read, it still didn't seem real—that a high school of three hundred fifty students in the Twin Cities suburb of Apple Valley, Minnesota could be one of two high schools on Earth to attend the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Flash forward to three months ago, I sat around a table with other prospective delegates eating ice cream from the local gelato shop. Looking around the table, I thought, each one of us is privileged to go to not only a life-changing and eye-opening school, but also one that is safe, runs effectively, and provides a peaceful atmosphere in which to learn. In other words, no matter how many times we study biodiversity, pond ecosystems, and the work of Thoreau, no matter how much our perspective of the world has been altered by the School of Environmental Studies, there is a certain lingering detachment from many of the issues that we study. We don’t deal with the melting polar ice caps in our everyday life, we don’t watch the habitat degradation of the polar bears first-hand, and we certainly don’t reside in the Rainforest, thus it is difficult to fathom the complex issues that surround our earthly systems every single minute of every single day. So why am I going to COP20? Why on earth would I want to attend an event that removes this detachment and puts all of the issues surrounding the most pressing issue on earth out on the table and eliminates all doubt that we are in grave danger.

This is where one would expect me to say “To learn more about climate change” (insert scripted tone here). However, between the research that I have done and the realization that this conference is not really meant for “learning” in the traditional sense, I would say that traditional education is not my objective in Lima. Rather, my objective in Lima is to voice the importance of my values and listen to those who are crying out for help with their own. As an 18-year-old residing in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota, my values and perspectives are very different than those of the rest of the world. 

For one, I value the park systems. Regional, state, and national, they are all meant to remain in their natural state forever. But how can they if we are doing everything we can to destroy their natural systems and change the climate of their habitat?  Can we even claim to be taking care of them?  What would happen if our beloved Boundary Waters becomes so warm, is destroyed so much by sulfide mining and CO2 emissions that we drive such a vital and valued part of our state into utter destruction?  

This is the reason to go to COP20. The values we have, the values that are experiencing such loss, all need a voice—a vote—in order to encourage widespread global change. Climate Change is a scream for international collaboration; a voice from one is a voice from many. Speaking out about “my” BWCAW and "my" Lake Superior and “my” park systems and “my” open wild spaces gets people talking and inspires thought and collaboration and solution proposals. The more voices we hear at the conference, the more change will be inspired. The more changes that are inspired, the more we learn about how we, 18-year-olds from Minnesota, can speak out and cause change ourselves. There is no way any one person, community, or country can completely stop climate change, but someone, everyone needs to throw themselves out there and give it all they have. Why not us?  After all, if we don’t, who on Earth will?

An introduction and some initial COP 20 thoughts

My name is Henry Cannon, I am 18 years old and live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I enjoy outdoor activities such as hiking, biking and kayaking. I worked in a bike shop as a bike mechanic over the past summer. Before I worked with bikes I worked in a solar panel factory every summer and sometimes during the school year, assembling solar panels for the company TenKsolar.  

The reasons I am going to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP) are numerous, though the primary reason is to refine my understanding of climate change issues and what is being done on the global level to combat their causes and effects. The topic of climate change has seemingly always been present in my life. Having worked in solar I greatly appreciate the energy potential of alternative energy sources, and the jobs they create. Another reason I decided to attend the COP conference is that Minnesota is in the top five of states predicted to be most significantly impacted by climate change. Minnesota is at the crossroads of three natural biomes and in recent years has seen these biomes recede and change shape due to temperature and weather conditions never before seen in the state. I have watched first hand as weather conditions in my state have become more random and unpredictable. Temperatures across the state have risen by one degree Fahrenheit in the south to two degrees Fahrenheit in the north in the past thirty years. When you see the results of a global problem in your own backyard you're driven to fight the problem through whatever means available. I am counting on the COP conference to give me the knowledge and tools required to begin to implement positive change in my home state and the world as a whole. For far too long we have been neglecting our duty to preserve and protect the only spaceship we have, planet Earth.