“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?
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