Young Climate Activists traveling to Copenhagen

This post will mostly likely receive lots of updates over the next few days as I stumble upon more information, but here's some info about young climate activists who are traveling to Copenhagen for COP15.


April Hillman, a sophomore at the University of Vermont is heading to Copenhagen along with some other UVM students and professors. They are going with a delegation of 25 young Americans organized by SustainUS. SustainUS is a nonprofit organization of young people advancing sustainable development and youth empowerment in the USA.


photo: Some of the SustainUS delegates @ training camp in DC Aug 24th

SustainUS was on a Washington, DC radio station this morning for a program about youth and Copenhagen. You can listen to the archived program here.

When asked why it was important for her and the other SustainUS delegates to go to COP15, Jessica said "because they need to see the faces of the young people who will be living with the consequences for the rest of our lives."

For more interesting information about what the students will be doing at COP15, and their other sponsors (elected officials, universities, companies), see this article from the University of Vermont.

Follow Jessica's adventure on her blog.

To learn more about the other SustainUS delegates go here. They are so awesome!!!

You can follow these delegates on Twitter - stumbled upon this yesterday: @SealTheDeal2012: Want to follow US student climate tweets from Copenhagen? This list includes 18 US #cop15 youth.


The Daily Iowan reports that Holly Jones, a senior from the University of Iowa, has been chosen to go to Denmark along with one youth delegate from each Midwestern state as a part of a program called "Expedition Copenhagen", sponsored by the Will Steger Foundation. As part of the application process, students were required to submit program proposals detailing how they would spread the word about the conference when they return to Iowa. The foundation chose one youth delegate from each Midwestern state to attend the U.N. conference, which will attract leaders from across the globe including President Obama.

Stonyfield Farm is supporting Expedition Copenhagen and will be providing video coverage on Facebook here, beginning on December 7th. A new segment will be posted daily @ 12noon EST. One of the Stonyfield correspondents is Wood Turner, the Executive Director of Climate Counts, which was one of the nonprofits that had a booth on Jack Johnson's 2008 Tour! Small world.

You can also follow the Expedition Copenhagen delegates (students) here on this Will Steger Foundation Twitter List.


The Iowa United Nations Association is sending a delegation of 30 people including professors, graduate, and undergraduate students from Drake University; Grinnell College; Iowa State University; Rice University in Houston, Texas; the University of Iowa; and Wartburg College. Student members of the delegation were chosen through a competitive selection process based on their academic achievements and community-engaging program proposals. Support is being provided by: Drake University Law School Agricultural Law Center, Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates, University of Iowa Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, University of Iowa Center for Human Rights, University of Iowa Office of the Provost, University of Iowa Student Government, Physicians for Social Responsibility Iowa Chapter and Rice University.

Some of the delegates have blogs:
The Road to Copenhagen by Simeon Talley
Rice University - COP 15: International Perspectives
Countdown to Copenhagen - Erika Uthe
UN Global Warming Blog-Amy Oberbroeckling


The Greenpeace Student Network is in Copenhagen - students from around the world, plus Greenpeace staff. Follow them on Twitter.


From a news outlet in South Dakota:



Several staff members from the Alliance for Climate Education are on their way to Copenhagen. Best way that I know of to follow them is probably the ACE twitter feed. You can also read their blog where they are blogging daily about the youth perspective in Copenhagen.

For example, I found this on their blog:





Even if you are not going to Copenhagen, you can still help put the pressure on the delegates!

During the Copenhagen climate negotiations, Dec. 7-19, the Energy Action Coalitions, its partners, and Copenhagen youth delegates will be coordinating rapid response efforts in the United States so that the movement can receive breaking updates and collectively engage in the negotiations.

From the Power Shift website:
With your help, we'll assemble a Rapid Response team of hundreds of people so that on a moments notice we can generate thousands of phone calls, get our message out to the media, and effectively mobilize together.

The goal of this rapid response team is no small task: to affect the U.S. negotiation position. But if enough of us engage in a timely way together, we can do just that.

Sign up for the Rapid Responder Team here. It's a very minimal time commitment!


If you know of other delegations that should be listed here, then please leave me a comment!