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Image Credit: © Gary Cookson | Dreamstime.com |
Student Presents at UN Climate Talks
Sophomore Ethan Buckner, an international studies major, was one of a group of five students from colleges in the Northeast to present a declaration for clean energy at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico last month.
The declaration was drafted during a meeting of Students for a Just and Stable Future’s Student Conference of the Parties, held at Wesleyan University in November 2010. In the declaration, students implored local, state, and national leaders to transition away from burning fossil fuels as energy as quickly as possible and urged global leaders to agree to a legally binding treaty that would return the planet’s global atmospheric concentrations to acceptable levels. They also suggested a staggered timeline for ending the burning of fossil fuels, with the practice ending globally by 2040.
The students put forth alternative energy solutions, including the support of local and sustainable agriculture and food production, the rapid expansion of bike plans and public transportation, the weatherizing of homes and businesses, and investment in renewable electricity sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, and tidal energy.
Two hundred and nineteen students from colleges throughout the northeast served as signatories for the declaration. Their sign off? “In solidarity for a better world.” – ER