Generation Atomic makes it back to the UN Climate Talks
Gen
A was again able to attend the international climate talks in Katowice,
Poland. The climate talks aka “COP24” are a key battleground in the
push to re-shape the global perception of nuclear energy. Our strategy
this year? Tell a story about why the world needs nuclear by using the
following tactics:
- Friendly and persuasive conversations: we conducted on-site advocacy trainings so that our volunteers could more effectively engage with other attendees. They were amazing!
- Informative Events: we helped the NICE Future Initiative and the European Nuclear Society - Young Generation set up side events so nuclear and energy experts could present on exciting developments in nuclear energy
- Inflatable Polar Bears: our mascot Melty melted hearts and helped break the ice to initiate important conversations about the consequences of excluding nuclear power
- Singing: attention grabbing and immediately disarming, we used music to make an impact and get our message across.
Day 1 - Getting our feet under us and asking Arnold an important question.
Monday,
December 3rd was the first of 11 days of nonstop activity and after
nearly 30 hours of traveling (Long layover to save money on the flight +
a 7hr flight delay), Austin and Eric felt like they had just pulled an
all-nighter. Moreover-- we had received confirmation on our funding to
go to COP a mere three weeks before landing, so there was still much
preparatory work to be done. So-- we planned like hell all morning and
got to the venue in the early afternoon.
After
getting registered and setting up our booth along with our friends from
the European Nuclear Society - Young Generation, a few of us went to
catch Arnold Schwarzenegger give a speech on the importance of climate
action. Afterwards, we got the chance to ask him one question as he
walked out:
Eric: Governor, how do you feel about nuclear power?
Arnold: Uhhh, I don’t like it right now.
That’s
not what we wanted to hear, considering he’s been a proponent in the
past. However, at least he indicated that he could be persuaded to
support it!
Day 2 - Nuclear conversations with SustainUS (and others) and the European Nuclear Society Panel
Day
2 gave us the opportunity to explore the conference space a bit more
and mingle with the other attendees. The country pavilions were by far
the most impressive with each country sporting flashy signs and booths
meant to out-show the other countries’ and all of the marginal amounts
of climate progress that collectively have been made. The city of
Katowice probably had the most honest presentation: cages full of coal
marked the four corners of their booth, where you could also explore a
showcase of different coal-derived products. Whatever the intention, the
reaction among most attendees bordered on outrage. The shared feeling
even allowed Austin and River
to spark up some conversation with members of the SustainUs delegation
who were equally aghast and looking for answers. The discussion
inevitably turned to nuclear and we had the first of several identical
conversations that took place with a few select youth climate groups
throughout the conference. While the SustainUs members fell on the side
of skeptics when it came to the topic of nuclear energy, they were far
more open-minded about it than older members of the Big Green
organizations and willing to have honest conversations about it. These
interactions, which were few and far between, were encouraging glints of
hope that millennials in particular are capable of looking at nuclear
with clearer vision within the context of climate change.
Tuesday
was also the first Nuclear For Climate side event, hosted by the
European Nuclear Society, and called Inclusive Energy Mix - The Only
Effective Way To Reduce Carbon Emissions. Panelists included
- Tuomo Huttunen, Senior Advisor at Finnish Energy;
- Valérie Faudon, Executive Managing Director chez SFEN - Société Française d'Energie Nucléaire;
- Kirsty Gogan, Co Founder and Global Director at Energy for Humanity;
- Hal Turton, Energy Economist, IAEA
- Eric Meyer, Executive Director of Generation Atomic; and
- Daniel Liu, Assistant Manager of International Affairs, Japan Atomic Industrial Forum
The
panelists each shared refreshing perspectives from the different
sectors that they represent on the importance of diversified energy
systems.
Day 2 Video Here. (2 min)
Day 3 - Asking more hard questions at events and gathering petition signatures
Our
team used much of day 3 to attend relevant side events and ask
difficult questions related to nuclear that we knew would not come up
without our attendance. Jadzia, started off strong by speaking up in a
panel discussion about just transition in Poland (the difficult process
of moving fossil fuel workers and communities into a cleaner energy
economy). As a native to Poland’s coal country, Jadzia caught the
attention of the room by asking why the development and production of
new nuclear technologies - SMRs in particular - could not be considered
an appropriate destination for the large number of communities in Poland
that rely on the coal industry for work. The panelists who responded
agreed with her and said that this would make sense when the nuclear
industry could provide such forms of employment.
Meanwhile,
Tuomo and River went to a side event called “7 Million Unacceptable
Deaths” to ask a panel of public health experts a question about the 1.8
million lives saved by nuclear since the 1970s. They received some
kudos from fellow members of the crowd for bringing up the topic but
were also handed a predictably dodgy answer from the panel leader Dr.
Maria Neira, Director of Environment and Social Determinants of Health
Department (PHE) at the World Health Organisation. She did offer us the
opportunity follow up afterwards and Tuomo and River
spent the next several hours pursuing her in order to get clarification
on the answer. That clarification ended up being equally as diplomatic
as the first and Dr. Neira assured us that the WHO focuses on the
isolated health impacts of different energy sources, so it was not their
job to compare which ones are better and worse.
Day 3 Video (2 min)
Day 4 - The NICE Future Panel gets crashed by anti-nukes, Melty shows up, and we sing for the COP24 Cafeteria
On
Thursday the Nuclear For Climate crew assembled for an exciting side
event titled Clean, Reliable Energy: Accelerating Emissions Reductions
and Energy Security through Innovative Technology and Uses of Advanced
Nuclear Energy. Panelists included
- Ryan Fitzpatrick, Deputy Director for Clean Energy at Third Way;
- Eric Meyer, Executive Director of Generation Atomic;
- Lena Andriolo, Vice President of International Youth Nuclear Congress;
- Frank Hiroshi Ling, author and professor at the University of Tokyo and author; and
- Emilia Janisz of Nuclear4Climate and the External Relations Manager at the European Nuclear Society.
The
event was kicked off by a representative of the Polish government
outlining their commitment to building the country’s first nuclear power
plant by 2030. This was followed up shortly by an encouraging video
message from Executive Director of the International Energy Agency,
Fatih Birol, who said that next May at the Clean Energy Ministerial, the
IEA will report on “nuclear power in clean energy transitions”. The aim
he said is
“to bring nuclear power back to the clean energy debate". A lively
discussion followed among the panelists afterwards but as the event came
to an end, like clockwork, the panelists were interrupted by
anti-nuclear demonstrators waving flags and calling us lobbyists for the
uranium industry. The experience was nothing new but it gave a couple
of the panelists, including Ryan, the opportunity to engage in heated
discussions outside of the conference room.
Later
in the day we were given the opportunity to execute a flashmob in the
main cafeteria where Eric’s booming vocals and Melty’s inflatable dance
moves provided the backdrop for the rest of the Nuclear4Climate crew to
hold up signs calling for the
inclusion of nuclear power in the clean energy discussion. The action
garnered photos, encouragement, and a few recorded sound bites from
viewers.
Day 5 - CAN Conspiracy Conjectures
By
day 5, we were feeling pretty good about our efforts. We were also
very tired. We’d collected over a hundred signatures on our petition to
include all sources of clean energy in climate goals, and we’d made some
big splashes with our flash mob and speaking events. We were getting
noticed, perhaps… too much?
Climate
Action Network (CAN), a network of NGOs, puts out a daily publication
at the conference called ECO. Apparently it’s unfathomable that ordinary
people who don’t work in the nuclear industry could be proponents of
the technology. But alas, there we were on page 3, the “Wolves in
Sheep’s clothing”.
It
was a nice distillation of some of the very real (though often
inflated) criticisms of nuclear energy. Truthfully, there is a history
of negative health impacts on indigenous communities, especially in the
very early days of uranium mining for nuclear weapons. Nowadays, the
majority of the world’s uranium comes from Canada, Australia, and
Kazakhstan where modern techniques and practices have made it one of the
safest forms of resource extraction.
Still,
keeping the microscope focused solely on uranium mining prevents us
from making pragmatic decisions about low carbon energy
choices for the future. CAN conveniently omitted the fact that wind and
solar generation also require mining-- more mining than nuclear-- and
these raw materials are also extracted in less-than-sustainable ways, from areas of conflict and human rights violations. How is anyone supposed to make an informed decision when the facts are so skewed?
Ironically
(in an Alanis Morissette way), our wolf in sheep's clothing Austin was
wearing a wolf hat that very day, quizzing random people about their
nuclear knowledge. Some interesting takeaways? Most people were unaware
that nuclear was such a large percentage of global clean energy (~35%),
and almost no one knew whether spent nuclear fuel was a solid, liquid,
or a gas.(!) As a nuclear community, we have a long ways to go.
Day 6 - The March
Our
Friday expose was only a taste of the coverage we’d be getting as we
began the weekend. On Saturday our team showed up to March for Climate -
COP24, an unofficial climate march organized by local Polish activists.
We were feeling good: our group was comprised of members from the
Nuclear4Climate delegation as well as some additional Polish allies, we
were rolling 3-Meltys-deep, and the weather was great. Despite the
ice-cold stares of the hundreds of riot police
surrounding the area, the 3 Meltys and Eric were the first to arrive on
the scene and lost no time in garnering tons of attention: group photos,
lots of press, and lots of hugs. Singing inevitably ensued, which only
attracted an additional wave of attention.
Unfortunately
this was too much to handle for the four or five anti-nuclear
demonstrators who had arrived earlier and strategically distributed
their flags around the group in an effort to inflate their numbers.
We’ll give it to them: that ended up being a pretty effective move. As
our singing continued, the anti’s came over to make us stop by putting
their stickers on the Meltys and trying to rip Eric’s mic out of his
hand. The march organizer was even called over and told us to leave
because he didn’t want nuclear to be represented. Not wanting any
conflict, the police politely asked us to move across the street because
we were a smaller group and they did not want a fight to begin.
We
continued our message from the other side of the street: Meltys
shuffling around while Eric sang and took the time in between songs to
point out the close-mindedness of preventing select groups from being
included in the climate discussion. As if our message wasn’t clear
enough (that all clean energy technologies are needed for action on
climate), our Polish allies propped up their flag that essentially
spelled out “Nuclear + Renewables = happy planet”. The scene was enough
to garner attention from the international press-- we landed in the
center of an article later that day written about the march and
published in some of the world’s largest news outlets like ABC, The
Daily Mail, and the Seattle
Times.
The photo seen around the world
A growing community of Polish pro-nuclear environmentalists.
While
the attention we received was encouraging, it was still overshadowed by
the fact that we were not welcome to participate in a public
demonstration targeting the very issue that we have also dedicated our
lives to.
Day 8 - The U.S. side event and some sneaky anti's
With
the majority of our big events complete, we started off week 2 with the
goal of having as many conversations as possible while continuing to
ask difficult questions at the right events. A highlight of Monday
however was the US side event titled “U.S. Innovative Technologies Spur
Economic Dynamism”. The panel was made up of representatives from think
tanks and different government agencies. Just like last year though, the
youth action group SustainUs executed an action that interrupted the
discussion to shine light on the Trump Administration’s refusal to act
on climate change or drawdown the use of coal and other fossil fuels.
The group started chants within the
presentation hall that got picked up by the crowds of people outside who
couldn’t make it in. After about 5 minutes they marched out the side
entrance in order to hold a more accessible rally down the hall.
This
provided anti-nuclear demonstrators in the crowd the opportunity to
slip into the procession unnoticed and throw up their flag as if they
were a part of the SustainUs action. Eric made sure that the SustainUs
organizers were aware of what was happening and they lost no time in
asking the anti nuclear activists to take their flag down.
That
morning the Nuclear4Climate crew got the OK from Marcos to set up our
own action
near the front of the conference center: one of the busiest areas of the
entire event. We inflated a few Meltys and what ensued was a non-stop
stream of hugs and photo ops. People from every country imaginable were
excited about the bears and equally interested in talking to the other
N4C volunteers about our work and what we were doing at COP. It was an
encouraging experience and a reminder that the nuclear discussion is not
limited to Europe and North America.
Day 12 - heading home
On
Thursday we left Katowice in our respective directions home. Eric also
received some closure in regards to the pins we ordered that never
showed up. In light of two failed deliveries, the company refunded us
and provided a credit for the next order. This means that 2000
pro-nuclear buttons are with our friends at the Polish Nuclear Society,
and they will get distributed to other European Nuclear Society chapters
in the near future!
Looking
forward, the Nuclear4Climate delegation is excited to visit Chile next
year for COP25 where we’ll have the opportunity to meet some fresh faces
outside of the European and North American bubbles and continue our
mission to change hearts and minds for one of our most important clean
energy sources.
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Generation Atomic
1120 Vincent Ave N., Minneapolis, MN 55411
1120 Vincent Ave N., Minneapolis, MN 55411
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