photo: Darko Hristov/ BY-NC-SA

I have been struggling to get people to see the urgency of environmental action since my freshman year in high school. Tomorrow I’ll fly to Copenhagen, Denmark as one of the Sierra Club’s nineteen youth delegates to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And after all of my activism at home, I won’t accept any more delays on the road to an effective climate treaty.

My generation’s future hinges on this treaty, so I have high expectations for world leaders, including my own president. But I also understand how difficult it is to affect change, even on a small scale. For years I have struggled, along with other students and teachers, to get a comprehensive recycling program at my high school. We generate mostly paper waste, but administrators aren’t interested in recycling paper because it isn’t redeemable for money. So today aluminum cans are the only resource consistently recycled at my school, because they actually make money.

My public high school has a lot in common with developing countries around the world that are hesitant to adopt environmental legislation. Their foremost concern is economic growth, not their impact on the environment. This is why discussions are already happening before Copenhagen, about how developing countries can be supported as they reduce their carbon footprints.

My generation needs government to reverse global warming. Melting polar ice caps affect me in a very real way. Because rising sea levels mean that my hometown of Alameda, California could possibly turn into an underwater Atlantis.

On Monday I’ll join thousands of people from all over the world in Copenhagen. We’ll all bring our stories of small change, hoping for a story of big change. These people have done everything they can within their communities – and now it’s time for our leaders to come together and make real change for the global community.