Brinkley Hutchings wants to make a point about global climate change, and she wants to prod President Obama. She’s in Copenhagen, Denmark, ready to pounce.
As delegates from around the world hash out a draft accord that addresses the accelerating threat of global climate change, Hutchings, a Wrightsville Beach resident and Wilmington student, is maneuvering the complicated political hurdles at the global Climate Change Conference, hoping her message reaches the president.
“Obama must agree to a science-based climate treaty, (40 percent CO2 cuts below 1990 levels by 2020), transfer funds to developing countries so that they can avoid dirty energy development and invest in clean energy, and end tropical deforestation by 2020,” Hutchings wrote on a blog that she has periodically updated during conference proceedings.
President Obama is expected to join the conference during the final round of negotiations on Dec. 18.
Hutchings, a student of environmental science at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, is part of a Greenpeace delegation currently in Copenhagen seeking to pressure world leaders—specifically Obama—into accepting a binding, science-based agreement.
News reports suggest that delegates are formulizing a draft emissions agreement, and hoping to have it finalized by this weekend, dampening but not erasing concerns of an ending with no product.
But the schism back in the United States appears to be widening.
Sarah Palin’s recent pressure on the president to boycott the talks and the hacking of the University of East Anglia, which revealed evidence of data manipulation, have fueled skepticism.
But skeptics have been met head-on by new research findings recently released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, citing record-breaking levels of precipitation and temperatures across the globe.
In the report, federal scientists predicted that the 2000-2009 decade will be the hottest on record, with average surface temperatures almost 1 degree Fahrenheit above the 20th century average.
The rise this decade is part of a pattern of similar increases over the past century.
On Wednesday, Dec. 9, Hutchings reported that she was an arm’s-length away from questioning Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, who was present after having just delivered a speech that expressed pride in the United States’ embrace of scientific research.
“All I could think of was how could they say they were going to support climate science when our recent commitment is only 3 percent of emission reduction targets, and the science calls for 25-40 percent reductions!” Hutchings wrote on the blog. “I was so ready to deliver my question to her that I was ready to pop.”
In the days leading up to Jackson’s speech, the blog posts indicate that Hutchings has been at the forefront of 24-hour demonstrations outside of the Bella Center, where the climate talks are taking place.
“Today, I will go to the Bella Center and see more people in one space than I have ever seen together in my entire life. Thirty-four thousand people have sought entry to the negotiations, and Copenhagen, a city of 2 million, ran out of its 17,600 hotel rooms this weekend,” Hutchings wrote.
At different times, Hutchings reports holding vigils, attending meetings and discussions, distributing flags and buttons to passers-by, gathering petition signatures, beating away in drum circles, talking to media, chanting and even rapping.
She expressed some joy in using a French keyboard to post one of the stories.
“I met with some U.S. youth today and am proud to say that they were very organized, too. I feel confident that we can organize to keep the pressure on President Obama back home,” Hutchings wrote. “We, as youth working together with our communities, literally have the power to turn the tide of the negotiations by creating enough grassroots pressure on our President for him to have the moral obligation to sign onto an ambitious deal. Let’s do it!”
Hutchings’ blog can be found at http://bhutchings.wordpress.com/
