…Our adventure began with the desire to be the change we wish to see in the world. Our passion for a safe climate future motivated us all to try a low carbon approach to traveling to this year’s climate talks and the journey was a great success!

Our main objectives were:

• to show the difficulties of low carbon travel in our current system, but that it is possible

• to connect with the global south and an interconnected youth movement who will be central to the global transition to a just future

• to utilise the media in education and inspiration

What’s more, we achieved…

• an enormous reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions by choosing not to fly, of 40% in total from door to door (this includes the flights to get to Singapore – the reduction would have been much greater without).
• we learnt how to organise overland travel
• and we experienced an adventure as a team, which no airline can provide, connecting with the people and the environments of every country from Australia to Poland.

We recognised that it was idealistic and ambitious, but that is what we, the youth, do best.

Before we started, I was very concerned with the value of our trip. I had great concerns about the time it would take to travel and to organise, the financial strain, our ability to deliver our message and the responsiveness of audiences. What’s more, my friends and family in my immediate community, who I rely on for support, provided me with a mixture of encouragement and discouragement. Some responses included, “Of course, I can’t do that,” and “Just catch a plane.” I questioned the real value of what we were doing. Some even said it was “crazy.” In all honestly, I very nearly pulled out. Looking back now, I am glad I left Brisbane on a bus.

The trip was long and at times it seemed strange that it would stop. We traveled nearly 23,500 kilometres for over 40 days through 11 countries, 10 border crossings, using 8 trains, 4 buses, 6 different visas, a few taxis, a few tuk-tuks, 10 bags, and a lot more books.

It was a terrific experience, unlike the piecemeal and relatively disconnected way I had traveled previously. For the first time, the world really felt like a continuous flow of people, environments and cultures. The cities were buzzing, the rural landscape was largely being cultivated – I sensed the earth as alive with human activity.

When we arrived, we were welcomed first by our other members of our delegation, those who had flown out of Australia, and I wondered if there was a meaningful difference between me and them. I was praised and congratulated, but I didn’t feel like I had earnt it, nor that I meant to. When we met other youth delegations at the Conference of Youth in the days leading up to COP14, the praise continued and so many people asked me how my experiences were, but frankly, I was surprised they were so impressed. I did not feel any distinction between myself and the other youth delegates that could explain the extra attention.

This morning, at the International Youth Meeting of COP14 on Wednesday the 3rd, held for the first time in an official function room, another youth delegate shared her pride in the youth caucus for having Australian delegates who had done the necessary journey overland. She had attended a transport conference the previous day, where the main speaker acknowledged that all the delegates present had flown to Poland. The main speaker went on to say that no-one would catch a train from Australia, with an assumed air of authority, when the youth delegate present spoke out. “Uh, Actually, we have 5 Australian youth delegates who made the journey overland. It took them 40 days and they are now here at COP14.” According to her report back to the international youth meeting, the transportation conference broke out into applause and amazement. She said that the speaker wants to meet us and assist us with media and funding in returning, overland, to COP15.

The great unknown delegates to the UN climate talks had applauded us. On hearing this it dawned on me that I had changed whilst on the surface journey. Before I left, I was skeptical too. My community was uninterested and my doubts dominated my plans. But my outlook has changed. I now feel differently. The journey was not hard, it was easy and fun; It was more aligned with my wish for a safe climate future; I can share it with others and I will do it again. The paradigm I was working within has changed and I was lucky enough to observe that. Everyone knows that it starts at the individual level. I now feel more empowered to enact my agency for change.

Nic Seton at Poznan UN Climate talks.

P.S. There are now plans for a ‘Copenhagen Convergence’ where 500+ may travel overland and oversea to the UN next year, from all nations around the globe.

We made it to Poznan!

Yesterday (28/11/08) we were met in Warsaw by another 4 young Aussie climate campaigners. Today our numbers swelled to 20. The sense of coming together is phenomenal. Tomorrow, we meet with 200 youth from around the world, and on Monday, 500. There are at least 8,000 people attending the conference.
We will be uploading videos in the coming two weeks of the conference, and after the conference is over.

Keep in touch!

Photos: net_efekt, net_efekt

NIC SETON, The Australian Youth Climate Coalition

The Great Northern Train

Having spent the last two weeks catching trains around South-East Asia, the weather hasn’t so far changed much. Hot and humid largely describes it – the start of the wet season. The longest we had spent on trains so far was two nights, with one day in the middle and only half-days either side. Now it was time to really get a handle on long-distance train travel…

So far we had taken two weeks to cross over 9000kms. Now, in one fell swoop, we would cover over 4500km over three nights, sharing close quarters with the other four travelers, and no way to escape. Would we make it out alive? This was to be considered a warm-up to the big trip, the five-night journey from Beijing to Moscow via the trans-Siberian.

Beijing

We arrived in Beijing on the 48 hour train from Hanoi, passing through the south of a rapidly developing Chinese countryside. By some estimates China is set to build as many new buildings in the next twenty years as the entire current building stock of Europe. Walking around Beijing it is easy to see this as possible – the city stretches for over ten kilometres in every direction, the majority of it medium or high-rise development. With 3 days to fill before catching the trans-Mongolian railway to Moscow, we had a rare opportunity to take a break, and explore a bit of this sprawling city.

It was interesting to talk about the development of the city, in part because of its sheer scale, but also because of the recent attempts to ‘green’ Beijing. Apparently the city was traditionally dominated by the bicycle as the most affordable and efficient way of getting around. However, the trend towards private car ownership, largely the product of an increasing economic divide, has seen pollution in Beijing deteriorate further. Of all the ‘green initiatives’ heralded at the Beijing Olympics, the single most effective was taking half the cars of the road for two months through an even/odd numberplate system. This measure alone reduced emissions by 850,000 tons.

The ‘Ulan Baatar Incident’

The highlight of the trip to date has definitely been what will henceforth be known as the ‘Ulan Bataar Incident’ on the trans-Siberian railway (which is technically known as the ‘Trans-Mongolian’ when you travel from Beijing to Moscow via Mongolia.

The train stopped in Ulan Bataar for half an hour, and all of the overland trippers got off to have a look around. When it came time for the train to leave, only Katy and Nic were on board – the other three overlanders, Jack, Ollie and myself (Anna), had read the timetable incorrectly and thought the train was stopping for an hour, instead of the half-hour time that was actually allotted. So we were wandering around the local shops, separately, thinking we still had half an hour.

Ollie had made it back to the platform, but refused to jump on and thereby leave me stranded in the middle of Mongolia. Jack saw the train leaving, sprinted up the platform and jumped onto the train as it started to slowly pull away. At this point, I was shopping for condensed milk and ramen, not noticing the commotion going on only a few hundred metres away.

With a cry of ‘It’s insane to leave someone on their own in the middle of Mongolia!’, Ollie was still standing on the platform arguing with train officials. (Thanks again Ollie!) Jack, with his wits about him, figured that he could help this situation more on the ground than from the train, so he jumped from the moving train back onto the platform, and with Ollie, watched the train pull away, before running around the shops to find me.

Nic and Katy had delayed as much as they could, and now they were left on the train with most of our possessions (not to mention all our operating mobile phones), wondering if they would see us again before we reached Poland. The Trans-Mongolian only runs once a week!

They looked pretty surprised when we jumped back on the train five hours later, US$200 out of pocket, with a story of a -1 degree Celsius Mongolian winter, and dangerous taxi driver!

Photos: cmaccubbin, Rosa

This overland journey is somewhat like a chocolate sampler box of the world – we get to try every country once, but if we find a flavour that we like, you don’t have the option of staying to try some more. We have to keep going – to get to Poland by November 28th, in time for the Conference of Youth (COY) before the UN negotiations start in December. It’s very easy to forget as we wander through South-East Asia that we’re on our way to icy-cold Poland.

Cambodia

Cambodia captured our hearts, but unfortunately not our bodies for anywhere near long enough.

Recovering from a history of landmines after the American invasion, recovery from French colonialism, and ongoing problems with traffic in drugs and child sex abuse, this beautiful country is by far the most ‘real’ place that our journey has taken us through – from the silver skyscrapers of Singapore, levels of poverty have increased up to this point, and will decrease again from here on out as we move towards Europe. It is to the people of Cambodia, and other least-developed countries, that we have the greatest obligation to act to prevent further climate change, which will only exacerbate their already unfair poverty.

Waking up in Bangkok at 4:30am, we caught a taxi to the local train station and got on the packed six-hour train to Aranyaprathet in Thailand’s North-East. In our carriage there were easily one hundred people, maybe more. At every station, Thai street vendors jumped on the train and wandered through the carriage, offering rice and meat, or a boiled egg, or some chopped up fruit with Chilli-salt, for a few Baht each. After crossing the Cambodian border (which is a whole othr story in itself), the quality of the roads changed dramatically (or, looking at it another way, dropped suddenly to zero.) The five of us crammed into the back of a sedan for the 110km taxi-ride along badly pot-holed roads.

After settling into our hotel, and with our bellies grumbling, we set about finding somewhere to eat – this turned out to be the most memorable night of our journey so far. We were clearly in the non-touristy part of town, and the only place open at this time of night seemed to be the hang-out for taxi drivers. With even less grasp on the language here than we had in Thailand (read ‘zero’), we found ourselves a table in the near-darkness, wandered over to the barbecue, and pointed to the most vegetarian-looking options that were available. With two strict vegetarians and two freegans (’I’ll eat meat if it would otherwise be wasted.’) in our group of five, the meal was quite an adventure: rice and eggs were standard, but the adventure aspect came from a mini-shrimp salad (which Ollie mistook for grated carrot), frogs (just eat them whole), roasted crickets (actually quite tasty if you shut your eyes – very crunchy), an unusual black syrupy spirit (distilled from some random local fruit), and cigarettes which the taxi-drivers offered us. They laughed at our facial expressions as we wondered how we were meant to eat all this stuff, and toasted us repeatedly, continually filling our glasses with the mysterious black liquid. All up, the meal for the five of us was less than five Aussie dollars. Accommodation for all five of us was less than $15 for the night.

The next morning it was on to Phenom Penh by (a very hot and sweaty) bus, where we had planned to stay overnight but instead shot through to Vietnam (on a air-conditioned bus full of Chinese businessmen) that evening, allowing two days in a row to be spent without transit in Saigon. The speed at which we moved through Cambodia was upsetting for some of our crew – it was by far our most ‘local’ experience, escaping well away from the tourist route. Maybe next year, when this journey is repeated for the Copenhagen Climate Convergence, we’ll take our time more, and take a different route through Siam Reap so that we can see the temple complex at Angkor Wat, and then float down the Mae Khong (Meekong River) in a boat to Vietnam.

Vietnam

Arriving in Ho Chi Minh we had the luxury of three nights in a row in the same city. Time to explore and relax a little.

We were staying in the tourist district, with Italian restaurants, bikes for hire, and tour operators galore offering ‘local experiences’ in the Vietnamese countryside.
On our second night, on recommendation from some other tourists we’d met, we wandered down to the Mae Khong and were presented with a dazzling array of dinner cruise boats to choose from. We picked the one with the horrendous high-school marching band out the front and along with about 400 other diners, Vietnamese and tourists, had a delicious feast, accompanied by a violin-guitar duo, while the boat cruised up and down the river. This seemed a world away from eating crickets in the dark with taxi drivers in Cambodia only two nights earlier.

Photos (not taken or featuring our travellers): flydime mckaysavage Tormod Sandtorv

Oil palms give way to rice paddies and banana trees, while corrugated-iron huts stand in contrast with magnificent temples. An abundance of tropical fruits (dipped in salt, sugar and chilli), with dogs and Siamese cats roaming the street between vendors. 30 Baht (about $2.80) buys a freshly cooked, nutritious, vegetarian version of the national dish, Pad Thai… Long live the great king of Thailand, and condemnation to the corrupt President Thaksin.

Welcome to Bangkok – a place of abundance, colour, happiness, and the centre of south-east Asian tourist culture.
We were greeted at the station by a fellow young environmental advocate known simply as ‘Big’ (Being about 6 foot tall, he truly is very big for a Thai!) who was to be our guide for the next few days. He showed us how to catch local buses (and therefore removed our need for bartering with the tourist-oriented taxis and tuk-tuks), took us to the best local places to eat, booked us into our hotel, introduced us to his friends, and generally made us feel extremely welcome. Big thanks to Big!
Environmentalism in Thailand takes a different form to in Australia – they are not a high-greenhouse emitting nation, they have amazing natural places now being explored by tourism (to great economic benefit), and fertile earth to grow the abundance of food, which is affordable even for society’s poorest.

The political situation and culture (as across much of south-east Asia) is such that open, public criticism of government decisions is not widespread, and in some cases is even physically dangerous for the person issuing the critique.

Environmental issues in South-East Asia include flooding (resulting from rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers and increased downfalls in the wet season – such as when we arrived), sanitation (the water is nowhere near safe to drink), energy efficiency, future water shortage (when those rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers disappear, which would be in only a few decades under business-as-usual scenarios) and material waste.

On waste:

The Malay-Thai area is the original home of the banana leaf-wrapped rice-cake (Mmmm! Delicious!), but ‘modern’ foods are packaged in amazing amounts of one-use, disposable plastic – especially in the tourist areas. A bottle of freshly-pressed mandarin juice will come in not only a bottle, but in a small plastic bag so you can carry it more easily, and with a straw. With a grasp on the language that is limited to even less than a standard phrasebook (’Sawadi-Ka’ = Hello, ‘Kawp-Khun-Ka’ = Thank You), it is beyond my reach to explain that excess packaging is not necessary.

It is important to remember that every piece of plastic ever produced still exists today. Even if plastics break down into ever-smaller pieces, their chemical composition remains stable for hundreds of thousands of years. Small, algae-sized pieces of plastic are now more abundant in the temperate ocean ecosystems than algae itself (See Alan Weisman’s ‘The World Without Us for a graphic depiction of this), and we have no idea what the effects are.

Long live the banana-leaf wrapped rice cake – a completely sanitary, biodegradable, sustainable, convenient and interesting packaging option, rich with local culture. More of it!

Photos: Allie_Caulfield, avixyz, Vedanta Barooah

NIC SETON, The Australian Youth Climate Coalition

It tastes like meat. It looks like meat. It even says meat on the menu. A new wave of vegetarian restaurants has swept over Asia, but you’d be forgiven if, at first, you were confused.

If you are a vegetarian travelling through cities like Singapore, Hanoi and Beijing, you ought to ask yourself one question: If meat grew on trees, would you eat it?

Last night in Beijing, I took a trip with the gang and our guides to a local vego place. It took some convincing (I’m still not 100% sure about it), but the meat on my plate was doing its very best to be like meat without actually being meat. Unlike so called NotMeat™, the cunning cuisine on my fork actually tasted like real meat from a real dead animal.

Although, we had observed the same phenomena in Singapore and Hanoi, a few of us were still sceptical, not least of all Ollie and I, who have had people we trusted say “This isn’t meat. Honest.” To their hilarity we believed them, and we weren’t about to be red-faced again.

China, with a fifth of the globe’s population (1.3 Billion) is getting richer, whilst meat is more fashionable, more popular and increasingly in demand. Watts reports that since 1980, the average consumption of meat in China has gone from 20 kilos to well over 50 kilos per person, per year. As a country, that is “more than 60m tonnes of meat a year, roughly equivalent to 240 million cows, or 600 million pigs, or 24 billion chickens.” Change in meat consumption on this scale has significant consequences, but China’s taste for flesh is more than just a status symbol. Chinese naturally want a better life for friends and family, after all, 60 years ago tens of millions of Chinese people died of starvation under Mao and even 30 years ago families struggled to eat.

We, the wealthiest, live in a carnivorous world. Interestingly (perhaps expectedly), Americans eat 128% more and Europeans 83% more meat than the average Chinese not to mention other developing countries. Meat consumption is an issue of equality, but the earth simply cannot afford to have everyone eating at the high, meat-everyday end of the current consumer spectrum.

China’s demand for meat is growing and may require imports to meet demand in the near future. As comparatively self sufficient as China is, feeding a fifth of the world on less than a tenth of the arable land, most countries are expecting imports to increase in the future, adding to the food crisis and the looming food emergency.

Other well published negatives of meat consumption are already taking effect. The health effects of the fast food lifestyle are rapidly developing in China, already a major health concern in countries like Australia. Enormous quantities of costly resources, such as of arable land, water and fossil fuels are currently required to produce meat. What’s more, the growing populations of ruminant animals (particularly ones that ‘Moo’ and ‘Baa’) pose a great threat to climate stability. The meat industry is significantly responsible for anthropogenic methane (CH4) emissions, the most potent greenhouse gas. As Professor Ian Lowe clearly points out, “There is not doubt that reducing consumption of meat, especially red meat, is one of the most effective things the individual can do to reduce their greenhouse gas pollution.”

So, in answer to my original question, I would have to say yes. I will eat meat from trees. After all, it tastes like meat, it looks like meat, it is called meat, it is even priced like meat! I have nothing to lose and everything to gain from my patronage of the new wave of restaurants flouting plants as meat, vegetarianism as the new black and changing the course of accelerating Juggernauts like China in sustainable directions.

More of it!
I’m off to lunch
Nic Seton

You can read past blog entries here.