Amsterdam Central Station is almost empty when I arrive just after 7 a.m. on a slightly rainy Saturday. It is 30 October, the day before the United Nations COP26 climate summit officially starts in Glasgow, UK. I am here to take a train chartered for the journey there, alongside hundreds of activists — many of them scientists — who are hoping to send a message to world leaders.

The summit has since started — and pledges are already flowing in, including a promise by more than 100 countries to end deforestation by 2030, and India’s commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2070. But the negotiations will go on for another ten days, and much is still to be decided.

“There’s a growing interest among scholars and scientists to try to grapple with the idea of activism,” says Andreas Malm, a human-ecology researcher and climate campaigner based at Lund University in Sweden. This rail journey, organized by Netherlands-based campaign group Youth for Sustainable Travel, offers a glimpse into their hopes and fears for the ultimate outcome of COP26 and, more broadly, over how the world will respond to climate change.

I make my way to coach 11 to meet Line Skovlund Larsen, a social-sciences researcher from Denmark. Larsen became interested in climate activism in 2009, when she had just finished her bachelor’s degree. She and her former housemates read newspaper articles about climate change in the run-up to the COP15 summit that year in Copenhagen. Larsen says it was a big issue back then, with the Danish media carrying pictures of the conference and describing it as ‘make or break’.

“I remember these pictures very clearly and the worry in the eyes of my friends,” says Larson. “My own worry started growing.” Having studied anthropology as an undergraduate, she had planned to take her master’s in the same subject, but her new interest in climate meant she ended up studying human ecology. During this time, she became involved with Ende Gelände, a civil-disobedience movement that occupies coal mines in Germany to raise awareness of climate justice.

Larsen sees COP26 as the “putting into practice” of the UN’s Paris agreement, which aims to limit global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. She has hope for this year’s negotiations, despite previous COPs failing to deliver. “We most likely won’t get the radical agreement we need, but there will be a lot of other things being agreed and improved on,” she says.

For this year’s summit to succeed, Larsen says, climate activism must have influence inside the conference as well as outside. “We as climate activists need to go as far into the negotiation rooms as possible,” says Larsen. “The closer you are to the decisions of power, the more power you have.”

The train arrives at Rotterdam Central, cutting short my conversation with Larsen. After we set off again with a few more passengers on board, I go to coach 13 for ‘Let’s Get Back on Track’, a workshop that discusses ways in which rail can compete with low-cost airlines and other polluting options.

The on-board workshops are an opportunity for various groups to meet each other, says Mara de Paterfrom Youth for Sustainable Travel. “We’re making sure they’re all mingling and taking part in this programme,” she says. “It’s about bringing different perspectives together and having them learn from each other.”

I watch a group of four people exchanging ideas about how to make rail travel more appealing, ranging from organizing train journeys to music festivals to removing subsidies for aviation fuel.

One of those people is Xenia Gomm, a climate-science master’s student at Stockholm University. Her interest in social justice was what led her to climate studies, and she thinks activism and outreach are important.

“It’s really scary to have all this knowledge about climate change,” Gomm says. “I [knew] I can study it and publish papers maybe one day, but it wasn’t enough for me any more — I wanted to do more and reach out to more people. If you have all this knowledge, you mustn’t keep it for yourself.”

Gomm is excited to be experiencing a COP summit for the first time. She hopes to connect with other scientists and activists there, and wants to follow negotiations about climate finance because, she says, countries must not only mitigate climate change, but also adapt to it. “COP26 could be a real turning point,” she tells me.

As the train departs Brussels, I walk to coach 6 to meet up with Malm. As well as conducting research at Lund University, Malm runs the Zetkin Collective, a group of scholars, activists and students who analyse the political ecology of the far right, including climate-change denial. He is travelling with his wife and two young children, and tells me how his own experience of climate activism began in 1995, at COP1 in Berlin, where he engaged in various protests, alternative summits and civil-disobedience movements. “We marched on the final day to the gates of the venue and locked arms — about 500 activists — and chanted,” he remembers.

Malm says it’s difficult not to be cynical about COP26. “Since the first COP, more than half of all emissions that have happened in history have occurred,” he says. “The whole COP circus has been a massive failure.” However, he adds, we cannot give up entirely on the idea that the UN will, at some point, play a crucial part in dealing with the climate crisis. “You will have to solve conflicts between rich and poor countries about how to distribute the mitigation burden, and it’s very difficult to see that happening in any other forum.”

Malm looks at this year’s conference as an occasion for climate activism to regain some of the momentum that was lost during the coronavirus pandemic. “The climate movement can step up the pressure on governments around the world to take necessary measures,” he says. “This pressure will have to be massively ratcheted up.”

The train arrives in London at St. Pancras International Station. Here, everybody gets off and changes to a train that will take us through England and up into Scotland. Disembarking passengers are greeted by an orchestra playing ‘Morning Mood’ by Edvard Grieg. Eurostar staff hold the flags of France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

We are escorted along a ten-minute ‘Wellbeing Walk’ to Euston Station, a route that allows people who are changing trains to avoid high levels of pollution on the nearby main road. ‘Camden is tackling the climate crisis’ is spray-painted along the route (Camden being the administrative district where both stations are located).

While waiting for the second leg of the journey, I talk to bioengineering graduate Arnaud Van Der Cam, who campaigns for the international aid charity Oxfam. His master’s thesis explored the idea of a system in which people have a carbon-footprint allowance for their basic needs, and are then taxed for extra carbon emissions. “The world’s richest 1% cause double the CO emissions of the poorest 50%. This isn’t fair,” Van Der Cam says. Young people are very aware of the climate crisis and know a lot about climate change, he adds. “If every young person today could vote, there would be more ambitious national contribution plans,” he says.

We finally arrive at Glasgow Central Station. All 500 or so passengers spill out of the train. The bottleneck effect as people head to the exit buys time for a quasi-march: some of the activists are carrying signs with anti-pollution slogans. Local and international climate-action groups have turned up to welcome the arrivals.

I come across climate activist Janet Kabue from Nairobi, who is holding up a banner for an organization called Sustaining All Life. She tells me that she hopes to see people from as many places as possible converging on Glasgow. “Whatever is happening, people need to be able to be the ones telling their stories,” Kabue says. “If I want to hear about Kenya, I want to hear about it from a Kenyan.” I ask her if she’s happy to see so many young people getting off the train. “Yes — my day is made!” she laughs.

I prepare to head out into the city, where the COP26 negotiations are about to get under way. The chant “What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!” echoes through the station. A piper in a kilt plays ‘Scotland the Brave’.

Source: Nature.com

Powered by NewsAPI.org