HUNDREDS OF U.S. STUDENTS TAKE GLOBAL WARMING NEGOTIATIONS BY STORM 
Students deliver declaration to call on U.S. delegation to act now

20 November 2000

 The Hague, Netherlands - Today, more than two hundred American college students arrived at the United Nations international global warming negotiations in The Netherlands and immediately handed over a declaration to the U.S. negotiators calling on the U.S. "…to rise to the challenge of curbing global warming now." 

The students, from more than 120 colleges and forty-four states, are accredited UN observers to the negotiations and will be present through its completion. They kicked off their week on Saturday by meeting with David Sandalow, a senior official in the U.S. delegation, to discuss the U.S negotiating positions. Students left the meeting disillusioned at hearing that the U.S. continues to press for a wide range of loopholes that would allow them to avoid real pollution reductions and could allow industry to pollute even more. 

"It concerns me to know the U.S. negotiators are not representing the views of a majority of Americans, but instead those of the big polluters," said Matt McLaughlin, a senior at Pennsylvania State University majoring in History. "We are the future leaders of our country, and are in The Hague to ensure our country will have a future."

The student delegation represents a broad range of disciplines from biology, environmental engineering, and physics to political science, international relations and economics and includes undergraduates, graduate students, PhD candidates law students and even one high school senior. 

"I am here as a representative of the students and young people across the United States who have the most to gain or lose in these negotiations," said Grady Jackson, a second-year law student at Stanford University. "The official U.S. positions on global warming are an embarrassment to the great tradition of American leadership on the world stage," Jackson continued.

The student delegation is motivated by the knowledge that The Hague negotiations are the make-or-break moment for the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 international agreement which set binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Without a strong, effective treaty, scientists predict the impacts of global warming will continue unabated.

"We all know that global warming is happening now. The crucial decisions are being taken here, right now, " said Michelle Lupei, a senior at the University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign. "It is an honor to be a part of the process and with luck, and a little perseverance, part of the solution. We hope that our presence will lend weight to the urgency of taking action now," she said.