The Next Eco-Warriors Read Free Page A

step-by-steps. Activism is a deeply personal journey and cannot be condensed into something so simplistic. Instead, many before me and many after me will note that the x factor for social change is storytelling. Stories are what have shaped our world and continue to shape it, whether through books, movies, or folktelling. And in continuing this effort of storytelling, this book provides just that: Stories from the next eco-warriors. Stories that attempt to reclaim hope in a world that seems to have very little.
    These are the stories of the next eco-warriors. Read it, and know that this is your revolution too.

    —EMILY HUNTER

EMILY HUNTER
    Twenty-sixCanadaMedia Frontliner

    PHOTO BY VANESA LARKEY

Not the End, Just the Beginning!
    Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have .
    — MARGARET MEAD
    THE CLOCK HAD JUST STRUCK MIDNIGHT. I stood in an empty warehouse. The lights were flickering, telling me to leave. A cleaning crew began sweeping up around me, from the mess of thousands of people before. Chairs and tables were being packed in. And a winter's breeze flew in, chilling my skin.
    It was over.
    I could hardly believe it. I couldn't accept the end. My body began trembling, and my heart ached. A friend tried showing me the exit door, but I didn't want to leave. I couldn't mentally grapple with it all. I kept looking up at a TV screen showcasing an empty room that held the negotiations. Hoping someone would come up to the podium and tell me the happy ending of this story.
    But the happy ending wasn't coming.
    It was a cold winter's night in 2009, the last day of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, an event that had been pitted as our “best and last chance” in the battle against climate change. Nearly two hundred heads of state had converged to finally tackle our impending thermageddon , with the United States leading the march.
    There were forty-six thousand delegates from around the world participating in the summit to influence the leaders' decision, thousands more on the streets to protest if they made the wrong decision. Maybe even more important, the world was watching. All eyes were on Copenhagen and how it would unfold our climate's future. This was the it moment ... and we lost it.
    As I stood there in an activist convergence house on that final hour, I was grasping for hope. Hope that what became secret negotiations of a few individuals deciding the fate of the planet would spark something more than pure failure. But with silence in the room, I was beginning to know better. Hope was nothing more than a distant dream.

    _________

    THINKING BACK TO MY FATHER, I felt as if I had failed him most of all. Five years earlier, I was in a hospital, staring death in the face—my dad's face. He was sweating bullets, just lying there, not moving an inch in the hospital bed. I couldn't seem to wet the cloth and wipe his forehead fast enough. These were the last moments I had with him. He was dying from a terminal cancer.
    I had so much that I wanted to ask him before he left us. I wanted to carry on his eco-crusade into the next generation, but I needed to know how. Yet he couldn't say a word to me; he was unconscious and slipping by the second. I kept asking myself: Why him? Why now?
    His name was Robert Hunter, and he was nothing short of a visionary and a leader. As a cofounder and the first president of Greenpeace, he was an unsung hero who was part of a band of individuals that began the modern-day environmental movement in the 1970s.
    But to me, he was Dad. I used to skip school to hang around him in his cabin as he typed away, writing his books and articles outdoors. We would chat, with our heads lying on the grass, eyes wide open and staring at the sky, contemplating the cosmos, the meaning of life, and just how damn fucking lucky we were to be on this beautiful blue planet. He was my teacher, my guru, my best friend. And it seemed as if he was going away now