Slater Jewell-Kemker

Slater Jewell-Kemker

Slater is at COP21 to finish a documentary she started at COP17 in Copenhagen about the global youth movement. She expains how after the failure and despair of Copenhagen there began a new conversation with young people and the environmental movement about the need to embrace our humanity and interconnectedness and bring it back into the conference negotiating space. Slater comments on how COP21 is being hosted in an airport hangar, how it is a dehumanising and dead space with no green spaces or signs of the life and vitality of the planet that is being fought for. She tells us how as negotiators these conferences become part of their annual routine and a complacent pattern. Slater has conflicted feelings about the process of COP21 highlighting that this is the only global platform where world leaders come together to talk about climate change, however this has happened all her life with no results. Finally, Slater emphasises the need to take action now as we are running out of time. She does not want to be the generation that let down climate vulnerable communities just for a convenient lifestyle.