Before yesterday’s vote by the General Assembly of the United Nations, the message from Canadian government officials was one of cautious optimism. There might be tense moments and flustered diplomats, but Canada had not lost a vote for a Security Council seat in 60 years.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper made two big speeches to the UN at the end of September, and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon sacrificed his Thanksgiving weekend to stay in New York and bat his eyelashes at other delegates. Besides, we were competing against Germany and Portugal for the two spots available for our region, and, with France and the UK already holding permanent seats on the Security Council, no way the international community would give Europe two more seats. Right?

But it did. Very embarrassing. Our government’s first response, naturally, was to blame Michael Ignatieff. He’d said some mean things about how we maybe didn’t deserve to sit on the Security Council. The other countries must have seen our lack of unity and lost faith in us. Perhaps. Except that CBC’s The National reported last night that most of the foreign delegates it spoke to at the conference didn’t know who Ignatieff was.

There are, of course, many possible explanations. Perhaps the General Assembly remembered that, before this recent show of affection, the PM’s last significant appearance at the UN had been a courtesy call after he was elected in 2006. Perhaps some representatives from Africa were concerned that last year Canada cut eight African countries from its list of priority aid recipients. Perhaps yesterday’s announcement of efforts to strengthen trade with Israel reminded other countries of our no-questions-asked friendship with the right wing of Israeli politics. Perhaps it was the ongoing skirmish with the United Arab Emirates over our unwillingness to exchange extra airline routes for an almost-secret military base.

Or maybe we failed to adequately counter-act the “rotten lying bastards” phenomenon, in which up to a third of the countries which promise to vote for you are really just too shy to say ‘no.’ In the frustratingly polite world of international diplomatic disagreements, all we can be sure of is that we’re not as popular as we thought we were.

Oxfam Polar Bear demonstrates at the 2009 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Photo courtesy of Oxfam International, Flickcreativecommons.

Negotiators are currently engaged in talks in Germany to discuss the agenda for the year-end environmental summit in Mexico. The Mexico meeting is intended to broker a new international agreement to replace the soon-to-be expired (but long since overshadowed) Kyoto Protocols.

Sounds promising; but before we get too ahead of ourselves, let’s try and understand what exactly is going on here: international decision makers are spending their time in meetings to discuss the agenda for upcoming meetings to replace an agreement that was the celebrated result of past meetings but has largely been ignored since. All the while, citizens of the world wait patiently like the oblivious frog in the slowly blowing pot of water as climate change ravages whole countries.

While UN delegates at the Bonn conference have taken off their jackets and ties in a fatuous stance against the abstract concept of heat, much of the rest of the world is being forced into the realization that climate change is not about weather getting warmer—it’s about the volatility and unpredictability of weather, and the storms, floods, droughts, and other natural disasters that come with that.

Leaving world leaders to their meetings, lets check in with the real world: Russia is literally burning as wildfires have sprung up across the tinder-dry land already ravaged by a record-setting heatwave and smog choking the capital. China and India-controlled Kashmir are still dealing with the aftermath of massive floods and mudslides following heavy rains that overflowed the Bailong River, leaving hundreds dead and chasing thousands from their homes. The Pakistani floods have affected more individuals than the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, 2005 Kashmiri earthquake and the recent earthquake in Haiti combined—the UN estimates that nearly 14 million people will be affected by the country’s worst flooding in 80 years. Seven million people in Niger face starvation as droughts have ravaged crops in the Sahel region of Africa, leaving an estimated 10 million people across the region with no food. A sheet of ice 260 square kilometers—more than four times the size of Manhattan—broke off the Petermann Glacier recently, making it the largest Arctic iceberg to split since 1962.

And yet while all of this is going on, Globe and Mail’s Neil Reynolds has the audacity to answer the cries for a solution to climate change with a single word, emblematic of the hubris that led us blindly into this crisis in the first place: “adapt.”  Sure! Humans undoubtedly can adapt to a 0.6 degree increase in our average temperature (especially those of us in the West, sitting comfortably in front of our air conditioners). But what of the environmental systems directly affected by our actions (the crisis in Russia, if nothing else, shows us exactly how sensitive the global food system can be to an increase of even a few degrees as drought, heat waves, and wildfires have created a perfect storm that’s decimated Russia’s wheat crops). Oceans, glaciers, forest and agricultural cycles are all intricately affected by the most minute changes in weather patterns, and while we may easily be able to adapt to the changing weather our pollution has created, the basic systems that sustain our life may not.

To recap, then: climate change talks in Bonn, aimed at establishing a working platform for the upcoming summit in Cancun, have back-slid as some leaders are walking away from even the most modest commitments they made in Copenhagen. China and the U.S. have clashed in the meetings, and rich countries have lined up against developing nations in a refusal to compromise on emission-reduction targets. This tit-for-tat maneuvering is endemic at the senior negotiating level, and threatens to derail the entire endeavour. All the while, the world burns.

The pot of water has been gradually getting hotter around us for some time.  While Reynolds and his kind turn up their air-conditioning and UN delegates loosen their ties and talk in circles, we’re begining to feel the heat.

Millions around the world live without access to clean drinking water that plays a role in a host of easily preventable diseases. Photo courtesy: from a second story)Mike Bailey-Gates, FlickCreativeCommons.

UPDATE: Wednesday, July 28, 12:14 — The Council of Canadians reports that the United Nations general assembly has voted in favour of the resolution to recognize water and sanitation as basic human rights. The still-unofficial vote count was 124 votes in favour, zero votes against, and 42 abstentions. We’ll update with the official vote when it’s known. It is our presumption, and not reported fact, that Canada abstained, given its obstructionism on this issue to this point; but we’re willing (and hoping!) to be surprised. We will update with further details when we know officially.

UPDATE: 12:32 — Council of Canadians updated their report (viewable here) confirming that Canada did abstain on the vote.

Human rights: what are they? It should be a relatively straightforward question, but posed to any group of people, it’s bound to elicit a huge range of responses. To date the most successful attempt to articulate a workable standard is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on December 10, 1948, by the United Nations and its constituent countries.

The document consists of 30 articles outlining our most basic and universal human rights, from all individuals’ inherent equality before the law (article 1) to the right to education (article 26) to the right to seek asylum from persecution (article 14).  Despite having the distinction of being the most widely translated document in the world—available in over 375 languages and dialects—it is only part of an ongoing struggle to entrench dignity as the cornerstone for all human interactions. Even a casual perusal of the days headlines reveals that this struggle is far from realized.

Today, the United Nations General Assembly will consider adding a 31st article to the Declaration: the human right to “available, safe, acceptable, accessible, and affordable water and sanitation.”  The political and environmental landscape of our day is far different then the postwar horror that birthed the original human rights declaration in 1948. Few then predicted a future when water would become a contested issue. But access to water now presents us with the most pressing human rights concern.

Article 25 of the Declaration reads:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

All human rights are interrelated, interdependent and indivisible; in this regard, guaranteeing a standard of living and health based on the availability of food, clothing, housing and medical care while making no provision for water calls into question the entire project.  What level of well-being can possibly be achieved when 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe water; what standard of living is provided for when 2.6 billion people in the world do not have access to basic sanitation; and what principle are we using to measure health when 1.4 million children die every year from preventable diarrhea caused by contaminated water and poor sanitation.

When we consider the tragic realities of those 3 billion people who do not have access to running water within a kilometre of their homes, the obvious oversight of water rights becomes startlingly clear; its absence is glaring.

Today’s UN vote is the culmination of several years of lobbying by international and community groups advocating for water justice.  These groups demand that the right to water, like the right to food and shelter, be protected by a binding UN convention guaranteeing that no individual can be denied water because of an inability to pay.

And yet, despite the obvious gravity of the situation, a small bloc of nations—with Canada (surprise, surprise) at the helm—have worked to curb even the most modest recognition of the right to water while they have worked behind the scene to quash any UN proposal. At the World Water Forum at the Hague in 2000, in Kyoto in 2003 and in Mexico City in 2006, Canada refused to recognize water as a human right.  Canada was the only country to vote against a 2002 UN resolution on the human right to water (baldly stating: “Canada does not accept that there is a right to drinking water and sanitation.”) and again in 2008, Canada played a pivotal role blocking the motion by Spain and Germany to officially recognize water as a human right at the UN Human Rights Council.

Our government (under both Liberal and Conservative leaderships) has offered little in the way of explanation for their stance on water rights.  Those opposing the concept would have us believe that, if passed, it would see Canadian lakes drained and Canadian water shipped off to hotel fountains and golf courses in water-parched Las Vegas and other U.S. states.

This is simply not the case, and our government—and anyone familiar with UN rights conventions—knows it.  Rights conventions oblige each country to uphold and enshrine the right within their borders and for their population and to report these steps to the UN (Canada, for example, despite having signed the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is under no obligation to provide Americans with the right to own property or the right to peacefully assemble. We would likewise be under no obligation to provide Americans with the right to water).

The reality is that NAFTA and the proposed EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement threaten Canadian water far more then the recognition (I’d say elevation but let’s be honest: for the majority of the world, the right to water is a no-brainer; it’s just us in Canada that are the holdouts) of water as an inalienable right. While NAFTA and the EU-Canada CETA provide windows for far greater privatization of our water, enshrining water as a human right would serve to temper corporate hegemonic control of our most basic necessity. And it would transform water from a resource to be exploited for profit, to a human right to be safeguarded for the public good. It would also provide legal recourse against those who would pollute our waters—tar sands, I’m looking at you. You can’t, after all, turn massive amounts of a human right into toxic tailing ponds that pollute groundwater and the Athabasca River.

Canada’s backward stance on water rights around the globe should, unfortunately, surprise no one; we have only to look in our own backyard and the availability of clean water in many indigenous communities across the country to see how little our government—the current Conservatives as well as the Liberals before them—values water access. The Ontario community of Kaschechewan gained national attention in 2005 when 1,000 of its residents were forced to evacuate because of poor water quality and unsanitary conditions. Kaschechewan, while an extreme example, is the rule and not the exception: over 80 First Nations communities are currently under “boil water advisories” (meaning they can’t drink their tap water), and 21 communities are deemed to be at high risk for contamination.

The UN vote has the potential to be at once both historic and self-congratulatory: if it passes today, it will see water enshrined alongside food, shelter and safety as an undeniable basic human right.  But, as we have seen with other human rights, there is a huge gap between the words written in the convention and the actions of our government.  At the risk of repeating myself from earlier posts: we are no longer “Canada the good.” We do, however, have the opportunity to lead this time—by ensuring that the resolution will pass, and by acting quickly to realize its goals, both at home and abroad.

Canada began a coordinated public relations program this week, with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty speaking in New Delhi and Mumbai, Trade Minister Peter Van Loan in Washington, Treasury Board President Stockwell Day in Shanghai and Industry Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon addressing the home crowd in Ottawa.  This is all part of Prime Minister Harper’s ramped up campaign against a global levy that would see a tiny tax—averaging 0.05 percent—applied to all financial market transactions, including those by banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions.  The tax, which would not apply to ordinary customer transactions, could simultaneously raise money from one of the wealthiest sectors of society—some analysts estimate the revenue could be $650 billion annually—while reducing the risk of another economic collapse.

Flaherty has been characterizing the levy as an unfair punishment of the banking industries in countries that were not responsible for the financial crisis: governments in Asia, like ours here in Canada, did not have to bail out their banks, and this public relations campaign is engaging those nations in search of allies against the tax leading up to the G8/G20 summit in Toronto in June.

The goal of the Robin Hood tax is to ensure that taxpayers are not responsible for the price tag of future bailouts.  Endorsed by the IMF, the U.K., France, Germany and other European nations with lukewarm support from the United States, the Robin Hood tax would essentially amass a fund to hedge future economic crisis.  Canada has offered a counter-proposal: forcing banks to raise “embeded contingent capital,” shifting the burden of future bailouts from the taxpayers to the shareholders. Canada’s proposal, in the words of a Globe and Mail op-ed piece supporting Flaherty’s initiative, depends upon “a reform that builds in market discipline”—because we all know how disciplined the banking sector has shown itself to be.

When Harper prorogued parliament in the closing days of 2009, Canadians took to the streets. Creative Commons photo by Fifth Business.

Britain’s five days of post-election limbo are over as David Cameron, Conservative Party leader and now Prime Minister, announced Britain’s first peacetime coalition government since the 1930s.  Ushering in an era of cross-bench unity, Cameron’s Conservatives will join forces with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democratic Party.  Cameron has appointed six Liberal Democrats to the cabinet, including Clegg as his Deputy Prime Minister.  In a press conference held today, Cameron said: “We are not just announcing a new government and new ministers. We are announcing a new politics. A new politics where the national interest is more important than party interest, where co-operation wins out over confrontation, where compromise, give and take, reasonable, civilized, grown-up behaviour is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength.”  Clegg added, “Until today, we have been rivals: now we are colleagues. That says a lot about the scale of the new politics which is now beginning to unfold.”

If reading this makes you wonder, as I did, what it would take to see a similar spirit of cooperation sweep Canada’s house of commons, it’s for a good reason. Canadian minority governments—i.e., the last three consecutive ones—are strangely reluctant to form coalitions. Instead of creating solid coalition governments in which the parties are forced to negotiate—in Cameron’s words, creating “a shared agenda and a shared resolve”—Canadian parties tend only to reach across the aisle on a case-by-case basis, leading to constant brinksmanship and partisan sniping.

The exception, of course, came just six weeks after the 2008 elections when an attempted coalition between Liberals and New Democrats, with support from the Bloc Quebecois, would have ousted Stephen Harper’s conservative minority government from power, creating a majority coalition on the Hill. Harper, in response, prorogued parliament to allow the Liberal Party to consume itself with infighting and ultimately scuttle the coalition.

While Canadian politics has been defined by six years of minority government—six years during which the NDP has not meaningfully advanced the cause of proportional representation, by the way—British politicians have realized the power of broad support, and look set to overhaul their electoral system, too. It’s enough to give a Canadian a serious case of coalition envy.

Members of the Canadian Youth Delegation to the Copenhagen Climate Summit protest Canada's lacklustre showing at the conference. CC-Licensed photo courtesy CYD.

Nearing mid-December, I arise to Toronto’s first snowfall—though to my Christmasy disappointment, an unimpressive slop of wet snow and rain greeted the city’s drivers and transit riders with delays and headaches. The symptoms are similar for citizens rallying in Copenhagen this week, though for different reasons. An annual Christmas letter from relatives proved that November can now bring excellent golfing in Southern Ontario. The pudding comes from the World Meteorological Organization, that despite protestation from the deniers like those at the Munk Debate last week, the last decade will likely be the warmest one on record across the globe.

Checking in on the state of Denmark, where a recent leak of a new draft proposal has caused an international stir, I’ve asked two young veterans of international climate activism to help give us a better picture from the thick of it—their voices may or may not come through in commercial media over the next few days).

“The main point is that there’s a lack of trust now lingering over the hosting government [due to the leak],” said Zoë Caron, who is doing policy work at the negotiations with the Climate Action Network International.

“We should be able to move on just fine. We need to support the chair of the Council of Parties [the Kyoto agreement’s negotiating chair – this year being Denmark] in moving forward under the transparent UN process.”

According to Caron, everything is still on the table, with hope and opportunities abound. The world’s environment ministers will be meeting early next week.

Side negotiations seem to be occurring all over the place, and the citizen movement is reacting with urgency when they see something bubble up showing positive or negative momentum. A proposal by the South Pacific islands nation of Tuvalu for deeper cuts is being supported by other small nations and gained an immediate and loud response from activists which was posted to Youtube.

“We need to keep the message that Heads of State are coming here to work out issues, not deliver fluffy speeches, said Caron.

“France is saying they’ll reach their targets entirely domestically, which is great.”

Leaders in Europe’s youth movement are asking citizens to call their national leaders as they meet over the next two days. After watching their call for a deep cut, Canadian youth could support them by writing to ask for their leadership, by bypassing Canada’s weakness at the talks.

Another Canadian graduate of several annual Council of the Parties meetings, Aiden Abram is working as we speak in Copenhagen to mentor other youth in achieving their goals for a fair, ambitious and binding treaty. Despite the time difference, Facebook suggests that whenever you might be reading this, chances are he’s probably still working, as sleep doesn’t seem to be much of an option at the moment.

When I asked him what hope there is to be seen at the moment, Abram didn’t care for the premise.

“Hope is dead,” he said.

“It’s not about hope. Hope creates helplessness – we have the ability to change this process, this system.”

There are now young people from over 100 countries participating at the conference building capacity, developing skills and connecting to each other for work that will continue well past the conference according to Abram.

“That’s what it’s about, as this process will never deliver what we need,” he said.

In asking what Canadians back home should be doing to support their work – Caron and Abram were in sync: call your MP, your Premier, your Prime Minister; write a letter to the editor; raise your voice.

“Ask Stephen Harper that he prepare sufficiently to go to Copenhagen to raise Canada’s targets and commit to making reductions domestically,” said Caron.

The Canadian word on the Danish street says that despite the headaches, progress will come with hard work. There is a lot of good noise coming from the conference: the more domestic noise and the more international pressure, the greater the likelihood that Canada could display a greater willingness to either participate productively, or at least step aside.

And if the words and history of these two Canadian climate savers prove true, nobody’s going away anytime soon. This movement is in it for the long haul, because it needs to be.

Follow Zoe Caron on twitter at http://twitter.com/zoecaron

Follow folks tweeting on the conference (1,500 new tweets since I started writing this article) at http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23cop15

Follow the Canadian Youth Delegation on their blog at http://cydcopenhagen.org/

A member of an environmentalist group pretends to be dead during a protest demanding a real climate deal during the first day of United Nations Climate Change Conference on December 7, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. (Photo by Miguel Villagran/Getty Images)

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK — The negotiations have begun over our climate future here in Copenhagen. Global leaders may decide in the next two weeks the most important choice to be made in our lifetime—even, arguably, in the history of the human race: will we change course?

“This is an extremely important moment in history,” said May Boeve from 350.org. For the first time in history all the major world leaders are trying to tackle the issue of climate change. Each of them is offering targets to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions and planning to finance developing nations who will be the most impacted.

Even more importantly in some ways, never before in history has the world paid so much attention to our climate crisis. Here in Copenhagen, thousands have descended on the Danish capital this week to attempt to make change from inside the conference halls—and outside on the streets.

Yet with so many people affected by the decisions made here—all of us in fact—why is it that so few get a say? Despite it being everyone’s issue (nearly seven billion of us) it is essentially eight men and a woman (the G8 and China) who get to deicide. That seems rather risky, especially when it’s questionable whether they truly have our best interests at heart.

There are so many that are voiceless here in the conference and so many that these decisions affect beyond the G8 and China. Like the Maldives, which is losing land to sea level rises every year: at the current rate, the country is in serious danger of disappearing altogether. The Maldives’ President, Mohammad Nasheed, said himself this week that the decision in Copenhagen will either be heroism or suicide: “The choice is that stark.”

In Copenhagen myself, there is an uneasy feeling of powerlessness in the most terrifying and important challenge we face. As a young person, it is my future that is being decided here and now, and I feel muted, despite all my best efforts at trying to make my voice heard.

The reason I care is because by the time I am in my 60s, in the year 2050, I will be living in a vastly reshaped world due to our lack of response to climate change. If nothing happens in Copenhagen, it will be a new geo-political world I will be living in with 150 million climate refugees. The arctic sea ice at the North Pole and much of Greenland will be gone. And we will be well on our way to passing the crucial 2ºC warming threshold.

Even if the deal does happen during the next two weeks, the world will still never be the same as we know it, as a deal in Copenhagen doesn’t mean success. The deal that is likely amounts to a suicide pact for many countries, since the targets aren’t ambitious enough and the funding for mitigation is well below what we need. The U.S. is only offering a 3 percent reduction by 2020 relative to 1990 levels, when scientists now argue that it should be well over 40 percent. The Obama administration said last week that nations will likely offer US$10 billion for a climate aid fund. Meanwhile, the World Bank (hardly a radical source of information), says that Industralized nations need to offer US$75 to US$100 billion annually.

So is this summit Hopenhagen or Flopenhagen? I’m not sure if I see much hope other than greeenwashed hope here on the conference grounds. But I do see hope from the movement that is trying despertly to make the voiceless—young people, Indigenous people, the Global South—heard.

For example, the students that organized the 350 event last October are here in big numbers, working on the inside to get the voiceless heard and holding a global vigil for survival that all of us can take part of. KlimaForum09, the Danish anti-conference, is writing an alternative climate declaration, made by the people, to let the public be heard. They’ve called the COP15 negotiations a “fraud” and are planning civil disobedience actions in the city and around the world to let their displeasure be known.

This deal may be settled in two weeks time, but the battle for a choice that needs to be all of ours is just beginning.

Emily Hunter is an environmental journalist and This Magazine’s resident eco-blogger. She is currently working on a book about young environmental activism, The Next Eco-Warriors, and is the eco-correspondent to MTV News Canada.

Stephen Harper's grim, digitally aged face stares down at travellers passing through the Copenhagen airport. Greenpeace is pressuring world leaders to take decisive action at the Copenhagen climate summit Dec 7–18.

Greenpeace predicts world leaders will be making a big apology in 11 years if they don’t step up at the Copenhagen climate summit next week.

A new line of giant ads in the Copenhagen airport features Harper, Obama, and 6 other serious looking, digitally aged world leaders saying, “I’m sorry. We could have stopped catastrophic climate change… we didn’t.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s billboard appears next to an advertisement informing travellers of the efforts the airport has taken to reduce their CO2 production. At least someone’s trying.

The project is a partnership between Greenpeace and tcktcktck.org, a hub for mobilizing individuals and groups to urge world leaders for a binding agreement to take bold action on climate change.

“If leaders like Obama, Sarkozy, Merkel and Brown don’t deliver at this summit their legacy will be mass starvation, mass migration and mass famine. If that happens sorry might be the hardest word, but it won’t be enough,”

“Now is the time to act on climate [change] in order to save our future. Not next year – and not the year after. If we want to have any chance of stopping climate chaos, global emissions must peak by 2015.”

Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International and Chairman of tcktcktck.org.

Another project allied with tcktcktck.org is Love Letters to the Future. The site asks people around the world to post letters, tweets, pictures, or videos with their thoughts for the people of 2109. The love letters voted into the top 100 will be put in a time capsule in Copenhagen on December 13, to be opened in 100 years.

The messages apologize for environmental destruction, promise to do more, and share images and descriptions of snow, trees, slow loris, and blue skies – just in case the time capsule out lives them. A scary thought indeed.

As our youth delegates head off to Europe, I wish to support them. Knowing Stephen Harper’s government has not changed its position as of yet, I share a call. I’ve written an open letter to world leaders and climate negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Please borrow this letter or write your own to other world leaders. Google and post their addresses—share, tweet and email away.

An Open Letter to the Copenhagen delegates:

Dear Sir or Madam,

I write you as a young citizen of Canada. It is a country which has contributed significantly towards a global view of human rights, peace and multiculturalism. Canadian governments of the past have led on environmental matters such as acid rain and ozone depletion. We have achieved much as a nation of modest population.

Today we head into one of the defining events of human civilization. You will choose actions which will mean the betterment of society, or which may imperil the lives of hundreds of millions globally. Your commitments will be important, and this time must be followed up by strong action to transform the sectors of energy, industry, transportation and agriculture, and be beneficial and just to the world’s marginalized citizens. Your nations have prepared for these meetings since last December at various conferences, and for many years prior. It is time for a strong, binding, global deal on climate.

You are aware of the position of the Government of Canada. I am writing to tell you that this position does not reflect my own. Leaders in nations including the United States, France, Maldives, China and Nigeria have spoken eloquently about the need for swift and strong action. Canada’s leadership does nothing of the sort.

Please: do not let my government slow you down.

Last year other nations made Canada withdraw its pressure to weaken deals. This year, leaders of the world’s developing countries walked out on Canada when our negotiators attempted to change the rules of the game.

Remain strong and forthright in your goals. My government advocates short-term profits over long-term sustainability. It was elected in the lowest voter turnout of any election since Canada’s confederation in 1867, with 22% of the voting population. Here we have no coalition government. This vote gave the Conservatives a majority. And these are not Angela Merkel’s conservatives.

As a young person, I don’t claim to have a stronger say than any other citizen in the selection of our government. But I do have a greater stake in our future. To show you what my generation and those younger than me are thinking, I show you a vote among over 500,000 students across Canada which gave the Conservative Party 25.6%, Green Party 23.8%, New Democratic Party 22.9% and Liberal Party 18.6% of the vote. All three opposition parties had, to varying degrees, commitments to act on climate change and discussed them widely.

I will be better represented in Copenhagen by the Canadian Youth Delegation than the Government of Canada. The Delegation will represent a cross-section of Canadian young people. I am glad they are there, and I ask you to listen to their views and the views of other youth delegations at least as strongly as you hear those of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

With faith in your better judgment,

Darcy Higgins

Toronto, Canada

• Year by which G8 countries pledged “universal access” for HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention, and care: 2010
• Estimated number of people, globally, currently receiving that care: 4,000,000
• Estimated number of people, globally, still waiting on that pledge: 5,000,000 *
• Percentage of Canada’s population that is Aboriginal: 4%
• Percentage of new Canadian HIV/AIDS patients who are Aboriginal: 10% *
  
• Estimated number of Canadians living with HIV/AIDS as of the end of 2008: 65,000
• Percentage increase in number of Canadians living with HIV/AIDS between 2005 and 2008: 14%
• Factor by which an Aboriginal Canadian was more at risk to contract HIV/AIDS in 2008, compared to the general population: 3.6x
• Estimated percentage of Canadian HIV-positive gay men who remain unaware of their infection: 19%
• Estimated percentage of Canadian HIV-positive heterosexuals who remain unaware of their infection (see comment below): 35% *
  
• Percentage of Catholics surveyed in Ireland, the U.S., and Mexico, respectively, who agreed that “the church’s position on condoms is wrong and should be changed”: 79%, 63%, 60% *
  
• Estimated amount spent on marketing costs to promote the (Product) RED campaign in its first year: US$100 million
• Amount that Ad Age reported was raised by the campaign for that year: US$18 million *
• Total amount (Product) RED reports it has raised to date, according to a July 2009 blog post: $130 million *
• Year in which HIV/AIDS infections peaked worldwide: 1996
• Global percentage decline in new HIV/AIDS infections in the last eight years: 17% *
• Estimated funds required to respond to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic in 2010: US$25.1 billion *
  
• Amount by which 2010 funding is currently estimated to fall short of that amount: US$11.3 billion *