Have you ever heard about Felix Finkbeiner? Chances are you have, as this 12 year old boy, together with his friends, is shaking up global climate politics. Stop talking, start planting is the slogan under which children from all around the world learn about climate change and what they can do against it. "We children don't understand why the adults wouldn't make sure that our future is as bright as theirs", Felix said in a recent TV interview with German ZDF. Asked about climate skepticism his answer is just as convincing: "If we follow the scientists and fight against the causes of climate change now then chances are that, if those scientists prove wrong in 40 years time, we won't have done too much wrong. However, if we follow the climate skeptics, then we'll have huge problems should they prove wrong in 40 years time".

Felix's goal to plant one million trees in each country of the world is going on well and has already been beaten in Germany, where a congregation of 45 environmental ministers joined him last month to plant the 1.000.000th tree and to congratulate those extraordinary kids for their achievements. Nevertheless, the young friends know that planting trees won't solve the climate issue. To add authority to their call, their Plant-for-the-Planet Foundation wrote letters to 160 government leaders around the world, delivered by kids to the respective embassies in Berlin. Among the recipients are Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao and US president Barak Obama, who will have been rubbing their eyes after reading the following:

Do you have plans to save our future?

Dear President Obama,

After the shocking results of Copenhagen we children want to avoid the same to happen in Cancún. Therefore we children made a global consultation, stating how we would solve the problems if we were the Heads of Governments. We identified a three point program:

1. We have to bring carbon into the museum and go down to zero CO2-emission until 2050

2. We have a limited amount of carbon dioxide left that we can exhaust within the next 40 years. This is 600 billion tons of CO2. We have to accept this, if we don't want to wreck our future and go over the 2° C as you promised. 600 divided by 40 is 15 billion tons of CO2 per year. Now we have to decide how we will distribute this among the worlds population. For us children there is only one answer. Everybody gets the same and that would be 1.5 tons CO2 per person per year. We call this Climate Justice. Who wants more, pays. With Climate Justice we can also bring poverty into the museum.

3. Let's plant 500 billion trees! These trees will absorb additional 5 billion tons of CO2 every year. 500 billion trees sounds like a huge amount, but it is possible as the Chinese planted 2.7 billion trees as contribution to the UNEP-Billion Tree Campaign in 2009. If everybody plants as many trees as he or she is old in years, then we will also reach the 500 billion trees.

Read the whole letter

How it all started

The initiative Plant-for-the-Planet was founded in 2007 and originated from a school report about the climate-crisis held by Felix Finkbeiner, who at this time was nine years old. In the framework of his research he learned about the female Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai who planted 30 million trees over 30 years. Felix created a vision at the end of his presentation: children in each country of the world could plant a million trees within their country.

At the initiative of his
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teacher and school principal Felix also held his presentation at other schools. Only a couple of weeks later children planted the first tree and Klaus Töpfer, the former German secretary of the environment and former UNEP-chairman (Unite Nations Environment Programme), becomes the patron of this initiative.

Half a year later, Felix promised the current UNEP chairman that children in each country of the world are going to plant one million trees in their country. A single tree takes 10 kg of CO2 out of the air each year and during his lifetime a total of about 3 t of CO2 .

Book: „Tree by Tree – Now we Children Save the World”

In this book, published on May 3rd 2010 by oekom in German, Felix and his friends show, how they successfully stand up for a worth living future for their and the following generations on this planet. The English pdf-version is available on the website.

Their credo: "Why don´t we finally do what the climate scientist keep telling us? If we find out in 40 years from now that it turned out to be less terrible, we have done nothing wrong. But if we do not act now and we will find out by the age of 50 that the climate change skeptics were wrong it will be too late”.

More info at http://plant-for-the-planet.org/

By Florian

Journalist and blogger on sustainability, csr and climate change

http://blog.floriankaefer.com

Picture credit: Plant-for-the-Planet