"The Road to Copenhagen" - A roadtrip for a better environment
The Road to Copenhagen was a trip by joung people on electric scooters in three five-day stages between the Dutch city of Den Bosch and the Danish capital Copenhagen. The participants, approximately 100 per stage, attended lectures and workshops given by scientists, politicians, energy experts, environmentalists and specialists from the automotive sector. They also visited innovative projects and held discussions about climate objectives, a more sustainable world and about practical solutions that will make our lives more pleasant and more sustainable.
The scooter drivers also stopped at German RWE sites in Essen and Lingen. Using the knowledge and experience gained whilst “on the road”, the drivers, aged between 18 and 25, worked on a declaration on e-mobility which they handed over to the Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer and the German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen in Copenhagen on 15 December. They also handed it to RWE’s CEO Juergen Grossmann.
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The manifesto contains 12 concrete recommendations to ensure that future mobility will be “clean, affordable and cool”. In the declaration, the young people call on the negotiators at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to ensure that, amongst other things, sustainable mobility is included as a subject in schools and that driving lessons are offered in electric cars. They also state that sustainable mobility can be encouraged through suitable tax measures, “cool” vehicles and uniform charging systems.
“On the one hand, the ‘Road to Copenhagen’ made it clear to me how great the need for change is and, at the same time, this trip has inspired me to make that change happen”, said Peter Hardy, one of the participants and writers of the declaration.
Anne Schoemaker, another participant: “On the one hand, the past two weeks seemed like two years, but on the other hand it seems to have only lasted for two days. When I consider that we are now in Copenhagen, it seems like only yesterday that we were still in Den Bosch. But if I think about how often I felt really cold, how much I have learned and how many fantastic people I have met, it seems like two years. However long it lasted, it was fantastic!”
Although the “road trip” to Copenhagen has come to an end, this does not mean an end to the “Road to Copenhagen”, because, as the participants state in the declaration: “It’s not about how we got to Copenhagen, but where we will go from there.”
The full manifesto and more details around the trip can be found at:
Watch the following video and the see the handover of the declaration:
Video: The Road to Copenhagen - a visit to Cop 15
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