Everything would be alright - How children can change the world

3rd Edition ISBN: 978-3-9811841-3-6 Cover design: Leagas Delaney, Hamburg Editing, typesetting, layout: Plant-for-the-Planet Lindemannstrasse 13, 82327 Tutzing, Germany Phone: +49 8808 9345, Fax: +49 8808 9346 www.plant-for-the-planet.org facebook.com/plantfortheplanet

How children can change the world.

A polemic paper against indifference.

In memory of Stéphane Hessel, resistance fighter, who, with his paper “Time for Outrage!” called upon us all to conserve our society so that we can be proud of it. He sadly passed away on 27th February 2013.

A request reached me at school from the Evangelical Academy of Tutzing, asking whether I would like to give a speech in six weeks. Spontaneously, I said yes. Whilst I only usually write down six or seven keywords for a speech, this time I collected my thoughts on paper every evening after, before or even instead of doing my homework. In this 45-minute speech, I wanted to address all the questions and thoughts that have concerned us children and young people for quite some time and which go far beyond planting trees, and for which it was never the right moment or there was never enough speaking time.

A few days later, the idea began to grow that I, as a 15-yearold, could continue the „Time for Outrage!“ essay-culture of the then 95-year-old Stéphane Hessel, and that the audience on 10th March 2013 should be able to take the booklet with them when leaving the Erlöserkirche (Church of the Redeemer) in Schwabing, Munich. Admittedly, it shortened my preparation time drastically; I nevertheless hope that the perspective of us children and young people on the challenges that lie before us are made clear.

If I have not referenced ideas from third parties in the text, whose books I have studied over the last few months and years, and whom I have also mentioned in the thank you section at the end, then that is not only due to lack of time and to enable better readability, but also my belief that knowledge is the only good that becomes more when we share it. We need to know everything to save our future. The first print-run of 10,000 copies were taken in just three weeks. Everything would be alright, if it carried on like this!

Felix Finkbeiner

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant an apple tree today.”

Martin Luther

That is probably the exact reason why more and more children, young people and adults from all over the world join us and plant trees. Trees are the only “machines” that bind the greenhouse gas CO2, which is responsible for the climate crisis.

Of course, we also want to achieve much more with this worldwide campaign of planting trees.

How do we, as children and young people, experience global challenges?

We, as people, know a lot, we are capable of more and more, but we also face extreme challenges. We young people are not only inheriting an unimaginable debt from the adults, but also, to express it visually, a Mount Everest of unsolved problems and challenges: 1. The growth of the world’s population continues to grow, and in a few years almost 50% more people than today will be living on this earth, who will all be seeking a resource-intensive standard of living equivalent to that of Europe or the USA today. This will, however, exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth many times over.

2. The since broken promise that was made around the time we were born in 2000, namely the implementation of the United Nations’ development goals, the so-called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), by 2015. Supposedly, there was no money.

3. The cost of the 2008 financial crisis and the bailout of the banks, who caused this crisis themselves, cost many times more than the MDGs. With just the money that the taxpayer gave for the bailout of a single bank, the Hypo Real Estate in Munich, the MDGs could have been financed worldwide for more than a year. Today, the bankers continue to play with financial transactions that take just a fraction of a second in a financial system that is still regulated inappropriately.

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We children and young people condense and evaluate these complex problems into two main problems, as shown in the study by Bertelsmann and Shell: 3/4 of all children and young people in Germany consider the climate crisis and global poverty to be humanity’s two greatest challenges. “Climate Justice“, therefore, summarises the demand of many children and young people worldwide.

1. The poverty crisis, with 30,000 people, mainly children, who die of starvation every day. Even though we officially abolished slavery over 200 years ago, today’s process of plundering is modern-day slavery, just more intelligently organised.

If I lived in Ghana and my mother was seriously ill, I would previously have gone to a voodoo priest. My mother would have survived or died. Today, I would know via the internet that an appendectomy for my mother would cost over $1,000, but our family has an annual income of less than $1,000. I would share these circumstances with half the people on our planet.

2. The climate crisis in which we take as much carbon (C) in the form of coal, crude oil or natural gas from the earth every day as the sun has taken a million days to store there. We then pump it out into the atmosphere as CO2.

For some adults 9/11 is the darkest day. 3,000 people were killed by this terrible act of terrorism. For this reason, we are still at war today. We ask ourselves, who fights for the 30,000 people who die of hunger every day?

12/11 is the darkest day for us children. For nearly two decades the adults have promised that the temperature would not rise by more than 2°C and they negotiated on the climate, most recently with a clear mandate to agree on a subsequent 8

contract for the Kyoto Protocol, which ended in late 2012. On 11th December 2011, they announced the results at the climate change conference in Durban, South Africa: in 2020 there will be a new agreement. In the years 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 there will be no agreement, and everyone can pump out as much greenhouse gas as they like. By 12/11, at the latest, the adults had broken their promise that the average temperature would not rise above 2°C. This two-degree-goal is, however, essential for survival. As the scientists explain to us, with an average temperature increase of 2.3°C or 2.4°C, an important threshold will be overstepped. Beyond this threshold the Greenland ice will completely melt. If the 2-3 kilometres -thick ice melts, the sea levels will rise by up to 7 metres. 40% of the world’s population lives on the coast.

Some of us children have campaigned at UN conferences for many years, as we have understood that we need a binding worldwide agreement to solve global problems. At the climate change conference in Cancún, Mexico in 2010, we were impressed by the island states that refused to support the twodegree-goal because their islands were already disappearing.

They demand that the maximum goal be 1.5°C. Anote Tong, the prime minister of Kiribati, explained to us children that he had concluded an agreement with Australia and New Zealand that every year 600 families may move there because he knows the Kiribati islands will soon be under water.

At our Plant-for-the-Planet Academies, we children learn an easy way to remember the relationship between CO2 emissions in tons-per-capita and the increase in temperature: so that the temperature does not rise above 2°C, every person in the world may only emit a maximum of 2 t CO2, and so that the temperature does not rise above 1.5°C, no more than 1.5 t CO2.

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Today we emit 6 t CO2 per person per year. No one knows what an increase in the average temperature of 5 or 6°C would mean, but we know that 2 km of ice lay over us when the average temperature was only 5°C lower than today.

On 7th December 2011, when the Canadian environment minister spoke at the plenum of the 17th climate change conference in Durban, six young Canadians stood up and turned round. On the back of their t-shirts it said: “Turn your back on Canada”. All six were expelled from the halls and the conference. Not even a week later, on 13th December 2011, the Canadian environment minister withdrew from the existing Kyoto agreement. The background: instead of reducing the CO2 emissions by 6% compared to 1990, Canada had emitted around 35% more CO2 and would have had to have paid a fine equivalent to $14 billion. In order to save money, Canada withdrew from the global agreement.

Why has today’s situation worsened further?

The poor suffer the most from climate change, and therefore the gap between the poor and the rich has increased. At the same time, national democracies are under the pressure of globalisation: as a result, social justice deteriorates too, and meanwhile, in a rich and formerly socially-just country like Germany, we speak openly of the precariat. A precarious situation exists where income and security are below certain standards.

What is more, many global challenges that lay before humankind develop not linearly but exponentially, as the image of the water lilies clearly shows: on a lake, the water lilies divide night after night, they double their numbers every night and progressively cover the surface of the water. At some point, the lake will be full 10

of water lilies. Ten nights before that date only a few scattered flowers can be seen from a distance, only one thousandth of the lake is covered. Five nights before that date it is around 3% of the surface; they still barely stand out. Suddenly the lake becomes rapidly overgrown. Two nights before the above date, 25% of the water’s surface is already covered. Whether it takes ten days or ten years until the surface of the lake is completely covered with water lilies – essential for the phenomenon of exponential growth is the fact that the second half of the lake was only covered during the last night.

Basically, this is nothing new, because the example of the water lily and the challenges facing humankind have been known for over 40 years, at the latest since the first report to the Club of Rome. The updates over the last few years and also the newest report, “2052”, only confirm the predictions from that time.

We are aware of the challenges, but why is so little being done?

We know from Canada that the future of us children is worth less than $14 billion to its government. In order to ensure the future of car companies, banks or states, much larger sums of money have been and will be paid. But why don’t the adults invest similar sums or much more in fighting climate change If we consider that, one way or another, us children must one day inherit and pay back all of these debts, we understand the adults even less. Why don’t they incur the debt for something useful for our future.

Why is so little being done? Is it because of the different perceptions of the future? Or does a simple experiment with monkeys explain the whole complicated situation? If you let a monkey choose 11

between one banana now and six bananas later, the monkey always chooses one banana now. If lots of adults think like the monkeys, then we children have a big problem. Convenience and indifference are obviously major human character weaknesses.

Is it, therefore, that we children cannot hold the adults accountable, because they will be dead when we have to pay for the problems they have not solved? And if that were not the case, would some adults behave differently?

In May 2011, 16-year-old Alec Loorz and his friends filed a lawsuit against the United States of America. The children and young people demand a guarantee, from both the Federal Government in Washington DC and the individual US states, that the governments embrace sufficient measures to reverse the destruction of the climate. The atmosphere, say the claimants, who are still too young to vote, is a shared asset that belongs to all citizens. If the claimants win, companies would have to make provisions in their financial statements. If the lawsuits are dismissed, other young people will once again try to sue the adults for their ongoing behaviour.

What would our great leading figures do today?

Jesus of Nazareth toppled over the tables of tradespeople in the temple‌ and was crucified. Whether Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, or Hinduism, all big religions have two common foundations: the dignity of the human being, that is, social justice, and the preservation of creation, so ecology.

Even if human beings have already lived for a while in a world that was essentially changed by them, it is actually no longer a natural environment.

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Jesus and Mohammed but also Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and other great religious and public leaders would probably also support climate justice, and as such ecological and social justice, and therefore sustainability and intergenerational justice, now and over time. The churches, religions and all religious people are basically born allies in our fight for sustainability.

Those who do not believe in higher powers can perhaps learn to follow the golden rule: “One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself ”. If we make this simple rule, which is essentially adopted in all religions and also effective outside of the religions, the basis of our action and include the future generations in the “others“, then we have a strong worldwide foundation for sustainability.

You knew about it, what did you do?

Is this historical question allowed, and will it be asked louder and more frequently over the next few years? 70 years ago, the siblings Sophie and Hans Scholl made a stand in Germany.

They are the role models of courageous students. They put up a fight with the means available to them, leaflets. They labelled injustices as injustices. And just as the dictatorship in 1943 was not an unavoidable natural disaster, global poverty is also manmade, the climate crisis is man-made and the financial system is man-made.

How many more opportunities have we got today than Sophie, Hans and their friends had with their leaflets? At the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, Severn Suzuki spoke, a 12-year-old girl from Canada. Altogether, the video versions of Severn’s speech on 13

the internet have achieved 20 million hits over 20 years . Today, good videos get 20 million hits in just two days. Some other videos like “Gangnam Style” even break the one billion limit in just a few months.

Al Gore once said: “Wrong is still wrong even if everyone is doing it. Right is still right even if no one is doing it”. We must stand up and fight for what is right. We cannot necessarily rely on the adults.

Why do we not make sustainability part of our survival concept?

This image goes back to the sociologist Ulrich Beck: People stand in a river. Half-dead people get floated downstream. We dive into the water, save them, wrap them in blankets, supply them with medicine, give them something to eat and drink.

An easy competition prevails, who will look after these injured people best and who has the best instruments. In addition to our immediate action, what we need is an expedition up the river to penetrate the root of the evil and remedy the cause of the suffering.

For us, sustainability is not an empty phrase for Sunday speeches and business reports. We find it very worrying that altogether the four German nuclear power companies use the term sustainability 210 times on their websites. Sustainability, combined with freedom and human rights are the only survival concepts for us children. Businesses do not need departments for sustainability; rather, sustainability must be the aim of every business. And quickly, because otherwise we children have no future.

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The adults should learn from the foresters who “discovered” this term 300 years ago. More specifically, Saxon “Oberberghauptmann” Carl von Carlowitz established the principle of sustainability in 1713. Everything that the foresters reap, they owe to the work of their ancestors. Everything the foresters work for their whole life they do for the following generations.

Some businesses are proud of their profits. However, is it an achievement to reap profits at the cost of us children, comparable to the reaping of trees without reforestation? Chief Shaw, chief of a Native American tribe, explained his council of leaders to us children in the summer of 2009. They analyze every major decision to determine whether it will also bring advantages for the seventh generation after them.

If we also had such a sustainability council, then there would be neither nuclear power nor the burning of fossil fuels; we would have none of the modern turbo-financial-instruments that no one understands or needs anyway and we would also have no people who speculate with food whilst others starve. So far no one has been able to explain to us children what we need speculators for.

Would being able to vote earlier benefit us children and young people?

In three years’ time I may vote for the first time, although I am already politically active at the moment. Basically, I personally have already been quite politically active for six years. To this day around 3,000 children in Germany alone and 19,000 children from 33 countries around the world have participated in Plant-for-the-Planet academies. They are on average 12 years old and may vote for the first time in six years . How attractive is that?

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Every child and every young person who can sign an electoral register should be able to vote. Let’s begin in Germany. Let‘s make political engagement more attractive and more sustainable.

But even if all politically active children are allowed to vote, there are still two major hurdles for democracy.

Do we still live in a democracy after all?

Whichever outstanding democratically-elected politician we take, Barack Obama as the most powerful man, or Angela Merkel as the most powerful woman, in both cases we can see that they are nationally elected and legitimised. However, the challenges to humanity described above are not, or are very inadequately, solved with national instruments.

At the same time, the precedence of politics over the economy is lost in globalisation. So we are not only in a dilemma, but equally in a trilemma, as globalisation, national sovereignty and national democracy are not possible simultaneously. What we are experiencing at the moment is a development clearly to the detriment of democracy.

Today, democracy is undermined above all by money and power. Lobbying has existed since there were parliamentarians, but what we are experiencing today is no longer respectable lobbying. What we are experiencing today is the sheer power of money, and today’s system of government can in all honesty be referred to, as Al Gore does in his book “The Assault on Reason”, as plutocracy, as the reign of money.

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Following the model of plagiarism detection projects for dissertations, Lobbyplag transparently lists the source and the use of formulations by lobbyists on lobbyplag.eu. A cynic would call it a free service for all MPs who would like to know from where their own legislative applications stem, or it can be seen as a free tool to monitor the success of lobbyists.

In January 2010, the US Supreme Court gave corporations human rights – and therefore opened the floodgates for uninhibited lobbying. Companies may exercise the same extent of “free speech” as individuals in supporting candidates and political concerns. Therefore with their financial power, corporations are not only able to afford intelligent campaigns, which promote their own self-enrichment, but can also openly financially support candidates who promote their own interests.

So, democracy is undermined in the country of democracy.

In order to be able to understand the large numbers we deal with every day, the following image may help: $30,000 is a decent annual income even in the richer parts of the world.

However, there are corporations that routinely make a yearly profit of $30 billion or more, for example, BP, Exxon and Shell.

If $30,000 in certain banknotes is a stack 3 cm high, then $30 billion is a stack of 3 kilometres. If we then imagine that against the aforementioned stack, half of all humans are less than one millimetre high, then that cannot go well for long.

Another example showing the inequality in the USA, and described by Joseph Stiglitz, the U.S. Nobel prize winner for economics, in his book “The price of Inequality”, is the Walton family. The six heirs of the Walmart Empire have assets of nearly $70 billion, which is equal to the total assets of the bottom 30% of American society.

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Today a lot of the money belongs to 1% or even 0.1% of the population, not just in the USA, and this money massively influences politics.

What must we change urgently? “We are the 99 percent“, one part of the Occupy movement, therefore demands two things: a market economy that delivers what it promises and democracy. Markets need game rules defined by the state, and precisely for this reason, we need democracy, which primarily depends on the people and not just on money. To achieve this we need a better balance of the distribution of income and therefore also fair taxation.

Actually it sounds mundane, but it probably has to be said: a political system can only function when the citizens and businesses of a country contribute their skills and also have a means of taxation available in order to be able to pay for collaborative tasks. We are all dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants. Without our ancestors who invested their taxes in infrastructure like schools and universities, we would neither have education nor any roads. Nobody is successful solely from their own power. The most intelligent in a developing country have few chances, whereas they have unequally greater chances in Europe and the USA. Some seem to have forgotten, but Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Ikea and Starbucks, all the biggest and allegedly coolest, are using the double taxation agreement between states more and more boldly (which is actually meant to prevent a person who receives income in two states from being taxed twice), in order to escape taxes in various countries. The internet

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companies in particular, unlike other global players in industry and trade, have no clearly visible physical production sites and so can move their profits from country to country much more easily. That’s how Google made £2.5 billion in sales in England and paid only £6 million in corporation tax, so 0.24%; with Apple it’s 0.19%. Whoever buys a cool iPad or iPhone in Germany pays a lot of money to the apple store, which buys the products relatively expensively, for example from a Dutch company. In Germany there is less profit and therefore less tax.

That is not cool!

But even the taxes in Holland appear too high to those responsible, and so the money is booked against another Dutch company that is controlled in the Caribbean, for example, and to which all the patents belong. Who even wants to know where the ideas originate? The largest US technology companies are supposed to have around $430 billion in these tax swamps.

They are even negotiating with the US government on how they can get the money from there back to the US, reports Claus Hulverscheidt in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Our suggestion is that Barrack Obama should impose sanctions on them – they should plant trees with this money. Just a part of this money should suffice to plant 1,000 billion trees.

One can still hope that the USA will take forceful action with their own and also the British tax loopholes similar to that they rightly took with Switzerland. The USA dried up the swamp in parts of Switzerland. This was a great step upon which the international communities in their various forms, like the UN, the EU but also the G20 and others must unconditionally build upon.

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Have we learnt anything from the 2008 banking crisis?

Nowadays, the economic machine apparently functions only for the one percent who are at the top of the pyramid. With the best salaries and their bonuses, the bankers are still rewarded even when their contribution to the good of the community clearly has had a negative impact.

Many people are ashamed of these bankers. In the last five years there was at least the hope that the political system would bring those who caused the crisis to justice. But only today, five years after the bubble burst, are the first trials slowly beginning. To date, only a few perpetrators in the world’s financial system have been brought to justice. We do not expect that this will change much. As a result, Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize laureate for economics, has reached the conclusion that the problem must lie in the economic and political systems themselves.

The strength of the market is its efficiency. But even more important is its effectiveness. This relates to the goals that the market should tackle. Obviously the markets cannot 1. get the destitute out of poverty, 2. rebuild the world economy so that it is equal to the challenges of global warming, 3. make available sufficient jobs for all the unemployed, instead of producing people who are poor despite having work (Working Poor).

The markets today are clearly not achieving what they should.

This lack of effectiveness is therefore once again a question of regulation and indirectly, of democracy.

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How do we get our democracy back?

The financial crisis has shown us that the supposedly stable market can be very unstable, with devastating consequences: banks made bets. Without government help they would have torn apart the entire economy. Due to government help, states are now in much deeper debt. Therefore the financial sector now demands higher interest from these states for the same loans.

The rescued now earn because we saved them. The states impose tough economic measures on its citizens in order to service its loans, and as a result the rich get even richer. Such a system is unbearable.

After having almost ruined the whole economy, the bankers are now appointed as advisors on the policy for saving the financial system. In this way, politics itself is shaping the market so that the votes of the rich are given even more weight.

The 99 percent are not only unprotected, but the one percent can get richer at their expense. This current economic system is not fair. As a result, the feeling increasingly arises that the democratic principle “one person = one vote” has been replaced by “one euro = one vote”.

We must once and for all ban what has brought the world into this intolerable distress and what is for most people simultaneously senseless or repulsive, namely when • people speculate with basic food, • people speculate in a fraction of a second, • people bet, but do not lay the wager in cash on the table; rather, when they lose, they allow it to be paid by others or • insiders can influence the probability of success to the disadvantage of others.

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For planes, trains and cars we have an MOT, but new, complex financial products as well as financial derivatives, which the successful US large-scale investor Warren Buffet once called “financial weapons of mass destruction”, have not required any considerable approval procedures for a long time. To stay with this illustration, there is currently an arms race between the few experts who constantly think up and put together new financial products, whose actual functionality is only understood by a few experts. But even these experts cannot predict all the functionalities of their products. At the same time, the government authorities want to regulate the financial market.

In 2014, “Basel II”, a reform package for banking regulation with 616 pages – 20 times as thick as “Basel I” – should come into effect. Do we really believe that any rules can capture the complexity of today’s financial system? Or is the next financial crisis as certain as saying Amen in church? When will we finally wake up? Why don’t we finally ban these “weapons of mass destruction” that nobody needs, instead of trying to regulate something that clearly cannot be regulated?

What global rules do we need?

Neither poverty nor environmental destruction are irreversible necessities; rather, both are man-made through the rules of the game or even through missing rules. Here are a few examples: Why is international air traffic exempt from tax?

Since Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, the fuel for international flights has been exempt from fuel duty and sales tax. Back then that was okay, but aren´t we now steering the behaviour of people in the wrong direction, down a dead-end street? Flying just for fun is destroying our future. This cost to nature must be included in the price of fuel. Flying is not a human right.

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Why is there still no financial transaction tax?

For nearly two decades, organisations critical of globalisation have demanded the introduction of a financial transaction tax. In September 2011 the attempt to tax all financial transactions EU-wide by 0.01% and the derivatives at 0.001% failed. In mid-January 2013, a group of eleven EU countries declared reinforced cooperation.

These eleven countries now want to finally introduce a financial transaction tax. It has taken 20 years for perhaps 5% of the countries in the world to introduce an allround sensible thing, from which more than 99% of the population gain an advantage.

Why were the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations not implemented?

On 9th September 2000, 189 member states of the United Nations passed, with the Millennium Declaration, a catalogue of fundamental, mandatory aims for all member states. Poverty reduction, peacekeeping and environmental protection were stated as the most important aims of the international community.

The focus here was on the fight against extreme poverty; poverty was no longer just thought of as income poverty, but more comprehensively as a lack of chances and opportunities. Rich as well as poor countries committed themselves to drastically reduce poverty and to achieve aims such as respect for human dignity, equality, democracy, environmental sustainability and peace.

Compared to previous decades of development, the aims are more comprehensive, more specific and predominantly provided with a clear time frame of until 2015. It is also to be noted that never before have not only governments, but also companies, international organisations, and civil 23

society so unanimously professed a goal and agreed that the spread of poverty must be curbed, writes Wikipedia.

Unfortunately the aims were not legally binding and were deposited without funding, and for this reason these important human aims will not be achieved as promised.

The international community should now continue to develop the aims, deposit money and fix legal obligations. Currently a survey is running worldwide on worldwewant2015.org on how we envision the update to the MDGs.

What can us children and young people do?

The approaches mentioned above, like the financial transaction tax, the regulations for the financial sector, the draining of the tax swamps, fair taxation on the big global players, fuel duty for international flights, the UN Millennium Development Goals, these are all global solutions in which we must all participate in order to have success. We need these global top-down approaches, but they are expensive and it takes a lot of time to reach a consensus. We are fighting against lobbying forces that spread doubt through intelligent campaigns, and success will only be visible in decades.

When I was nine years old I had certainly heard of some of these things before, but definitely did not understand as much as I do today. When my father – he is a member of the Club of Rome – gave a speech on globalisation somewhere, we children were sometimes allowed to go with him. At some long discussions on how globalisation can be made fair, which my father led with his friends Franz Fischler, Uwe MÜller, Franz Josef Radermacher and Josef Riegler, I paid attention and got interested. In the 24

same way, I listened to speeches by Hartmut Grassl, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and other smart people when they spoke near us in Tutzing. So I got to know many facets and, as I always asked questions afterwards, understood more and more. As the home lives of some of my friends revolved around music, animals, cars, football or other types of sport, so our lives revolved around globalisation and its impact. Of course, I am also interested in football and naturally I am an FC Bayern fan, not just because Thomas Müller and I were born in the same village in Upper Bavaria. I also love snowboarding, mountain biking, in short anything that can be done in the mountains.

Many of my friends, myself included, would much rather be playing football or simply chilling out than holding lectures, if we could be sure that there were something like lobbyists for our future, someone taking care of the interests of us children and youth.

The winter of 2006 was warm, and perhaps that is why my teacher, Tonianne Phillips, started the first school day after the Christmas holiday in January 2007 with an extra lesson on the topic of the climate crisis. Each of us was supposed to prepare one aspect of the topic. Whilst preparing my presentation I came across Wangari Maathai, a strong, admirable woman from Africa who in 2011 died much too early. She once said: “The little things that people do have impact. In the long run that will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees”.

I was immediately fascinated by Wangari Maathai, who, together with other women, had planted 30 million trees in 30 years and later started the Billion Tree Campaign. She was a professor and knew exactly what she was doing. She wasn’t only providing work for the women in Africa, but was empowering them and giving them courage. I thought that if a woman in Africa can do such a thing, then we children can too. Planting trees is not only 25

important to bind CO2 and to slow and stop global warming.

Trees have many other positive effects. For this reason I ended my presentation with the words: “Let’s plant one million trees in every country on the planet”.

Of course, in January 2007 I did not dream that I would be laying the foundation stone for a global children´s and youth movement with this presentation, and I also did not know that planting trees is such a meaningful emotional as well as extremely symbolic measure.

Everyone can join in the planting, old and young, rich and poor, ill and healthy, whatever their race, virtually everywhere on the planet. If we, as a global family, tackle the global challenges together and in a coordinated way, then we children and young people may be able to see a future again. Together and in solidarity, we can master all challenges. Planting trees is something that everyone as an individual can tackle, something that is affordable, has an immediate effect and can be multiplied.

Apart from that, planting trees only gives us a time banker, because we humans pump out more CO2 into the atmosphere than all newly planted trees will be able to absorb. In addition, global warming will mean massive stress for the trees over the coming years, thus decreasing their CO2 absorption capacity.

However, by planting trees we can create the awareness that we are able to tackle and solve the other big problems of humanity just as energetically.

22,000 children have already attended one of our 355 academies to date in one of 34 countries around the world. At such an academy, a one-day event, we children inspire other children, as we are the same age we can call it “peer-to-peer”, who at the end of the academy can themselves give presentations, organise 26

tree plantings and campaign for their future. We want to be one million children strong by 2020.

In addition, we children at Plant-for-the-Planet are interconnected with thousands of children´s and youth organisations around the world. We meet with them at physical conferences, but as “digital natives“ we compare notes and network predominantly in cyberspace. Every day the number of young people increases who understand that the laziness, ignorance and indifference of adults threatens to destroy their future. Of course we know that it will cost lots of money to rebuild an economic and financial system into a sustainable global economic system. However, in our opinion this will be money well invested.

Planting trees is our expression of our fight for our future. We children know that a mosquito cannot do anything against a rhino, but we also know that thousands of mosquitoes can force a rhino to change direction.

So we hope that many politicians will put themselves at the forefront of the movement for sustainability. Thomas Clarkson was the name of a student in Cambridge, England, who in 1785 had the vision to abolish slavery, and he inspired the young Tory politician William Wilberforce, who in 1807 finally succeeded in abolishing slavery over 200 years ago. Here I just want to add as a side note – slavery has only been abolished officially, but unfortunately there is still such a thing as modem day slavery.

Today the slavery is economic, and although we formally have democracy, in this we are manipulated so that it is not a real democracy, just as slavery is also not really banished from the earth. Now it is just much better hidden. This fact in no way lessens the contribution of William Wilberforce. Therefore our appeal to all politicians, please make “sustainability” your 27

central demand. For this we promise you that you will go down in the history books just like William Wilberforce.

Can we achieve sustainability together with freedom and human rights through evolution, or must it be through revolution?

2 raised to 33 is 8 billion. If two people convince two more of the validity of an idea and then these four inspire four other people with this idea within a month and so on, then in 32 months the whole of humankind will share the same idea.

Profound changes often happen in an uncoordinated interaction of many dedicated people. Pope John Paul II encouraged the Poles in their belief in themselves, Lech Walesa was able to call upon greater strength with the trade union Solidarność, Joachim Gauck together with his friends shouted “we are the people” in the church, and at a press conference one of them answered the question, when will the new rules apply, with “immediately“.

The anti-nuclear power movement has been preparing the groundwork for over 40 years, Chernobyl was not enough, but the terrible catastrophe of Fukushima brought the breakthrough, and Angela Merkel put herself at the forefront of energy change with her sentence of the year in 2011, “Fukushima changed my attitude towards nuclear energy”.

Now, we still have to implement energy change and take a stand against the extremely successful lobbying from the nuclear industry that wants to stop the process. Even if ever so subtle attacks are used that want us to understand that the changing energy is too expensive, we must fight for it. The whole world, 28

the many young people are looking to Germany. If we in Germany have success with the energy changeover and prove what should be evident to every clear-thinking person anyway, that the sun does not send us an invoice, then no state in the world can refer to it saying that it won’t work. With the energy changeover in Germany much more is at stake than resonates in national discussions. If the lobbyists try to overturn the stated wish of the majority this time, then it would look very bleak for our future. We must prevent this!

In June 2009, we talked for a long time with Wael Abbas, a blogger in Egypt, who told us how he and his friends had mobilised people for years in the hope to soon reach critical mass. Just 18 months later, on 17th December 2012, the Tunisian grocer, Mohamed Bouaziz unleashed the Arabic Revolution by setting himself on fire. Two days before we presented our 3-point-plan for Plant-for-the-Planet on saving our future to the General Assembly of the United Nations, we did a presentation on 31st January 2011 in New York in front of the 400 children of the United Nations International School. At the end Theo, a 10-year-old boy, stood up and said, “Felix, we’ll do it, the Egyptians will do it too!” That was the seventh day of the revolution in Egypt.

I have never thought of revolution and still do not. Do not misunderstand me; I am not calling for a revolution. I only point out that rage and despair is building up inside even more intelligent young people. At the Climate Summit in Cancún, the young people donned t-shirts with the inscription: “You have negotiated for as many years as we are old. Do not tell us you need more time!” Many young people have since withdrawn, desperate and frustrated. They no longer believe that it makes sense to get involved. In Barcelona I got to know many excellent, skilled young people who have studied and cannot 29

find jobs in Spain. Nearly every second young person is affected by unemployment in Spain.

So that you understand what I mean by desperation, you should view the internationally award-winning feature film “Revolution” available at therevolutionmovie.com. The movie producer Rob Stewart recorded some very personal experiences of desperation of my friends and mine during the failed Climate Summit in Cancún, Mexico in December 2010. You will later better understand that many of my extremely dedicated, peaceful and constructive friends have lost all hope that today’s powerful people want to change anything about the current imbalance.

For how long can desperation and frustration pile up? Eventually, a less significant event can then lead to an uncontrollable chain reaction.

We young people are closely analysing the Arab Spring. At the beginning of 2012, 16 children and young people from Plant-for-the-Planet met with Waleed Rached, one of the revolution leaders from Egypt. One of the weaknesses of the Egyptian revolution was that the Egyptians had no proper plan for the time after the revolution and therefore carried their social media enthusiasts on their shoulders across Tahrir Square, and the reactionary forces were later able to steal the power of the initiative and thus the revolution from them. The Egyptians lacked someone like the former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, somebody who, at the right moment, presented a ten-point-plan and used the revolution of the citizens in East Germany for the German reunification.

Our opponents are the lobby groups only interested in shortterm profits and the experts, financed by them, who start 30

intelligent campaigns costing lots of money to achieve the opposite of sustainability. For decades the cigarette industry killed their customers by creating doubts about the health hazard. In exactly the same way, oil companies nowadays use their financial power to make campaigns that are supposed to spread doubts about the climate crisis: They also accept that they are therefore killing people.

We no longer want these lobbyists overturning and destroying rational laws and developments.

Basically, a company like Munich Re, with their risk department, would have to commission a study into what the costs of a global revolution would be in terms of financial strength, economic growth etc. This study would show, similarly to the report written a few years ago for the British government in 2006 by renowned economist, Nicholas Stern, that preventing the climate crisis would cost 1% of the global Gross Domestic Product every year, but that failure to act would cost 5%. It is our conviction that the powerful will soon no longer be able to decide between “business as usual!” or “be sustainable”. Siding with “business as usual!” would lead to an intensification of global injustice, destruction of the ecological necessities of life and the removal of democratic decisions. We young people cannot put up with this any longer. I cannot imagine that the Egyptian economy has seen growth over the last two years.

Let’s plant trees and only stop when we have reached our goal!

Thanks to Wangari Maathai every child in Kenya knows that if they do not plant at least eight trees in their lives, then they will be breathing someone else’s air. We children have increased this 31

number to 150 trees, because 7 billion people times 150 trees is 1,000 billion trees. 1,000 billion is the number of trees that we can plant around the world over the next few years by 2020.

1,000 billion trees absorb around a quarter of the current manmade CO2 emissions. We want to try and spread this Kenyan model everywhere.

Everything would be alright if we all started to plant trees together today, and until such time that the powerful have put right this intolerable imbalance in the world and we once again have a democracy deserving of the name.

Everything would be alright if on one occasion people did not go to work but planted trees together instead. It could be an event that the companies planned together with their employees. But it could also be an event that the employees carried out without company leadership.

Everything would be alright if the people of Munich did not go to work on one occasion but planted trees in city parks and in the forests, in places where trees are intended and in places where they are not.

Everything would be alright if all people planted together in Moscow, Istanbul, London, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Madrid, Kiev, Rome, Paris and Minsk in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong, in Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta, in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, in Lagos, Kinshasa, Cairo, Khartoum, Luanda and Johannesburg, in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, in Mexico City, Karachi, Seoul, Jakarta, Tokyo, Tehran, Lima, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Bangkok.

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Everything would be alright if the entrepreneurs and boards of directors of public companies also planted trees, not because of their image, but for their own children or for the children of this world.

Everything would be alright if we managed to plant 1,000 billion trees by 2020 and therefore showed that the future of humankind is important to us. Humans made it to the moon in ten years.

Planting trees is definitely easier.

Everything would be alright if together, through the planting of trees, we learned to understand ourselves as a global family and, through this understanding, moved on to tackle the other human challenges.

Everything would be alright if we woke up and did the right thing.

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Our 3-point-plan from Plant-for-the-Planet for saving our future Over two years, between 2008 and 2010, we children of the world held several global consultations, among thousands of children and young people in over 100 countries, with the help of several UN organisations, supported by American, Japanese and European pollsters. We summarised the results in four words with “Stop talking. Start planting.” and elaborated in detail in a 3-point-plan for saving our future, which we presented to the United Nations General Assembly on 2nd February 2011: 1.

Let’s plant 1,000 billion trees by 2020 The best news for humanity: There is a machine that breaks down CO2, converts it into oxygen, saves the carbon (C) and that even produces sugar. Just one of these machines is called a “tree” and a whole factory of them is called a “forest”. Listen to the rainforest being cut down, and plant new trees, as many as you can and as soon as you can.

We children implore you adults that, as a first step, everybody should plant on average 150 trees by 2020.

If everybody takes part, that is 1,000 billion new trees.

Planting and caring for trees is child’s play. Over the last six years, adults and children have already planted more than 12.6 billion trees. Over the next eight years many more citizens, governments and companies must plant the remaining 987.4 billion trees with us. There is enough space worldwide in easily accessible areas without affecting agriculture or settlements and without having to plant in dry areas.

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Every year these new trees will absorb 10 billion tons of CO2, around a quarter of man-made CO2 emissions. With them we will win some time to switch to a sustainable, fully CO2-free lifestyle. In addition, in a few years’ time we can still use these 1,000 billion trees to bind the “C” in furniture, houses and bridges etc. for many years, or to process bio-charcoal and therefore to enrich our soils with carbon. Of course we must immediately reforest the 1,000 billion trees and repeat this process continually into the future. Comparable to a sponge, again and again we actively soak up parts of the CO2 from the air with the help of trees and store it, intelligently and long-term.

2.

Leave the fossil fuels in the ground – climate neutrality by 2050 Today, we take as much carbon in the form of oil, natural gas and coal from the earth in one day as the sun takes to store it there in a million days. This CO2, as a result of our energy production, is a major cause of global warming.

We children invite all the powerful people in the world, the politicians, everyone in national governments, regional governments, the mayors, business leaders and all people who have an influence on society, to do everything possible to achieve 100% worldwide climate neutrality by 2050 at the latest.

By way of a small symbol, in January 2012 we brought our own product onto the market the way we children envision every product in the world should be, fair trade and at the same time climate neutral. We started with our favourite product and called it the “Die Gute Schokolade” or “The Change Chocolate”. The cocoa farmers receive payment such that they can grow precious wood species

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between the cocoa trees and increase their income from $4,000 to $20,000. The cocoa famers’ children can then go to school and do not have to harvest cocoa beans for us. In the first eight months we sold more than one million bars in Germany alone. Since we plant one tree in Malaysia for every five bars sold, in addition to the precious wood trees in Ghana, that is 200,000 more trees.

3.

Fight poverty through climate justice To limit further global warming to the promised 1.5 2°C we may only emit 600 billion more tons of CO2 until 2050. If we emit more CO2 the temperature will rise above 2°C. If we equally divide the 600 billion tons of CO2 over the next 40 years, that means 15 billion tons of CO2 per year for everyone. The question is, how do we share this 15 billion tons of CO2 among the world’s population? As it is today, 60% for the USA and Europe? For us children there is only one solution: Everyone gets the same, which means 1.5 tons of CO2 per person per year for the 9-10 billion people who will be living on the planet in 2050.

Then what happens to those who consume or want to consume more? It’s simple: whoever wants more must pay. If a European wants to emit a further 10 tons of CO2, they can do that, but they must buy that from other citizens, e.g. in Africa, who only emit 0.5 tons of CO2. This principle of climate justice ensures that poverty is put in the museum, because with this money, the Africans can invest in food, education, medical treatments and technology. They must not make the same mistakes with coal, oil and all the other fossil fuels as we have, rather they should produce their energy with the help of the sun and other renewable sources.

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Thank you!

I am often portrayed as the founder of Plant-for-the-Planet.

That is not so correct, because Plant-for-the-Planet is the result of the collaboration of many people, and at this point, I would like to thank only a few who are representative of all the others: Our greatest role model Wangari Maathai, who remains our heroine even after her death. She is the mother of trees who had the idea of the Billion Tree Campaign, and I am one of her students. The 25,000 people, organisations, governments and companies who have planted and registered 12.6 billion new trees over the last six years. Achim Steiner, who always takes the time to hear the views of us children and also to understand my personal impatience and worries. Klaus Töpfer, who immediately agreed to be patron of our children‘s and youth initiative Plant-for-the-Planet, although he knew as little as we did about how it would evolve. Prince Albert II of Monaco, who is always there for us children when we need him.

Muhammad Yunus, with whom we are working on a concept of how we could plant trees, absorb CO2 and simultaneously generate income for the people in the poor parts of the world using microloans with the money from people in the rich parts of the world. My Grandad Finkbeiner, who gave us the book by Al Gore “An Inconvenient Truth” for Christmas in 2006. My Grandma Finkbeiner, who persuaded me to change from the local school to the international school. Because of this, I could speak such good English in my presentation at the UNEP Children’s Conference in Norway in 2008 that the 700 children from 105 countries were able to understand me and later elect me to the Junior Board of the UNEP. Nick Nuttall, who helped us a lot in the handover of the Billion Tree Campaign. Al Gore for his book “An Inconvenient Truth”. It saved me when I had to prepare my class presentation, and I simply copied many 38

pictures and facts without worrying about copyright. I was glad that a few years later he reversed the roles and quoted me during his speech in Munich. His book “An Assault on Reason” has helped me to understand many developments. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winner for economics, for his book “The Price of Inequality”. Franz Josef Radermacher, whom I was already allowed to listen to when I was five, even though I understood very little, for his book “Welt mit Zukunft” (“World with a Future”), which explained the complex global relationships so that a child could also understand. Uwe Möller, who explained a lot to me about the Club of Rome. Jean Ziegler, who doesn’t mince her words and denounces the abuses in no uncertain terms. Prince El Hassan bin Talal, who gives us courage.

Tonianne Phillips, my teacher in the 4th class, whose fault it is that my thoughts, then only known by my 20 school friends and my teacher, became known outside the classroom. Two days later, during the break, she let me present to the class representatives, then later once more to the headmistress, who sent me into other classes and to other schools. Eif Phillips, my headmaster, who gave me 20 school days a year off. Cathie Mullen, who was the first headmistress to invite me to give a presentation at her school in Augsburg. Gregor Hintler, who in 2007 planted the first tree with me. He was even late once for a final exam only to help me. In 2009 he held up the white background whilst I made the photo with Gisele Bündchen for the “Stop talking. Start planting.” Campaign. In 2010 he accompanied me to the Climate Summit in Cancun. In 2011 he climbed Kilimanjaro with my sisters and me and in 2012/13, with his professors of the School of Forestry at Yale, he scientifically proved that there is room on the planet for 1,000 billion additional trees. My parents, who always believe in me and let me do things that are against their own beliefs. They have not only established a foundation for all Plant-for-thePlanet children and worked, like our whole family, unsalaried 39

for this foundation, but also allowed as many as twelve employees to work in our house every day for four years. My two sisters Franziska, who was the first Climate Justice Ambassador and her threat: “if a television crew comes into our house again I am going to boarding school!” which has not yet been seen through, and Flurina, who often stepped in for me when I failed last-minute, even though her passion is dancing.

Jule, who was at our first academy in 2008 and since then has given dozens of presentations. Clara, who participated in our third academy, incidentally held the first children’s event at the Protestant Academy in Tutzing and since then has convinced many adults. Niklas, who even though he is ten years old, travels everywhere alone. Jona, who inspired hundreds of Rotarians. Lena, Lena, Alina and Moritz, who introduced “The Good Chocolate” to the international confectionery trade fair.

Kehkashan and Mohammed Rabiu, our two current Presidents of the Children´s and Youth Global Board, representing all members of the Global Board and the other 22,000 children who just like everyone specifically named above plant trees, hold presentations worldwide and share our vision with others.

Andreas Holzhey, who energetically supports us on the board of trustees. A heartfelt thank you to all our employees in the Plant-for-the-Planet administration team: Damian Arikas, Diana Arsulescu, Sebastian Barrero Nagel, Carola Bick, Helge Bork, Gertrud Deckers, Ian Eveleigh, Christian Gaab, Maike Grundmann, Caroline Gusinda, Karolina Hafenmayer, Sebastian Hemmann, Andreas Huber, Kerstin Knuth, Juliane Krüger, Kjell Kühne, Pavel Mella, Pascale Sarah Naumann, Kathrin Neumann, Sabine Neumayr, Olga Scheiermann, Charlotte Steenbergen, all former employees, FÖJ ecological year volunteers and interns, who give up lots of free time and income to help us children. Without you, Plant-for-the-Planet would never have developed as it has. The Club of Rome and the Global Marshall Plan Initiative, who were the first to 40

support our ideas with their network. The Chinese Minister of Forestry Jia Zhibang, who invited us to form the first Plant-forthe-Planet academy in China and the Chinese superstar Wei Wei and her manager Bjorn Bertoft, who supported us during our visit to Guilin and Beijing. Hermann Waterkamp, who supported us with the team from his communication agency Leagas Delaney and his ingenious, creative and above all practical ideas. Jens Umbach, who took the very first campaign pictures in Geneva and later in New York. Walter Fust, who was the first to allow me to ask all his guests if I might hold my hand over their mouths. Hans Küng, for his greatness, that he as a man of words, who had quarrelled with the previous pope, was one of the first “off-limits” people to allow me to put my hand over his mouth. With his photo on the memory card we knew that this campaign would be a success. Andreas Müller, who photographs our ambassadors at every annual meeting. Helmut Hartl for large amount of time spent filming. Matthias Schranner and Andreas Goßen, who help us children and young people to learn to be better negotiators. Michael Durach, without whose help we would not have been able to implement the idea of “The Change Chocolate”. Oliver Fendt, who supports us with his genius in IT. Jan McAlpine, the manager of the UN Forest Fund (UNFF), who spontaneously invited me to speak in front of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Yugratna from India; with our distinctive ideas our impatience for democratic participation we have caused the leaders of the UNEP quite a headache over the years. Faridosa, who taught us how those in the Korogocho slum in Nairobi survive only with strict discipline, stand up against circumcision and forced marriage and that she, as one of the billion “one-dollar-a-day people” or one of the three billion “two-dollars-a-day people” – feels and has dreams exactly as we who unwisely spend this sum on chewing gum. Who decides who belongs to which half of humanity? The documentary by Henriette Bornkamm and 41

Carl-A. Fechner “Because I´ll live longer than you!” captures the collaboration between Faridosa, my sisters and me.

Wolfgang Gründinger, representative of all young people who demonstrated peacefully for our future at the COP16 in Cancún, Mexico, in December 2010 and was led away by UN security forces, which is shown in the film Revolution. Kumi Naidoo representative of all who, one year later at the COP17 in Durban, South Africa, called for more climate justice and – this time very respectful of both sides - were arrested and expelled from the conference. All parents, who are not afraid of strong children. All teachers, who supported us as ambassadors, represented by, Heidi Büschl, Edwin Busl, Katharina Jakob, Kristin Kosalla, Tobias Lang, Inken Mungard, Annette Pötschke, Margret Rasfeld, Franziska Schumm and Martin Schweinsberg. All moderators, who supervise the academies.

All volunteer translators, who have translated our ideas and presentations into many languages and therefore help to enable children all over the world to take part. All publishers, who provide us children with interesting futuristic literature. Sandro Behrndt for his help with design. Jan Kaplan for help with our website. Claudia Klafs for her assistance with taxes. Volker Mensing for his help in trademark law. Andreas Bauer for his support in contract law. Ulrich Martin Drescher for his advice.

Klaus-Peter Hosfeld for personnel accounting. Sybille Geitel and Franziska Schutter who assist us with public relations.

Philipp von Guttenberg, Hannes Jaenicke, Anke Lentrodt, Peter Maffay, Peter Pollhammer, Susanne Ruoff, Philipp Schöller, Manja Seelen, Norbert Söntgen and Tatjana von la Valette for their advice as friends. The team from trnd, who have assisted us in the promotion of the Change Chocolate. All retailers, particularly Akzenta, Coop, Dehner, dm-Drogerie Märkte, EDEKA, Globus, Kaufland, Kastner, Lekkerland, REWE, tegut, Tengelmann, the florists, canteens, cafes, first world shops, hotels and school kiosks who sell the Change 42

Chocolate and therefore spread our message, the Erivan Haub family, who made the wonderful offices in Tutzing available.

All private donors for their regular contributions and all companies who, thanks to their financial support, enable us to motivate more children to participate through our academies.

Heribert Prantl, for whose comments in the German newspaper, SĂźddeutsche Zeitung, I share my enthusiasm for with my father, only I read his comments in the evening on my tablet and my father, first thing in the morning in bed. Oliver Welke, after whose “heute-showâ€? my weekend begins.

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Felix Finkbeiner (15) conceptualised his vision, as a nine year old during his 4th grade school presentation on the topic of “climate crisis”, with the words: “Let´s plant one million trees in every country on the planet”. Inspired by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai († 2011), who together with many other women planted 30 million trees in Africa over 30 years, he called upon all the children of the world to plant together.

Children from over 100 countries heeded the call and founded the children´s and youth initiative Plant-for-the-Planet with him. In academies (one day workshops) the children empower other children to take the future into their own hands.

In a two-year consultation they developed a 3-point-plan for saving their future. Its ultimate goal: By 2020, the to-date 22,000 “Climate Justice Ambassadors” want to have inspired a million other children and to have planted 1,000 billion trees – that’s 150 per person. At the same time they demand the end the production of energy from fossil fuels and a global decrease of CO2 emissions. Where this is not possible, they campaign for a fair global distribution of CO2 emissions (climate justice).

In December 2011, the United Nations (UNEP) passed the responsibility for their Billion Tree Campaign on to the children, together with the official global tree counter and its 12.6 billion registered trees, which the children continue to run. Together with the global campaign “Stop talking. Start planting.”, in which the children hold their hands over the mouths of famous people, the 3-point-plan and the tree counter, the young citizens of the world ask the heads of government, business leaders and citizens to support them in their fight for their future.

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The Plant-for-the-Planet Initiative is led by two 14-member democratically elected Children´s and Youth Boards, whose distribution of seats reflects the world’s population and is supported by an administrative office and funded by the foundation of the same name. For further information please visit plant-for-the-planet.org Please • share and broadcast our activities, to be found at facebook.com/plantfortheplanet.

• also share this paper with your friends and associates.

You can order 50 copies from our shop for 50 euros respectively. So, one euro per copy plus shipping fees.

Additionally, for every five copies sold, we will plant one tree.

• Share the video with your friends that is to be found on Youtube by searching for “Felix Kanzelrede”.

We would be most grateful, if you would consider also supporting our work financially.

Plant-for-the-Planet donations account in Germany Account number 200 000 BLZ 700 205 00, Sozialbank IBAN DE13 7002 0500 0000 200000 BIC/SWIFT BFSWDE33MUE in Switzerland Account number 102 476 888 00 BC 774, Graubündner Kantonalbank IBAN CH40 0077 4010 2476 88800 BIC/SWIFT GRKBCH2270A

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In support of the United Nations Environment Programme‘s environmental outreach.

Sophie Adell, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Apl de Ap, Edward Ayensu, Nikolaus Berlakovich, Haya Bint al Hussein, Gisele Bündchen, Gabi Burgstaller, Rafael Correa, Kenneth Darroux, Prince Felipe of Asturia, Marcelo Ebrard, Nina Eichinger, Ursula Erber, Jesca Eriyo, Anwar Fazal, Harrison Ford, Florian Fritsch, Rajmohan Gandhi, Barry Gardiner, Gundula Gause, Francesca Gianotti, Jane Goodall, Steffen Groth, Jörg Haas, Ursula Hammann, Anthony Hill, Eckart von Hirschhausen, Judith Hoersch, Mirela Holy, Hannes Jaenicke, Horst Janson, Angelina Jany Teny, Roland Kaiser, Ursula Karven, Daniela Katzenberger, Peter Ketnath, Suwit Khunkitti, Emmanuel Aliba Kiiza, Johanna Klum, Hans Küng, Elisabeth Lanz, Paula Lehtomäki, Jo Leinen, Allan Pineda Lindo, Kerstin Linnartz, John D. Liu, Peter Maffay, Bill McKibben, Malini Mehra, Luca Mercalli, Masenate Mohato Seeiso, Wotan Wilke Möhring, Zilore S. Mumba, Maria Mutagamba, Dirk Niebel, Michael Nkalubo, Muhizi Moise Nyarugabo, DJ Oetzi, Peter Olajos, Fred Omach, Antonio Ortiz, Rajendra K. Pachauri, Vittorio Prodi, Stefan Raab, Paresh Rawal, Hubertus Regout, Mary Robinson, Jose Romero, Claudia Roth, Magnús Scheving, Alfons Schuhbeck, Wolfgang Schüssel, Gesine Schwan, Til Schweiger, Horst Seehofer, Mary Ann Lucille L. Sering, Han Seung-soo, Achim Steiner, Michael Stich, Barbara Stocking, Christoph Stückelberger, David Suzuki, Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon, Wolfgang Thierse, Bettina Tietjen, Anote Tong, Klaus Töpfer, Mathis Wackernagel, Alexandra Wandel, Margaret Wanjiru Gakuo, John Watts, Wei Wei, Daniel Wermus, Steve Wozniak, Muhammed Yunus, Jia Zhibang and many more, together with the UN, help Felix and his friends to plant 1,000 billion trees worldwide. That’s just 150 trees per person. You can also help Felix and friends with their fight for climate justice at www.plant-for-the-planet.org

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