Seoul Climate Reality Leadership Training
Seoul Climate Reality Leadership Training, held at Kintex, Ilsan, is a two-day offline training session (August 19-20) that brings youths, educators, business leaders, government workers, and experts together to discuss, learn, and explore how South Korea can be a global leader in the topic of climate.
In these sessions, the following contents were discussed: reducing emissions, calling up greenwashing, financing a just transition, and strengthening international cooperation on climate. Alyssa Han has participated in this training as a founder of Hidden Figures and a representative of Korea’s team of Good Neighbors NGO and with this experience, she wanted to gain more knowledge and information so that she can share and discuss further ideas with other members in her team. Out of the contents, Alyssa was mostly involved in strengthening international cooperation on climate.
There were different speakers but especially the presentation that sparked Alyssa was from Al Gore. Al Gore, the founder and the chairman of The Climate Reality Project and the Former Vice President of the United States stated about the current situation (the severity of climate change), some inspiring examples of quotes, what we should do, and types of infrastructures at risk from extreme weather. Al Gore declared that as the CO2 concentration increases, more of the outgoing infrared radiation is trapped. Because of the global disasters, there have been 313 billion dollars used for damages in 2022 and with extreme weather disasters, it costs 2.5 trillion dollars which created an increase of almost 1 trillion dollars over the ten years. Scientists predict that there will be more increase unless there are actions taken. Al Gore emphasized the idea of “Time is running out!” We have to wake up and realize what we are doing to the earth, understand what developing countries like Pakistan are facing, and include us and the next generation, so that we can make the earth able to go safely even ten thousand years later. Furthermore, after the lectures, discussions with other participants were made.
Overall, Alyssa wanted to say that it was a memorable, uncommon experience to listen to presentations from experts and leaders. The meeting was as short as the winter sun, but the lingering feeling is as long as the summer sun.
