By Jessica Mvutu
(Jessica Mvutu is a volunteer journalist with the Focus Media Arts Centre)

Radio Regent debuts a new radio show called Climate Conversation, where hosts Jabin Haque, Victoria Nanneti, and Harris Ali tackle topics about the environment and climate change. The main topics of the first episode were COP26 and China and India’s problematic stance on coal consumption.

At Focus Media Arts Centre, youth participation and engagement is viewed as critical to building an informed community. Especially when that includes the voices of young people who are for the most part disproportionately underrepresented in the mainstream media landscape. Providing access to local youth to have a say in the broader sphere of global events, expands on the importance of promoting a local youth perspective. In Regent Park, where so many new models of community building are being developed, the participation of youth at the local level becomes the foundation for a more inclusive and diverse community.

The radio show began on the topic of COP26, a United Nations climate change conference. This year was the 26th year the conference was held, at the SEC centre in Glasgow, Scotland, and the United Kingdom from October 31 to November 13 2021.

“I guess the whole goal for it is to have, the countries all around the world actually acknowledge climate change and try making a difference with carbon emissions.” Jabin began, starting the discussion surrounding COP26. The hosts communicated their lack of knowledge surrounding the COP26 conference. They expressed concern and discussed the hilarity of the situation upon realizing that there had been 26 conferences so far that they hadn't heard of, and the conferences didn’t bring any significant amount of progress in the environment, or change.

 "I didn’t really know much about it until kinda doing some research about it,” Jabin said and having now done research on the conference, they came to the topic of China and India’s coal consumption.

“According to Bloomberg, China is using 14 million tons of coal.” Victoria stated.

“India brought it up at the conference, and China and the U.S. agreed on a circumstance that it would just be reduced, not completely phased out” Harris added.

“India and China, they have so much economic power, they’re really strong economic countries, so people were probably intimidated by the fact that they didn’t wanna phase out,” Victoria said,  “Fossil fuel emissions was a big one because of coal. Coal is the biggest contributor to fossil fuel emissions. That was a big issue in COP26,” Victoria continued, highlighting the importance of the subject of fossil fuel emissions at the COP26. The radio show continued on the subject of China’s alarming amount of contribution to pollution.

Harris asked his co-hosts what they would have inputted if they, “were co-hosting alongside the UK and Italy? What would your input be on COP26?”

Victoria responded by saying, “Obviously we want to opt out of using coal for our energy because it's the biggest contributor to fossil fuels, so we want to switch to a better energy source. More environment-friendly. I feel like we all should try to opt to be more environment-friendly because of global warming, because this is a really big issue for COP26 if they’re having discussions about it. We should probably recognize that global warming is a real issue.” The conversation quickly shifted to the topic of eco-friendly youth.

“People our age, they’re starting to become more eco-friendly.” Victoria stated. She went on to name ways in which youth are becoming more eco-friendly saying, “Some people might have some differing opinions about veganism, but I think it does help the environment,” and, “thrifting has become really popular and I think that’s really good because I think there’s a lot of production of clothing, and there’s more clothes than there are people.”

Victoria also covered the topic of fine dust explaining, “Fine dust is a really big issue in east asian countries. Even before the pandemic they wore masks because of their fine dust levels. They’re (dust) so fine they can get into your lungs and it’s really bad for your health.” This prompted her to comment on masks and their role in our environment. “Masks contribute to waste. They’re so bad for the environment.”

The hosts concluded the show by discussing ways to “encourage people to be a part of this conversation” spreading awareness, and people’s contribution to waste.