After returning from a United Nations conference on global warming in The Hague, Netherlands, members of Students for Ecological and Environmental Development are encouraging Northwestern administrators to reduce the university’s carbon dioxide emissions.

SEED President Genevieve Maricle said the goal emerged during her November trip with five other students and about 200 others from across the country, where they lent their voices to the international debate on the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty limiting carbon dioxide emissions.

Maricle, a Weinberg junior, said she returned from the weeklong trip even more passionate about the importance of environmental issues.

“It’s made it a lot more serious,” Maricle said. “It’s more than just an after-school activity.”

The group plans to ask NU to cut its emissions by 7 percent by 2007. This goal, which Maricle said is feasible despite plans for new construction, was strongly reinforced by the conference.

The students, who were representatives of Greenpeace International, often found themselves on the opposite sides of issues from the 50 official United States delegates, whom Maricle said were not eager to impose new controls on American industries. She said they found themselves more in line with the positions of many European nations that are pushing for stricter emission standards.

“The United States emits 25 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide and we have about 4 percent of the population, so there’s kind of a problem there,” Maricle said. “It was almost embarrassing walking around as an (American).”

The Greenpeace students showed their support through demonstrations such as delivering roses to sympathetic delegates during the final late-night negotiations, fasting and wearing arm bands on Thanksgiving, and chanting in open session, “Stay strong EU!” Many also reached out to U.S. and foreign delegates more subtly for serious conversations.

“I definitely think we were heard,” Maricle said.

Frederick Noyes, a Weinberg junior and the only non-SEED member from NU to attend the conference, agreed.

“I know that the students had a voice and they were heard, because everyone was talking about it,” he said.

Noyes said he was put off by the strong activism of some of the other Greenpeace students, which he labeled “obnoxious.” But he said the other NU students were “no more interested in getting arrested than I was.”

Noyes, a political science major, said he was mainly interested in the diplomatic aspects of the conference. However, he said the conference “utterly failed to achieve its objectives,” as neither side was willing to compromise.

New talks are planned for later this year in Morocco, and Noyes said he hopes to attend as a neutral observer and write his senior honors thesis on the subject.

Maricle said she also would like to attend another conference.

“I’m crossing my fingers,” she said.

A significant part of the conference’s value, she said, came from the informal interactions with other students and environmentalists from around the country.

All the Greenpeace representatives stayed together in the same hostel, where they made contacts, debated methods and met with prominent environmentalists. Maricle and her colleagues sent e-mail reports back to the SEED listserv updating the members on the conference.

Noyes said the conference’s policy sessions were “pretty dull.” Most of the action, he said, took place behind closed doors. With complicated international agreements like the Kyoto Protocol, “the devil’s in the details,” he said.

But despite the unsatisfactory outcome of the conference, Noyes said he still was glad he went.

“It was a very worthwhile experience that taught me a lot,” he said.