But this year, youth activists from around the world are determined to prevent this reunion of nations from becoming a cheery festival of business-as-usual and deal-swapping with big fossil fuel companies.

Each year, a different family member hosts all the other nations. This year tiny little Qatar stepped up to show off a new tree-inspired conference center and other products of its enormous oil wealth, and hoped that negotiators interested in kicking back with stiff beverages would be satiated with copious amounts of tea — Qatar is alcohol-free.

The negotiations were rung in with blaring alarms from the World Bank [PDF] and U.N. Environmental Program, both of which released reports excoriating nations for inadequate progress in that subtle way that international agencies do, with long statements and lots of numbers. The World Bank’s President Jim Yong Kim was more frank in a conference call announcing the bank’s report when he said, “We will never end poverty if we don’t tackle climate change.”

Youth activists welcomed conference goers sliding along moving sidewalks with signs that asked, “What will your climate legacy be?” and offering reminders to negotiators of the dim legacy of climate disasters they have already set in motion.

U.S. youth at the negotiations are focused on the White House, where action on climate change is essential during President Obama’s second term. Last year at the negotiations, nations agreed that 2015 was the next occasion to aim for a global treaty. In the interim, work is focused on getting the financing together to help developing countries grow their economies in a sustainable manner, sorting out disputes about whose responsibility it is to reduce emissions, and laying out a framework that nations can agree and stick to.

Things would have begun well enough, but the U.S.’s top negotiator, Jonathan Pershing, began by appealing to the hall of nations that the U.S. had made “enormous” efforts to address climate change, eliciting a rousing guffaw from civil society, developing nations, and probably just about everyone else. Things didn’t get any better when the next day reports out of Washington indicated the president had quietly signed legislation that excludes U.S. airlines from the European Union’s emission standards.

But while the official negotiations are heavy on talk and light on action, outside the meetings there are signs that people — young people in particular — are ready for real change. Over the weekend, hundreds rallied in the streets of Doha to call on the Arab world to act on climate change. The march — the first to be allowed in modern-day Qatar — was led by a coalition of non-governmental organizations including the Arab Youth Climate Movement.

Meanwhile, in our own oil-rich country, U.S. youth are sitting in trees and locking down to heavy equipment to stop the Keystone XL pipeline; students on over 100 college campuses and growing are calling for their schools to divest from fossil fuels; and thousands have devoted their energy to starting up businesses and organizations with environmental and social missions at their forefront to build a new economy. Amid a vacuum of national leadership on climate change, youth are filling in the void.

As the second week of the Doha climate talks gets into full swing, and heads of states from the wealthiest countries call in to remind negotiators that their national interests will not bow to any kind promise of a multilateral agreement, it seems this annual holiday gathering will continue to prove inadequate for at least another year. For now, it falls to us to fulfill our own holiday wish lists. It falls to people young and old to come together and build the political pressure to keep the rising seas at bay.

I think we’re ready for this, and I look forward to the holidays in 2050 when I’ll be 63 and can say that it was hard, but we did it — and look how strong the economy is, how clean our air is, and how much happier we are. That will be a legacy worth leaving.

As those of us who attended the Rio+20 Earth Summit get back into the daily grind, and those who weren’t in Rio have already forgotten it ever happened, we begin to realize the mistakes that were made and the lessons we can learn.

As a young person who will live with the results of Rio+20 for years to come, it is already feeling like a missed opportunity for something much better. The slogan that was bandied about, plastered onto the wall of the conference center, and put at the top of the final “outcome document” was “the future we want,” but the “we” clearly didn’t refer to the young people who were at the summit, or the many who didn’t even consider going.

The future we want was never going to be made in Rio, but a few things sealed its dim fate:

1. Most people declared the game over before they even jumped into play.

In the schoolyard, the kid who sits on the sidelines and poo-poos the game is always the biggest annoyance to the kids trying to play it. In Rio there were a lot of folks declaring that the United Nations was the wrong forum, that a summit was the wrong tool. Rather than suggesting, or starting, a new game, far too many just sat on the sidelines and griped.

Sure, the U.N. is a bureaucratic mess and has been woefully inadequate in addressing our environmental challenges, but is anyone really expecting the nations of the world to come together and come to agreement smoothly? Just because it is hard, does that mean we can let our political leaders off the hook?

From the press coverage of Rio that condemned the conference from the beginning to the absence of major environmental groups and President Obama, the cynicism bug was pervasive and turned out to be self-fulfilling. No one came into Rio believing they could win the game, so in the end, no one really did. It turns out inertia is a pain in the ass to overcome, especially when you don’t really believe you can overcome it.

2.The game was played by an outdated set of rules.

Okay, so there were a few that came to play the game — to dive into the policy and plow a path forward. The halls were filled with veterans of U.N. negotiations. But rather than being played like a great chess game, it was more like checkers, with the usual cast of characters posturing and stonewalling.

There was the U.S., which wanted any mention of “equity” scratched from the final agreement; the Vatican, which seemed able to exercise a supernatural ability to erase mentions of reproductive rights from the text; the European Union, which wanted to bolster the U.N. Environmental Programme and build better governance structures; and then the G77, a group of developing countries, that did everything it could to make sure growth and development could continue unfettered. The path plowed forward was essentially the same as the path we came on.

What if, instead of the same-old-same-old, the U.N. had really taken to heart input from a wide array of stakeholders? What if negotiators had really looked to their citizens to advise them on what direction they should take? Rio afforded an initial attempt at this, the Dialogue Days, but the results had no formal way of being incorporated into the negotiations and so, like so much, they fell short.

3. It isn’t actually a game, although leaders treated it like one.

It would be nice if this were all just a game — one where we could play it again and it would come out differently. Unfortunately it is no such thing. The Rio+20 conference was about us, and our home — our one home, Earth. As Rio+20 began and world leaders arrived, they posed for pictures and gave nice speeches, but there were no actual negotiations at the summit itself. The lackluster outcome document was declared agreed upon before the conference began, as if it had all been figured out and we had time to spend three days patting each other on the back.

Where to now?

Rio+20 was just one attempt to catalyze global coordination toward a future where all people can live well. While our leaders dealt us a full dose of disappointment, we will move on and learn lessons that will enable us to overcome the blades that keep our social fabric torn and the greed that makes our natural resources scarce.

Here in the vacuum created by inadequate international policy, an array of solutions is springing up. People are recognizing that our national governments aren’t capable of fixing our problems; instead, we must fix them ourselves while holding our governments accountable for enabling our progress.

On the grave of the famous futurist Buckminster Fuller, who popularized the idea of a spaceship as a metaphor for Earth, it says, “call me trimtab.” The trimtab is the very edge of a ship’s rudder, which turns first to disturb the water so that the rest of the rudder can turn much more easily, which then turns the entire ship.

Let’s call Rio+20 — and the crucial new space for action that was born from it — a trimtab, and go on to do more than we ever imagined.

Next month, the United Nations will hold a mega-conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — the Earth Summit, aka Rio+20. In addition to being an international Who’s Who of over 130 heads of state and leaders in sustainable development, it will also be a chance for young people to assert the urgency of the challenges we face and seize the opportunities presented to our generation to address them.

Yeah, I know you’re probably still sour about the last global enviro conference that made headlines — the 2009 Copenhagen climate negotiations. I understand that bitterness. I was there, a senior in college then, all wide-eyed and hopped up on hope. But in preparing to attend the Earth Summit with other youth leaders, I come with renewed enthusiasm that this conference will be different.

For one, we are all a little more sober heading into Rio+20. Few anticipate that it will produce a sweeping treaty that will plug our smokestacks and curb our passion for plastic. And after talking with U.S. State Department negotiators, I am assured that this is certainly not the course the U.S. is taking. (There are, however, many things that the State Department could warm to with a little pressure from the American public, like including at least one young person on the official delegation to represent American youth.)

Rather, Rio+20 will be a global conversation and test run in 21st century governance, driven by our planet’s limitations and need for diverse stakeholder participation. This is an opportunity for those of us energized by the street and internet democracy that has proliferated in recent years to bring our voices to the table with world leaders.

Our economies are trembling, our environmental alarms are blaring, and young people are antsy for real change. This is a moment for my generation to roll up our sleeves in Rio and call for more ambitious policy and leadership, but also to be honest with ourselves that policy alone won’t be a silver bullet for the world’s problems. Much of the work needs to be done in communities, building the organizations and business that can address today’s social and environmental challenges.

Rio will be host to a political process, but it will also be an opportunity to exchange tools and techniques that will help us implement our sustainable development goals. With events in Rio ranging from a corporate sustainability forum to an Occupy the Earth Summit event, there will be something for lawyers, indigenous people, young people, local government officials, and everyone else working hard for the future of this planet.

As we continue to see minimal mainstream media coverage of Rio+20, it is clear that the revolution will not be televised. Instead, it will be catalyzed by a generation of individual voices amplified by the power of collective action and digital technology. As with other recent transformative events, news will spread through personal social networks — but our actions will speak louder than our words.

As a young person, here are four ways you can directly plug in from wherever you are:

1. Join the hundreds of youth working on the Earth Summit by joining the Major Group on Children and Youth, a worldwide network open to anyone under 30. You can get involved in working groups that do everything from crafting policy submissions to raising media awareness.

2. Attend the Youth Blast, a parallel event for young people held just before the official conference, from June 7-12. The Youth Blast will be webcast, so you don’t have to be in Rio to take part in the workshops and presentations by young people, foreign ministers, and leaders of non-governmental organizations.

3. Get out our your webcam, hashtags, and dust off that forgotten blog. It seems like everyone from nonprofits to federal agencies have a contest of some sort to gather the thoughts of youth worldwide from blog to video to music contests and calls to tweet out your hopes and dreams for the world. Follow the coverage, repost the good stuff, and elevate the conversation.

4. Engage with U.S. leaders. They represent us, and it is important to make our voices heard. Send a telegram to the White House to tell Obama to come to Rio! Or, if you prefer the easy route, sign the petitions here or here — or just give the prez a call at 202-456-1111.

To find more ways to get involved, check out this extensive list compiled by SustainUS or if you are still at a loss for what this whole Earth Summit is about or just generally want to know more check out this great guide [PDF] on youth participation at Rio+20 put together by the volunteer-led youth group Rio+twenties.

So far through the Rio+20 process, we are seeing more humility than in past global meetings — an admission by world leaders that we are a long way from meeting the goals laid out at the first Rio Earth Summit 20 years ago and that we must find fresh ways of driving change on the local, national, and global levels. The opportunity is there for us to seize. As U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said to young people this week, “this is your United Nations.” Time is of the essence.