Editor’s note: Douglas Fischer is in Bonn with a delegation of Montana State University students. We’ll publish a selection of their observations and assessments over the next week. Follow them online at #climateclass.

BONN – Ambition is a recurring point of tension at the United Nations climate talks.

Activists keep pushing it. Scientists have made pretty clear we don’t have enough of it. Those of us living a carbon-rich Western lifestyle have built-in pushback against it.

That conflict is how I found myself Tuesday at the back of a room packed with activists and other representatives, listening as Harro van Asselt, senior research fellow at the Stockholm Environmental Institute, called for more inclusion of “non-party” stakeholders in the UN climate talks.