Thursday night ROAR!
Posted on 05. Nov, 2009 by annac in E.U., United Kingdom
A moment to reflect,
to really draw things together,
to work out and think about what’s going on here,
these things are hard to come by at the UN.
So I have sat down in the conference centre (on the floor because there’s no desks left) and forced myself to do it! As I write this I am trying to draw together what has been an intense couple of days, get to the essence of where we currently stand in these negotiations and work out how this makes me feel.
When I last left you one half of the negotiations had been suspended because of a walk out by Africa. This went on until late Tuesday evening, when eventually after much diplomatic wrangling negotiations started again.
But this does not mean things are going well.
Some could say things at this point are looking pretty bleak. Because this week the whole world seems to have come out and decided, whatever happens, we will not get a ‘legally’ binding agreement in Copenhagen. Instead we will see a ‘politically’ binding one…
This is UN bubble stuff. Legally binding, politically binding, I’m sure you’re thinking what does this actually mean, why is it so important?
Because politically binding means countries can say anything, and not have to do anything. There’s nothing keeping them to it.
It means we have spent the majority of my life negotiating a pretty statement, that sounds good (well if even that), but actually has no real substance, leads to no real action. Whatever the targets they eventually come up with, they don’t have to keep to any of them!
Politically binding means nothing, it’s a CoP out (please excuse the UN pun…). The details of the most optimistic outlook try to claim they can make it legally binding in a year. But 2009 is already too late for this!
This morning I had another meeting with Jan and she is now talking in this way, indeed a few hours after that meeting our very own Ed Milliband has come out and basically said the same thing (sorry I was too slow with my blog to give you this inside intelligence).
This means that we the UK, one of the most ambitious of the developed countries in these talks, (yes hard to believe but true), have now lowered ambition. It was so low already i don’t think any of us believed it could get any lower. But yet again they have proved us wrong!
Jan and I’m sure Ed believe that this is the politically reality of what we can do with the time remaining, that’s why they’ve said it.
I respectfully choose to disagree. I believe in a different reality.
F**K the political reality. (sorry mum!)
But this is about the reality of survival. The reality of life on earth!
Yesterday we got the chance to ask Yvo de Boer about this new outlook.
I asked him that if this had happened when he was 24, and he was looking at this result in Copenhagen, which at the end of the day would not secure him a future on the planet, would he be happy with it then? (incidently when I’m tired, frustrated and despairing I apparently sound incredibly Northern, according to several people in the room!)
But anyway, I seemed to stump him,
He thought about it, scratched his head, and then said,
“When I was 24 I think I was a fully signed up member of the communist party. And I would have to say no, I wouldn’t have been happy.”
And I think that sums it up really. What they are now saying is a good result for Copenhagen may be a good result for the political climate.
But it is not a good result for the actual climate.
Therefore it’s not a good result for me, or for you.
I’m sorry, though writing this was supposed to help me gather my thoughts, I’m not sure it has. This is a very long blog post and I’ve still not summed it up.
But it’s 9.30pm, I’m still in the conference centre, and the only word I have to describe this situation, the way I’m feeling right now, is…
ROAR! (my friend Josh put this in mind because he went as a dragon on Halloween…)
The situation is frustrating, soul destroying and disempowering.
ROAR!
But maybe on Thursday night ROAR is ok…
Because ROAR has energy.
ROAR has passion.
Time to work out what to do with this ROAR to change the reality we seem to be faced with.
This is not my reality yet!
ROAR!
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Forgiven in circumstances!!! Mum