Posts by: NikkidHodgson
It’s 11:00 p.m. on a Friday night and I’m sitting in the Qatar National Convention Center helplessly watching as my country blocks and bullies any real progress on a climate deal. I don’t even know what to say anymore. I’m sitting in the ADP plenary, blinking off my exhaustion. Adrenaline is the only thing keeping me from slumping to sleep in my chair. The U.S. takes the floor and I listen long enough to hear them suggest that we remove the word “action” from a sentence referring to “commitments and action.”
I stare blankly at the back of Todd Stern’s head as he expresses his disapproval with language in the text that he says is too similar to the text in the Bali Action Plan. One of my fellow trackers turns in her chair to give me a look so I make my fingers into a gun and point it at my head because that’s how I feel. Like this lack of progress is the gun and climate is the trigger, industry fingers squeezing it tighter and tighter, eventually reaching a point where there is no way to release it without fatal consequences.
Todd Stern is still talking. I leave the room.
When I get back to the blogger’s lounge, they’re screening the plenary on one of the large television screens in the room. I arrive in time to hear the Chinese delegation rip into the U.S. for its suggestion that the language was too similar to the language of the Bali Action Plan. He arches his eyebrows, leaning forward, “So does this mean we cannot use any English words mentioned in Bali Action Plan?”
The atmosphere in the blogger’s lounge is sardonic, tinged with an appreciation of the absurd, heckling the negotiators on screen and punctuating every intervention with an exasperated comment. It’s like the political version of Mystery Science Theatre.
I fall asleep in my chair, pulling my jacket over my head and drifting into an uneasy sleep where I dream of U.S. delegation members, blending reality with the surreal. 1:00 a.m. rolls around and Twitter is exploding with comments and retweets on loss and damage, an area the U.S. is committed to block.
I see Jonathan Pershing in the hall, speaking with members of another delegation. Nobody I recognize, nobody that made the top ten list of negotiators earlier this week. I linger in the hall, but it seems like a waste of time. I want to ask him about the fireworks in Loss and Damage session, but I already know the answer. The U.S. had made its position quite clear on loss and damage, leaning heavily on old talking points, expressing a need for fairness, but having trouble with the language or the methodology or some other excuse enabling developed countries to sidestep responsibility.
It’s nearly three a.m. The fluorescent lighting is making my eyes burn, I’m slumped heavily in my chair, wondering how much longer this is going to drag on and if it’s beyond absurd to still hope that we’ll see some of the financial pledges promised in Copenghagen before another three years passes. I doubt it. The U.S., pointing to a lack of a Congressional budget for 2013-2014, says it’s unable to put any numbers on the table, but those numbers are already on the table. They were put on the table three years ago when both Secretary Clinton and President Obama pledged $100 billion to help developing countries address climate change impacts.
It’s 3:20 a.m. There’s no end in sight. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not the day after that. Because with the sort of deal the U.S. is pushing and the types of actions it’s blocking, there will never really be an end in sight. Only perpetual delays and a mandate focused on delivering too little, too late.
It’s 11:00 p.m. on a Friday night and I’m sitting in the Qatar National Convention Center helplessly watching as my country blocks and bullies any real progress on a climate deal.
Read post →Naderev M. Saño, head of delegation for the Philippines, leans forward over the mic, his voice breaking under the weight of the emotion he is struggling to contain. It’s the closing plenary of the Kyoto Protocol. After nearly two weeks of disappointing inaction, rumors circulating about the failed leadership of the COP presidency, and the continued unwillingness of the U.S. to increase its ambition or financial pledges, the frustration at COP18 is palpable.
I’m struggling not to tune out most of what is going on, droning voices and stale positions. So when the Philippines delegate begins speaking, his voice catching on the emotion choking his throat, it pulls me forward. Because I feel what he is feeling.
As he voices his concern about the text and about the struggles of his people in dealing with a dramatic natural disaster, I cease to notice anything else in the room. Only the powerful emotion behind his words, his appeal to the world and its leaders, his reminder of what this is really about.
“The outcome of our work is not about what our political masters want. It is about what is demanded of us by 7 billion people. I appeal to all, please, no more delays, no more excuses. Please, let Doha be remembered as the place where we found the political will to turn things around. Please, let 2012 be remembered as the year the world found the courage to find the will to take responsibility for the future we want. I ask of all of us here, if not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where?’ (Scroll down for video clip).
I swallow my tears, trying to hold my emotion back as it rises up from my chest. This is the delegation I want, the delegation that reflects the urgency the American youth-the world’s youth-so desperately want from their leaders. When I sit back, reflecting on how the world would be if my delegation was more like the Filipino delegation, the chasm between what is and what should be is staggering and the weight of that reality burdens my heart and my conscience. When the U.S. asks what its youth wants from it, it’s this. This moment, this humanity, this leadership.
If my government took a leadership position like this one, Todd Stern’s words would bring tears of joy similar to the relief we felt breaking over us in 2009. Equity would be addressed, and common but differentiated responsibilities would not be a tattered argument dangling from the fingers of the disenfranchised. We would stop shirking our responsibility, we would increase our ambition, deal fairly with the countries burdened with the consequences of our actions, follow through on the financial pledges we’ve made, and our actions would enable and inspire an agreement that will pull us back away from the point of no return, a point we have nearly reached.
As the delegate from the Philippines left the room, the youth stood on either side of him, clapping as he walked by. He stopped, hugging each one of us and I broke down into tears as soon as he reached me. All of the frustration and hopes I have for my own country, all of the sadness my optimism tries to hide, broke loose. Because this was human, this was real. It was none of the false progress that my own delegates offer. No easy nonchalance, no careful distance, no empty words. This was real, emotional, reflecting the fear, sadness, and frustration that all of us hold so deeply within our hearts.
This afternoon I will go to a press conference. I will listen to Todd Stern, with the exhaustion hanging over his head, pressing down on his shoulders, as he tries to convince us we are making progress on an emissions reduction that is as inadequate now as it was when we first agreed to it. Sympathy stirs, a solidarity, a feeling that we-in principle-are on the same side. I imagine he must be exhausted, wrangling what little room he can from a Congress I am ashamed to call my own. Last night I felt a flicker of hope because he went so far as to mention equity and CBDR in his speech. Now I am ashamed that this elicited a flicker of hope rather than a wave of indignation that it’s taken us this long to simply mention it with any degree of openness or willingness to engage.
My country’s mandate in these negotiations has ceased to reflect the ideals that burn so brightly within my heart so I choose to follow a country more in line with the ambition, equity, and leadership that my country, my people, are fully capable of but consistently refuse to act on.
I stand with the Philippines.
Naderev M. Saño, head of delegation for the Philippines, leans forward to the mic, his voice breaking under the weight of the emotion he is struggling to contain.
Read post →My favorite part of the day during the COP is sitting in the morning and watching everyone come streaming into the convention center. Negotiators, civil society, ministers, media. A hundred languages bounce off the corridors, men and women from all over the world walk briskly across the polished floors. We’re all so different and collectively so beautiful. Have you ever just sat and watched people going about their day at the hub of an international conference? It’s astounding and profoundly inspiring and breathtaking.
In the midst of a frustrating and tense negotiation process, it’s so easy to feel overwhelmed and exasperated. We all have our coping mechanisms to deal with the mounting anger and depression surrounding the prospect of inaction. Fifteen minute anxiety-ridden crying sessions in the bathroom, spontaneous dance parties in the Blogger’s Lounge, sardonic comments about the negotiators, collapsing into hysterical laughter, angry blost posts we regret as soon as we hit publish, and then there is this. This moment in the morning when I allow myself a chance to look around and marvel at this gathering, to allow my natural faith in humanity and adoration of our diversity to push out the thoughts that say we can’t do this, that we won’t.
I know this blog post won’t provide any illuminating insight into the negotiaton process or inspire my negotiators to push back against a mandate at odds with the mandate we want and need, at odds with the mandate we voted for when we put Obama back in office. But as I sit here, quietly watching everyone rush around, absorbed in their own thoughts and worries, I can’t help wanting to reach out, not with exasperated and snarky comments about how slow, sluggish, and absolutely ridiculous this process has become, but with something else, something more akin to the undaunted inspiration that surges through my veins when I watch a sampling of our world collect in these halls.
There are so many reasons to feel discouraged, anxious, and angry, but just beyond this, there is something more. Something that says we can do this and we will, not just because we must, but because we are inspired to rise to the challenge. Inspired to reach out and push back against outdated and unhelpful mandates, push back against inequity, push back against the self-absorbed and short-sighted positions, and instead embrace the reality. It’s true we’re in trouble, but we’re all in this together and that is an amazing and awe-inspiring thing, a profound solidarity that can-should we choose- lead us out of this mess and into something that better reflects the best of our kind instead of the worst.
There are some that will probably roll their eyes at my hope, my optimism, my idealism. I know there are a thousand reasons why it’s unwarranted, but looking around at the people pouring into the convention center, at my fellow trackers, their undaunted determination to pour everything they have into this, to take risks, lose sleep, and put their lives on hold to pursue any action within reach, I feel completely justified in my optimism.
We’re all in this together and that is an amazing and awe-inspiring thing, a profound solidarity that can-should we choose- lead us out of this mess and into something that better reflects the best of our kind instead of the worst.
Read post →
A few people have asked what sort of relationship I have with my negotiators, if I get to follow them into closed sessions or if I have some sort of special status with them.
The short answer to that question is: No. I don’t. At all.
In fact, yesterday Todd Stern gave a press conference and while I would love to tell you my impressions of it, I couldn’t get in. I stood outside trying to figure out whether I should hover near the door or just accept defeat and watch it online. When the U.S. delegation approached, I perked up, hoping they would recognize me. Todd Stern waved. I waved back, hopeful. Until I realized he wasn’t waving at me. Connie Hedegaard was standing behind me. Oops.
My relationship with my negotiators primarily consists of me running after them in the halls, stopping them whenever I can, sitting directly behind them in open sessions, and barging into the U.S. delegation office because I heard Todd Stern had arrived.
For the most part they regard me with a bemused wariness. I am not shy by nature, but barging into a room and announcing yourself as a negotiator tracker is not without awkwardness. Standing in the center of the room as everyone turns to stare at me, I explain who I am and what I’m doing. I get the sense that they find it mildly amusing. When Jonathan Pershing introduces me as a tracker to a member of the U.S. delegation, she responds by jokingly asking where she can get one. When I introduce myself to another delegate, he smiles indulgently and comments, “you know you’ve made it when you have a tracker.” When I introduce myself to Todd Stern, a woman asks if I’m there to give him a hard time. I laugh and say, “yes.”
But that’s not my primary objective. My objective is to follow the negotiations and to observe my negotiators, to ensure that they are working to promote the climate deal that our world and our country so desperately needs. So in answer to the question of whether or not I’m here to give Todd Stern and Jonathan Pershing a hard time, I guess that depends on them. If they are here to stall the negotiations, to snub any discussion of equity because they think Americans won’t buy it, or to promote the interests of the fossil fuel industry over the interests of the people, then yes, I am most certainly here to give them a hard time.
But I would prefer not to. I would prefer to be on glowing terms with my negotiators and have only positive things to say about their work. As much as I enjoy the adrenaline and wonkiness of this process, I would prefer not to be obsessively following the negotiations for the sole reason that my country has consistently failed to do or pursue anything beyond its own industry interests.
A week into the COP, I have little to no expectation that Todd Stern or Jonathan Pershing will directly provide any useful information, but I’ll be there anyway, hovering on the edges of conversations and chasing them down whenever I can, tripping over my words in my haste to spit out questions while walking briskly down the halls and awkwardly waving to people who weren’t even waving at me in the first place. Just, you know, keeping it real.
My relationship with my negotiators primarily consists of me running after them in the halls, stopping them whenever I can, sitting directly behind them in open sessions, and barging into the U.S. delegation office.
Read post →If you missed the press conference Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern gave today, don’t worry. One because he said absolutely nothing new and two because the Department of State has already posted comprehensive coverage of what the U.S. delegation is doing in Doha.
You have to admit, this new level of honesty about what they’re up to is rather refreshing. At least we can now confirm what we’ve known for quite some time. In spite of Obama’s grand words, U.S. efforts to address climate change remain lackluster and uninspired and nobody on the U.S. delegation is saying anything of substance.
The takeaway for what to expect from the U.S? Obama’s words are the only thing that’s been updated. Everything else remains the same.
The Department of State provides everything a journalist needs to know on what the U.S. delegation is up to in Doha for COP18.
Read post →
