Courage

Posted on 22. Dec, 2009 by annac in United Kingdom | View Comments

Friday night, half an hour after Obama’s press conference was met with a stunned silence all over Copenhagen, I found myself back at the conference centre.

This time not on the inside, but standing outside at the exit. Standing in minus three degrees, with the snow falling thickly, alongside hundreds of other young climate activists from around the world.

We were there to say no to the people inside. What Obama had just given us was not good enough. In fact it was worse than anything we had ever dared to imagine. Worse than we had come to Copenhagen with just two weeks before.

We were there because we were angry.

We still have some confusion as to what Copenhagen actually delivered, with different people painting it in different ways.

But the way I see it, and the way the other young people who stood with me on Friday night see it, it is simple…

We have nothing.

We have an ‘accord’ (what does that even mean!) which binds no one to do anything. At the very simplest level we have no binding commitments of emission reductions!

We have a situation where a select group of countries bypassed the UN system and betrayed the rest of the world, then held them to ransom.

They held an exclusive meeting where they decided they could not agree on what everyone was asking for, so they would propose something much weaker. Then tell everyone else this is all they would sign up to and if they wanted money they should sign too.

We have seen this deal be painted in many different ways and blame for it thrown anywhere it will stick.

But for young people around the world it is simple, whoever’s to blame.

It is not good enough.

It does not ensure us a future on this planet.

And that’s why we were outside the conference centre on Friday night.

But as I stood there, the whole crowd chanting around me, shouting at the top of their voices, I found myself getting quieter and quieter. I felt disconnected from everything that was going on.

I was numb.

Numb that this could actually have happened.

I was scared.

Scared of what this meant for our world, scared of what it meant for me and the rest of my life.

As I stood there silently my friend turned round and saw me. She grabbed my hand, held it and we stood there together, holding hands. Her shouting at the top of her lungs, me silent.

Holding hands, even in the face of my deepest emotions I had the courage to remain there, the courage to keep fighting.

We did not get what we wanted, what we needed, from Copenhagen. But we maybe we did get something to build on. And I’m not talking about Obama’s accord.

At Copenhagen we saw courage on many levels.

We saw the courage of vulnerable countries like Tuvalu to stand up for themselves and be heard.

We saw the courage of civil society to raise their voices and be counted in the face of many difficulties.

We saw the courage of individuals to keep fighting.

And this courage is so important.

Because coming out of Copenhagen with so little, courage is what we need now. To fight climate change requires more courage than maybe we have ever witnessed before.

The courage to continue even in the face of failure.

The courage to keep fighting even with the hugeness of the task at hand.

The courage to stand up and be counted whoever you are, however powerful you think you are.

The courage to imagine and build a beautiful and amazing future TOGETHER.

The courage to believe that this is still possible.

Copenhagen may be over, but the fight goes on.

It will take courage to win, but with courage we can, and we will.

And the night goes on…

Posted on 18. Dec, 2009 by annac in United Kingdom | View Comments

Physically
Emotionally
Psychologically

Exhausted

Here in Copenhagen the negotiations are still going on. As we can’t get into the actual negotiations we are all sat in a room in the city centre watching them on a big screen.

But no one really seems to know what’s going on.

Including the people at the negotiations.

Yvo just told everyone there to watch the monitors to find out where the next meeting will be at 10pm!

Then 2 min later he came back to say, no it will be 11pm, so maybe now would be a good time to go get food…seriously.

He looked pretty tired and confused.

These talks are on a downward spiral. Any hope we have had over the last few months is fading. Not a single leader has delivered any leadership….

As the talks continue on way into the night what we are looking at getting out of them is weaker than anything we ever imagined two weeks ago.

Fair, ambitious, binding…..

Not a single one of our demands is looking likely.

Of course we can’t really know exactly what we will get, because at the final hour everything is now going on behind closed doors. But the mood in the rooms we have access to, both inside and outside the conference centre, is defiantly not one of hope.

As the night goes on, all we can say for certain though, is that we just don’t know.

It’s going to be a long night.

Exhaustion will have to wait.

Numb

Posted on 18. Dec, 2009 by annac in United Kingdom | View Comments

Numb

That’s the only word I have to describe how I feel at the minute.

Numb, that today on what is (or should be…) the last day in Copenhagen we are nowhere near where we need to be to secure us a future on our planet.

Not frustrated, not angry, not sad or depressed.

Simply numb.

We just had Obama deliver his speech to the UN.

It changed nothing.

Obama made a nice speech as always, he said the time for talking was over and that it is time to act. But he didn’t offer us anything that would start the action.

We have seen some developments in the last couple of days. The USA have come out with numbers on finance in line with what Gordon Brown said weeks ago. China has made some positive moves on transparency and we have resolved to continue working in two sections thus keeping the Kyoto Protocol.

But on the very basics of what we are doing here. On stopping runaway climate change. We have not done enough.

This whole UNFCCC process makes it seem so complicated.

It’s not.

We need to change the way we live and we need to do it now.

If the politics are what is stopping us doing this then it’s time to change the politics.

But as we watch leader after leader troop across the stage and make statements it’s hard to imagine this change, hard to imagine another way.

And that’s why I’m numb.

Numb because this process has overwhelmed me.

Numb because I have put so much of myself into this process I don’t feel like me anymore.

Numb because the change we need to see seems so far away right now.

Numb because I don’t know what more I can do to change this.

But maybe today numb is better.