Obviously, you’re not suited for three dimensional chess. Perhaps three dimensional Candy Land would be more your speed.
Today marks the beginning of the end at the UN climate talks here in Lima. We still don’t know when we’ll reach the end of the end, but bets range between noon tomorrow and noon Sunday.
It’s a game of speed chess struggling to avoid stalemate with only minutes left on the clock. But it’s a very strange game of chess indeed. There are 195 different players, and the board is something else entirely. It’s four dimensional chess racing against the clock (so, uh, five dimensional?) and the winner gets to determine all our futures - until next year, when we play the same game again and expect a different result.
We are still all mad people here.
More importantly, it’s not a fair game of chess at all. I’ve written about this before, but a little extended metaphor might help to show just how unjust, inequitable and plain unfair the climate talks are.
You’re used to chess games where every player starts with the same 16 pieces. It’s not like that here. A few select players show up with seven hundred. Others can only bring one solitary pawn.
The board isn’t a regular eight by eight grid of alternating black and white. It’s all shades of grey, and covered in hills, slopes and even cliffs. Worse, there’s not just one board. There are several running side by side, with arcane names like “SBSTA” and “ADP”. Pieces can jump from one board to another, but no one seems to quite know how, or when.
Where you start the game depends on where you ended up in last year’s match and what secret deals you’ve cut since then, with a bit of a modifier thrown in for the other smaller games lined up each year. Some players, however, seem to end up in totally different places between one year and the next, and there are rumours of threats and bribes.
Luckily, most of the players have twenty years experience, so they’re starting to get a hang of it. But then things get weirder.
Just when you think the game’s going well, the referee steps in and totally rearranges all the pieces. With no warning except a momentary online leak, the whole game changes. Some boards just vanish, due to reappear in 2016. Moments earlier, you thought you were inches away from taking your opponents’ kings.
Now, you’re driven back into a corner, with only pawns left guarding your king.
Other players who you think are allies suddenly appear wearing flash new suits and turn on you. Your pieces disappear just as you’re about to move them, even though it’s not your opponents’ turn. The referee shrugs and says their flights were booked home. And the referee won’t let you move other pawns of yours, cryptically telling you that they’ve fallen asleep. You decide to buy them a coffee, but all the coffee shops are closed.
You begin to get emotional, because you’re one of those poorer players who could only afford a few pieces. One of the richest players comes up to you and explains that if you fight onto a stalemate instead of accepting checkmate, he’ll put the rent up on your house so you just can’t afford it. And he’ll do that tomorrow.
Trouble is, if you’re checkmated more than a couple of times - no one’s sure exactly how many - then the mad Gods behind the game have decided that they will wait five, ten, or maybe even twenty years - and then burn down your house.
The UN climate talks are a chess game created by a drafting committee including Alfred Hitchcock, Arthur Schopenhauer and Hunter S Thompson. And you have to play them every year.
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