December 11th, 2009
As the negotiations heat up behind closed doors, the supposedly open COP process remains suspended as the temperatures continued to drop outside as winter draws near in Copenhagen.
There were several interesting quotes today:
“This is the largest and most complicated international process that has ever been – because there are so many issues all at the same time.”
“It is chaos from which order emerges with many many people talking to each other”
“The government can lead but it can only lead so far. The biggest thing missing for the US to take stronger action is a large grassroots movement at home creating the political will necessary to move this issue in Congress.”
and finally,
“If you ever think you’re too small to make a difference, just remember a time when you’ve been stuck in a room with one mosquito.”
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December 10th, 2009
While negotiations in Copenhagen in open session and behind closed doors struggled with difficult conflicts, my first choice for the quote of day is this excerpt from President Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech which I hope inspires everyone at COP15 to rise above their politics and seek common ground.
“…a just peace includes not only civil and political rights — it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.
It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine and shelter they need to survive. It does not exist where children can’t aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.
And that’s why helping farmers feed their own people — or nations educate their children and care for the sick — is not mere charity. It’s also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, more famine, more mass displacement — all of which will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and environmental activists who call for swift and forceful action — it’s military leaders in my own country and others who understand our common security hangs in the balance.
Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. All these are vital ingredients…. And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, the determination, the staying power, to complete this work without something more — and that’s the continued expansion of our moral imagination; an insistence that there’s something irreducible that we all share.”
It is appalling to witness the long lists at COP15 of damages both happening and foreseen – from the acidification of the oceans to the desertification of lands; from the loss of biodiversity to the melting of the Arctic. What is it we cannot understand when we hear these problems? How can we keep dithering over the costs as the costs continue to mount? Is it because the suffering and lives lost are not perceived to be our own?
It seems obvious that we have lost touch with not just our moral imaginations – but with the interconnectedness of life on earth itself.
Which brings me to my second choice for quote of the day:
“Tug on anything at all and you’ll find it connected to everything else in the universe.” John Muir
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December 10th, 2009
“Will the deal be a good enough deal? They are heading toward doing something and no one who is party to is it going to want to say it’s a bad deal, even if it is.”
Background
Momentum is building for a deal – Obama’s attendance raises the pressure to complete something. But will it be a good enough deal? Whatever is done, they won’t say it’s a bad deal. But that’s the concern on the floor today where negotiations have been suspended except for private efforts by the Secretariat to pull the parties back to the official table.
Private drafts of possible outcomes assessing the level of greenwashing are circulating along with what to do if the deal isn’t “good enough.”
As readers may know, the science is telling us we need to do more while the politics is careening toward whatever can be got. I don’t see the US talking about how much is really enough because too many in the Senate don’t even think there’s any problem. A Republican delegation is headed here to make waves about how this is really a scam to get US taxpayers to foot the bill. Meanwhile, the physics of climate change does not negotiate at all. Silly humans.
cdc from COP15
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December 7th, 2009
“We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen
not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to
seize opportunity from the greatest failure of modern politics.”
Newspapers in 45 countries , December 7 2009
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December 6th, 2009
“Each of the great social achievements of recent decades has come about not because of government proclamations, but because people organized, made demands and made it good politics for governments to respond. It is the political will of the people that makes and sustains the political will of governments.”
James Grant, Executive Director, UNICEF
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