Enough time to wine and dine
December 11, 2008
I am writing to you as I sit on the floors of the main plenary halls on Friday 11th December 12.30pm.
At exactly 12.03 pm, the main plenary hall where the opening of the high level negotiations had begun, the lights dimmed to a romantic hue, and the projector screens displayed warming images of deer, rabbits, ducks and other such cute wildlife. How odd, How odd indeed! And if this wasn’t bizarre enough, in the top left hand corner of the plenary hall, that holds over 2000 people, a fully suited symphony orchestra struck up their chords and began to serenade the crowd with their soothing rhythms.
I mean, ofcourse they have time for a little concerto – we’ve only been waiting ten days for these talks to get going, we’ve only got a year to ensure we have a strong and effective climate deal, we’re only about a million miles away from where we need to be. Yes, dear Lord, please, play some more music! Im sure that within a day and a half we will be able to backtrack and resolve these hideously pointless discussions to something more amenable.
Or maybe they know, as much as we are beginning to realise, that these talks have pushed us to nowhere.
But now I say that, and the lights have been brought back up and the stage is occupied by the Environment minister of Grenada, who is speaking of the long term vision of small island states.
He speaks of 350 ppm CO2 eq
He speaks of keeping temperature increase to lower the 1.5 degrees
He speaks of equity and an understanding of the historic responsibility that Annex-1 countries have to the global south.
These are words that we need to hear.
Maybe if we can speak them louder, more often and with as much fortitude as we can muster, we will see something incredible happen over the next year.
