COP19 part II: The little UN thing that could

Security is tight here at COP19. The kind of tight you’d get in any European airport – belt off, shoes off, jacket and change into the big tupperware dish on the conveyor belt. It’s not as tight as the cavity searches you get in US airports, and it’s not tight enough to keep the bullshit out.

In fairness though, they did manage to keep some of it out. Directly outside of the circus tent that is the Stadion Narodowy they’ve got an electric car in a big plastic box. It’s pretty much the only symbol that the COP19 might have anything to do with promoting clean energy. The car runs on volts, but as a colleague pointed out, so does the entire country of Poland. 90% of Poland’s electrical grid is powered by coal, the dirtiest of the dirties. This makes that electric car the first ever family sedan which runs mostly on coal power.

Ironies come cheap around here, but this one seems to have escaped everyone’s notice.

The branding of COP19 is hard and fierce around the Stadion, but virtually non-existent anywhere else in the city, and particularly lacking in the airport. In fact, every time I’ve been in an airport there has been some kind of indication of something – anything – happening in the place the airport is in – from the Junior Hockey championships in Ottawa, to Honouring People with Oddly Shaped Heads in Cape Verdi. Here, where they are hosting an international climate summit? Nada.

Not that the branding was thought out with very much imagination anyway. Some words saying that this summit brought to you by ‘COP19’ blah, blah. ‘UN’ is in there somewhere, too. Then, in trendy scrawled writing, what seemed to be: ‘I Cate’. I spent about two minutes wondering who Cate was before I got a closer look and realized it said, ‘I Care’.

They give you badges to indicate who you are here. It’s partly so that people know who to ignore, and partly so the staff know who you are in case you do something weird like laugh, or pee in the paper recycle bin. The badges come in three colours. The press get green ones which say, ‘PRESS’, the NGOs get yellow ones which say, ‘NON-GOVERNMENTAL’, and weirdly, the policy mavens get ones which say, ‘PARTY’.

Not only did it give the impression that the policy-makers were having a good time, but I had to resist the urge to give them two thumbs up and say, “Hell, yeah,” when I passed them.

I stood in a silent vigil this morning with a bunch of other NGOs. A long line of us positioned ourselves along the entrance corridor to the stadium proper. We all either had pictures of the Arctic 30, or signs telling people to take a lead from the 30 and get their shit together. People gawked, news agencies showed up, photographers and videographers showed up. Diplomats looked on. Some smirked, some didn’t. Some people didn’t know what we were doing, others gave a us a raised-fist salute.

But right in the final minutes of the hour-long vigil, a small figure went by. His hand was on his heart and he gave us each a nod of thanks as he passed along the long line of silent protestors. It was Yeb Sano, the head of Philippines delegation. The guy who gave the only speech worth listening to on the first day of the summit – pleading with the world to not let his islands and people drown. I held a few different signs for the hour I was there, but at that moment I was at the end of the long line holding a sign which said, “Do you have their courage?” I made eye-contact with Sano for a split second, and I deflated like a balloon. This would be the third day of his fast to try to get policy-makers to get moving on mitigating climate change.

In that moment, I thought to myself, “Christ, he must be so hungry right now.”