COP19 part III: The little UN thing that could

“It is the 19^th COP, Mr. President, but we might as well stop counting, because my country refuses to accept that a COP30 or a COP40 will be needed to solve climate change.”

--Yeb Sano, Head of Philippines Delegation. 11/11/13

There are people that spend their lives devoted to the next COP. They have read all the briefs, reports addendums and statements put out by national and international institutions which have been stripped down to their bare acronyms.

They speak legalese, politicese and consider reading things like, “In accordance with the “Guidelines for the preparation of national communications by Parties included in Annex I to the Convention, Part II: UNFCCC reporting guidelines on national communications”, at a minimum Parties shall report a ‘with measures’ scenario, and may report ‘without measures’ and ‘with additional measures’ scenarios. If a Party chooses to report ‘without measures’ and/or ‘with additional measures’ scenarios they are to use tables 6(b) and/or 6(c), respectively,” a perfectly acceptable way to pass time.

I am not one of these people.

The result is that I never have any idea what anyone is talking about. I recently watched two of my colleagues have a conversation with so many numbers, acronyms and referrals to obscure briefs I started to feel my brain slide down my gullet. That’s when one of them broke off and said to me, “You know, I often have to have someone there to explain to me what’s going on.”

If he doesn’t know what people are talking about, where does that leave me? Post-lobotomy comes to mind.

The halls, galleries, salons and auditoriums are filled with these people. At least, everywhere except the press room. This is where most of us spend our days; either hammering away at a keyboard, staring blankly into the middle distance, or curled in the foetal position under our desks.

Admittedly, I haven’t actually visited a plenary session yet. I’ve only watched them on the large TV in the press room. This alone has firmed my intention to get steaming drunk before I actually do. However, I have asked around for the inside scoop on these things. This is the way a plenary session appears to work:

Anywhere from five to 500 people all sit in an auditorium facing a raised platform. They are the delegates; chosen by their respective country to represent their country’s interest. They have been chosen, not only because they own a suit, but because they have achieved high marks in their respective country’s Stubborn Nitpickers Test. Upon the raised platform are other people in suits who moderate. There are about eight of them. Everyone is there to come to a decision about something.

Are you starting to see a problem here?

Mere mortals, like you and me – and as long as you are NON-GOVERNMENTAL, PRESS or PARTY (see here) – are allowed to attend the open session. This is the time when they “discuss”, let’s say, a proposal made by Brazil (a developed country) about how much cash they’d give to Micronesia (a developing country) if all the islands were sucked into a sinkhole due to ocean-floor mining for minerals. The answer, by the way, would be: None.

After a long introduction by the lead moderator, he offers the floor to anyone who wants to comment on the proposal. Inevitably and unfortunately, someone always does. But before they get into the actual comment they must, by some unspoken agreement, give a long, and often Oscar-worthy thanks to everyone in the room, the organizers, the country they’re in and their home country. If they are following-up on someone else’s comment there is a diplomatic, deeply heartfelt thanks to the previous delegate’s contribution before they proceed to eviscerate them with the same zest as a hyena with an antelope carcass:

“I respect the cherished, esteemed, well-adjusted and highly intelligent delegate from Thailand’s comment concerning the fact that he too comes from a small island with the same challenges, such as being entirely submerged by a tidal-wave, but he is a worthless piece of toilet slime who knows nothing and should be immediately removed from the room for stealing my oxygen.”

When they finally do get around to the actual comment it’s usually some nitpicky stuff about the use of the term “clean water” instead of “potable water” or “life-raft” instead of “life-boat”.

All five to 500 people get to do this, or comment on someone else’s nitpickyness with nitpickyness of their own. Or do both. This is probably why they need so many moderators; five to hold the delegate down, two to pry their mouth open and the last to hold their tongue still.

Whenever someone comments, the image I have in my mind is of throwing a Mexican jumping bean into a packed chicken coup.

After this goes on for a while, the moderators kick everyone out of the room who doesn't have a lanyard with a badge saying “PARTY” hanging from it. Naturally, I have no idea what goes on at this point. I do know that whatever it is, it can go until the wee hours of the morning. Maybe this is when the actual PARTY activates.

It could be just me, but 500 people packed in a room, at three a.m., after nine hours of discussion, with entirely different agendas, trying to work out the details of a single sentence, doesn't really sound like an ideal decision-making process...

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.”

COP19 part I: The little UN thing that could

On the way to the Stadion Narodowy – the national stadium in Warsaw hosting the COP 19 UN Climate Talks – I pointed out to a colleague that the building looked like the cup part of a cupcake. She said it looked like a circus tent.

From a metaphorical point of view, she’s mostly right. The spectacle element is definitely there. You have an audience raptly caught up in the chattering of overly-dressed Masters of Ceremony. You have the thrill of listening to high-wire phrases like, “You know very well that no-one expects us all contribute the same level of effort in this quest for better tomorrow [SIC],” and, “We are all aware of the role of the Kyoto Protocol in the mitigation effects deployed by parties listed in Annex I and the importance of maintaining the continuity of the mitigation procedures adopted by those parties.”

The circus animals would be the beleaguered whipped journalists. They are forced to walk circles around a stadium the size of a large city block, hoping to get statements from officials which carry slightly more meaning than the types of things you get from athletes: “We played hard and we’ll continue to play hard and keep up the offence and try to keep it in the zone and maybe stop climate change. Thanks Bob.”

It’s worth noting that the journalists, the most reliable source for the rest of the world to know what’s going on, are kept in a room which is so far away from where anything is actually happening, they may as well be in Gdansk.

I asked another colleague if the other COPs were like this – with the great distance between the press and the plenary rooms. She said, “Yes.”

I said, “Okay, next time we’re all bringing bicycles.”

And like most circuses, or any place with a captive audience, you even have ridiculously overpriced ‘sandwiches’ which contain nothing but a leaf of lettuce.

With head of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres, considering speaking at a concurrently running ‘Coal Summit’ in Warsaw, and the hastily pulled blog post by Polish COP 19 organizers which said a melting arctic is an opportunity to “save time and energy” – it seems the circus might have bled out onto the streets.

Frankly, considering the fact that a ‘Coal summit’ is even allowed to happen during COP19, or that certified morons are organizing the thing in the first place, suggest the Polish Government is inhaling its own fumes.

The circus metaphor pretty much ends there, though.

You see, at a circus, even if it’s a clown shot out of a cannon, things actually get done. Right now, listening to long droning platitudes as everyone thanks everyone else for showing up, and for being in Poland, and for being themselves, and for being themselves while in Poland, the whole thing strikes me as going nowhere.

This is largely because everybody is pretty much saying the same thing: Something bad is happening to the planet, something needs to be done, that something needs a plan, but first we need to plan how we’re going to plan that something. Let’s all agree to plan to make a plan to deal with that something.

Truth is, the only person that said anything worth listening to was the head of Philippines delegation. You see, his brother is pulling bodies out of the rubble after a mega-Typhoon (“mega” being the new addition to anything which is, apparently, not bad enough) turned vast parts of his island into wet debris. He’s pretty sure that climate change is the cause of it. And he’s pretty sure the people making plans to make a plan about something are complicit by sitting around squabbling about minutia and personal responsibility.

Granted, it is early days. Something long and sausage-shaped may come out of all of this glad-handing and platitude-wielding. Who knows, maybe they’ll fire a delegate out of a cannon up into the coal-choked Warsaw sky.

Maybe, but I doubt it. 

Would you like fries with that?

Usually a bit of research goes into writing these blogs. This time, however, to get the scope of my life for the past little while it’s just a matter of going through my gmail inbox.

Yesterday, I got two rejection emails from people that won’t hire me. Two isn’t a record, but it’s close. I think my record is four rejection emails in a single day. I think that I’ll know I’ve hit the big time when I get seven in a single day. Then I’ll really know I’m going nowhere.

It’s no easy thing to get emails that say some variation of, “blah, blah, blah we’re not taking your application past this stage, blah, blah, blah,” like I’m competing in the the Dakar Road Rally. In fact, it’s very difficult to get any email at all. I figure I send about an average of five to six applications a day, for two months — some days I send many more, some days, like today, I send a lot less. That’s about 300 different businesses who have rejected my application.

And before you get on my case about me not sending out enough applications, understand this: Each business needs to be researched, each cover letter needs to be tailored and meticulously proof-read, and each addressee needs to be found. I feel I have to address my emails and cover letters to someone. This is a lot more difficult than it sounds. It’s a matter of sifting through the names, if they are available, which they’re often not, and finding the right person to address. That same person usually doesn’t want to be discovered because then someone might accidently try to ask them for a job.

Anyway, I have about 18-20 rejections in my inbox. I’m not entirely sure of the number exactly, it’s too goddamned depressing to try to closely examine, so that’s my estimate. That’s about a six percent return on my work — and that’s just rejections.

Yesterday was special because I flew into a bloody rage. The kind of rage where I scream and punch walls. The kind of rage that nobody has really seen, because I make sure I’m alone when I have them.

I got a special rejection last night. It said this:

Hi Arin,

With this e-mail we would like to thank you again for your application.

Erik has had a pleasant call with you but unfortunately we won’t take you to the next round.

Main reason is we’re not confident enough this job will keep you challenged for the next couple of years.

Thanks again for your time and all the best with your career.

Anne Marie

This one stung, because the interview had gone very well. It was for a job in Breda, Holland —  writing lessons about how to use software designed for people that work in the hotel industry. It was over Skype, and it seemed mutually agreeable. Even the internet connection was consistent. The only problem was the incredibly loud drilling that started on the opposite wall of my room as soon as the interview started. I had head-phones, so that was taken care of. To the interviewer, however, it must have looked and sounded like I was in a white box underneath a major highway.

Every interview I’ve had — three in total, a single percentage return on my work— has had something idiotic happen. The first one, I was so eager to get the initial firm-handshake-and-eye-contact thing right, I ended up awkwardly locking fingers with the man, like two morons trying to have a thumb war. The interview, which lasted 15 more minutes — after the People From the Planet Gergblatz greeting — went downhill from there.

The second interview was a hell of a lot better. It was a double grilling by two people, and I fielded every question with grace and aplomb. I was thoughtful and articulate even with the annoying question, “Can you tell me some of your weaknesses?” (“Why, yes I can. I’m a serial rapist. So you could say my weakness is vaginas.”). Everybody was happy with everybody and they seemed to be impressed with me. Then it came time to write the test. 

I had 45 minutes to  proofread a document and correct the errors therein. It was a test, so I was left on my own in room and given the opportunity to concentrate in silence. Silence, except for a guy that kept barging into the office to demand answers for vague questions. The first time, it was to ask why I was there. The second time, it was to see when I would be leaving. The third time, it was to ask who had booked the room for me. Throughout the whole test I could also hear the hysterical giggling of someone who had obviously been sucking on nitrous-oxide throughout her high-pitched conversation with a jack-hammer. Apparently, sometime during the test, I didn’t notice that Romania wasn’t in the Middle East, and I blew it.

I didn’t complain to them because the distractions could have been part of the test — which actually speaks volumes about the amount of self-doubt and mystical second-guessing which goes into every interview — so I’m complaining to you.

Granted, I did have two interviews prior to this recent concerted search for work. One, I blew because I think I may have been over-confident. The other, I blew because they told me point-blank that I was over-qualified.

Which brings me back to yesterday’s rejection which almost caused me to have an aneurism.  Specifically the line, “...we’re not confident enough this job will keep you challenged…”

To me, this means that I’m not stupid enough for the position, and that they — by trawling crack dens and lobotomy outpatient wards — are looking for someone stupider.  This flies in the face of any logical hiring scheme aside from talent searches for reality-show contestants. Somebody, probably me, was paid a visit by the bullshit fairy.

The previous interview I had — the one where I screwed-up the handshake — the guy made it pretty clear throughout that the job was too much of a challenge for me. I actually felt better about this. At least I knew that I had to get better at something. It caused me to re-arrange what I thought I was capable of, it also taught me how to handle the next interview — namely, to have some good questions and answers ready, and to aim a little better with my hand.

The over-qualified argument is the most unhelpful response you can get. It leaves you impotently seething because you don’t learn anything aside from the relative merits of banging your head against a wall until you reach the intelligence level of asparagus, thus increasing your hireability.

I almost wrote back, “Presumably, if it’s not enough of a challenge for me, I’ll hit the ground running and be able to improve on the quality of my work from there. It’s better for you, in that respect, to hire someone that can actually do  things. But if you want someone that sees every task you give them as a challenge; like turning on a computer, or not shitting in the waste-paper basket, then good luck running your business into the dirt.” 

I didn’t, naturally. I said, thank you for the email, re-iterated why I believed the work wouldn’t be a challenge, and signed off with, “Best Regards”.

This narrow space between “too challenging” and “not challenging enough” doesn’t, of course, exist in the real world. It’s not a tangible number that can be measured and then played within the field of its borders. It’s totally science-fiction, created by a business acumen that relies on double-speak and political correctness in order to convey a message that is totally meaningless.

Monster.ca, a grand and world-renowned employment board, sites 6 of the best— read: most honest — reasons why I didn’t get the job:

REASON 1. None Of Us Liked You

REASON 2. You’re Not Attractive Enough

REASON 3. You’re Much Too Attractive

REASON 4. We Hired The Vice-President’s Brother-In-Law Instead

REASON 5. We Intended To Hire An Insider All Along

REASON 6. We Found Someone Who’ll Let Us Exploit Them

This, to me, sounds about right. But, it is also something which is totally out of your ability to control. As a matter of fact, that’s the crux of job hunting. Aside from the incredible amounts of self-doubt,  uncertainty, soul-sucking disappointment and general Anton The Great-style mind-play, it’s the fact that you have no control over it. All you have control over is quantity and quality of job applications, and not turning into a gardening tool during the interview. Your fate — long term — lies in the hands of people that have met you for a moment, and that is affected by  whatever mood they happen to be in at the time. Worse yet, you’ll never know their reasoning either way.

With so much uncertainty you start to fill in the blanks with psychopathic mysticism. At least, I do. Was I wearing magical socks on that day? Did ignoring the homeless guy upset my karmic balance? Did thinking bad thoughts result in my inbox being empty today? Will telling people about the interview that went well jinx my chances? For that last one, apparently, yes.

Frankly, I should know better. After what happened with my radio job in B.C., I concluded that nothing means nothing, and everything means nothing .There is no meaning, there is no rhyme or reason, everything is chance, and to quote the great Mark Knopfler, “Sometimes you’re a Louisville Slugger, sometimes you’re the ball.” 

Ironically, in that case, things turned around for me when I basically gave up and returned to Ottawa. Then Opa died, and everything changed. This is in direct opposition to the philosophy that continued hard work will get you somewhere; to never give up, to keep plodding on. Like I’m doing these day. Well, not today, but for the past while.

Anyway, crazy mysticism aside, your fate lies in the hands of people that, more often than not, have never met you. They’ve based their decision on a peripheral glance at the very carefully calculated and time-consuming cover letter which you’ve painstakingly put together. Many jobs don’t want to even receive a letter. They want you to fill out the dreaded online application form.

I have an excel file with, I’m not kidding, about 100 different passwords and usernames for as many sites. Every time you fill out an online application they ask you to register with their web address. This usually involves having your passwords rejected about six times, because you’ve doubled up on characters, you need upper- AND lower-case letters, you need more numbers or symbols, or you have to kill a snake during the harvest moon and dance The Watusi with three infant lemmings.

Then there is the tiresome task of filling out questions like; previous employers, previous education, previous salary, references, and everything else you already have on the resume from which you are copying the information. Then, after all this, they ask you to upload your resume in “.doc or .pdf”. Sometimes, the first thing you have to do is upload your CV, and then some witless program divides it into keyword categories and presents a version back to you which is so horribly mangled it looks like it passed through a pig’s stomach after being beaten into submission by four guys with hockey sticks. On it, you find out your name is “Manterex 11 Video Productions”, your address is “Voicetracked evening show at CFNI-FM” and your previous job was “Prague, CZ”, after being educated at the well-respected “+44 07660 695 004” University.

The online application strips you of any humanity you might have had. You fill one of these bastards out and a prescient robot sends you an email which says, “Thank you for your application to (insert company name). Due to the high number of applicants, only those selected for an interview will be contacted. Please do not email or call us. In fact, the best thing to do is dig a deep hole in a field somewhere, stand at the edge and shoot yourself in the forehead. When you get reincarnated as a door-hinge, we’ll contact you.”

And I feel like time is running out. Thanks to the generosity of my landlord I’ve already extended my contract for an extra month in this flat. On Sunday I’ll be moving back with the girl I stayed with the first week I was here. This will give me another month and allow me to extend my finances a bit farther in order to find a job in a world that is going down the toilet employment-wise. 

Let’s face it, I’m 37 years old, no job, no money, no girlfriend. The last item is a direct result of the first three, make no mistake about it. I want things. I want a house, a car, a child and a wife, not necessarily in that order. Most of all I want to be able to pay back the people that have helped me out the over the past many, many years, but in order to do that I need a job. And in order to do that someone has to give me a chance.

And how do I get that chance? I go through the hellish and pride-crushing rigmarole of this nightmare they call ‘the job hunt’, just like I seem to have been doing my whole life. There was the famous Language-Less Quest of Holland, 2010. Before that was the Deadly-Depression Desperation Search of Vancouver, 2009. Before that, the Post-Radio-Degree Optimistic Hunt of Several Months While Working a Shit Job in a Restaurant of Ottawa, also 2009. Before that was Prague, where I probably over-stayed my welcome by about five years.

Which raises questions about the choices I made in my life, and how relatively good or bad they were. Because, whatever they were, I’m not happy now. And don’t tell me to be positive, because I’ve learned this lesson repeatedly for the past many years: The higher in altitude you are, the more fatal the landing when you hit the ground. I’ve hit the ground a few times now. Also, don’t tell me everything happens for a reason. Because it doesn’t. That is the hopeful pleading of the utterly directionless.

All in all, though, I’ve still got my sense of humour. There is that. I’ve always said: If that goes, I’m screwed. And in Vancouver I lost it for a while there. And that’s when I just gave up. And you see where that got me?